Telegraph 29 January 2022

Technology that allows archaeologists to make a millimetre-perfect replica paves way for a deal with British Museum, says Greek ambassador. The plan to copy the section of the Parthenon frieze in the British Museum comes from the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA), which created a full-size replica of Syria’s Palmyra Arch which was blown up by Isis in October 2015.

To read this article in full, visit The Telegraph.

Ta Nea 31 January 2022

Yannis Andritsopoulos, UK correspondent for Ta Nea published an aricle on Monday:'New proposal for 3D copies of the Sculptures. The international Institute of Digital Archaeology is willing to make exact replicas with the ultimate goal of exhibiting them in the British Museum, as reported in ‘Ta Nea’ by the IDA’s director Roger Michel and the Greek Ambassador in London, Ioannis Raptakis.'

Speaking to ‘Ta Nea’ the head of the scientists who inspired the project explained that the innovative method developed by his team could create copies of the sculptures, which may convince the British Museum to return the fragment sculptures  in Room 18 to Greece. A move that is "justifiable and will be of benefit to both countries."

 "I want to see Boris Johnson and Kyriakos Mitsotakis shaking hands and smiling. There is a long history of cooperation between the two countries, which must continue. That's why we offered to make these copies. I think the British will realise that it is time for the Parthenon sculptures to return home. Nothing would make me happier than seeing them reunited in Athens," notes Roger Michel.

Initially, the Institute's scientists intend to "clone" a metope from the south side of the Parthenon located in the British Museum, which represents the struggle between a Lapithe and a centaur. "We're going to show people what this technology can do," Michel explains. This will take about three months and cost £50,000-70,000, a cost that the Institute itself will cover. "Then, we aspire to reproduce the entire parthenon frieze."

The Oxford-based institute has pioneered a technique known as 3D Machining. First a digital image is created using photogrammetry, then a robot-operated machine uses chisels in the same way as a human sculptor to carve a copy of the original.

"We will procure marble identical to the one used by Phidias," explains the director of the Oxford-based Institute, who will ask the British Museum to allow his team to scan the Sculptures on display in London.* 

The aim of the Institute is to exhibit the entire Parthenon frieze at the United Nations headquarters in New York and other cities of the world, until they are "installed" in London, if the British Museum allows it. "We hope the Museum will embrace our initiative and exhibit the copies, to facilitate the reunification of the surviving pieces in Room 18 with those in the Acropolis Museum.

"I am optimistic that the reproduction of the frieze will act as a symbol of Greek-British friendship and will lead to a gesture of goodwill that will correct a mistake that was made two centuries ago."

The Director of the Institute calls on the British Prime Minister to support his initiative. "Mr Johnson has been a great supporter of our work. Thanks to him, the copy of the Arch of Palmyra in Trafalgar Square was exhibited. I believe he can support us now. People change their minds and I think there's a chance it will help this call for the reunification also."

Speaking to ‘Ta Nea’, Greece's Ambassador to London Ioannis Raptakiswelcomed the Institute's initiative, which was inspired by his own intervention during an event in the British capital last Friday. "It is one step closer to meeting the respectful request for the return of the Sculptures to Greece. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakishas put a number of proposals on the table. It would be amazing, if the British government were to take the initiative to correct this injustice."

"The new technology allows the manufacture of exact copies. I believe that the British Museum should present these copies in its collection. It is time to allow the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures. It would be a magnanimous act of the British people and would be a recognition of our historic debt to Greece," Michael Wood, professor of history at the University of Manchester and member of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (BCRPM), told ‘Ta Nea’.

To read the original article in Greek, follow the link to Ta Nea.

* In 2012, the BM gave Niall McLaughlin Architects permission to scan the frieze in Room 18  

Historian, broadcaster and public history professor at  the University of Manchester, Michael Wood has joined BCRPM.

On Tuesday 04 Januray 2022, Michael's article in History Extra on the 'the future of the Parthenon Sculptures' was published. A topic that has been at the heart of the BCRPM campaign for 39 years.

This week, on Wednesday, a jury also heard that it was a criminal offence to keep the statue of Edward Colston up in Bristol's public park "The Centre" because it was so offensive and that it was beyond belief that it had been up for so long.

For the Greeks alongside so many more nationalities, that have stood in Room 18 looking at the fragmented sculptures forcibly removed from the Parthenon, they too cannot believe that it is two centuries since Greece's independence and yet today, the halves in the Acropolis Museum continue to be divided with those that are in the British Museum.  

BCRPM Chair Janet Suzman and Vice-Chair Professor Paul Cartledge, alongside the members of BCRPM were delighted to welcome Michael Wood as a new 2022 BCRPM member.

You can read Michael's article in History Extra with the link here.

23 May 2022, London, Thanasis Gavos for Skaigr

"Great shock" said Michael Wood, a renown British historian as he grappled with the "false" claim of the British Museum that most of the Parthenon Sculptures located in London were collected by Lord Elgin's associates not from the monument, but "from the rubble".

This argument was made by the Deputy Director of the British Museum Jonathan Williams at UNESCO's the intergovernmental commission's 23 session on the Promotion of the Return of Cultural Property last week in Paris.

Speaking to SKAI Mr. Wood, Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and one of the newest members of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), clarified: "It is clearly clear that most of the marbles that Elgin took were taken from the monument. You cannot tour the British Museum today looking at them and thinking that these marbles fell from 40 feet in the rubble. The greatest of the damage they suffered was in their removal by Elgin and his envoy, the Italian Lusieri."

The professor known through television histories to the British professor continued: "We have eyewitnesses who describe the forcible removal of the foreheads, the frieze. Even Lusieri himself admitted that he had to resort to becoming a 'little barbarian', as he put it, to get the pieces of the frieze, cutting the back with saws to make them lighter to be transported. So it is outrageous to claim that most of the sculptures were not on the monument."

Mr Williams' argument provoked a reaction from Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, who in a statement to the Guardian newspaper referred, among other things, to the "blatant theft" by Elgin.

The honorary President of the BCRPM Professor Anthony Snowgrass commented speaking to SKAI that the argument for rescuing sculptures from the rubble is not entirely new, but has now been formulated to an exaggerated degree. In any case, he added, it does not change the substance of the issue and the Greek request.

On the British Museum's argument for the legal acquisition of the Sculptures, which Mr. Williams insisted on at the UNESCO conference, Michael Wood noted: "In the year 2022 such arguments do not convince most people at all. Whether they were acquired legally is a very controversial point, there is very little evidence of this. In any case, how can he (Elgin) legally acquire them from an occupying power?

"The question on which we should keep our minds is not these meticulous arguments about whether it was legal, whether this sculpture was on the ground or not, but what is the right thing to do in this case. All over the world now these demands for reparations and for the repatriation of things looted by European powers in the era of imperialism are becoming a very big issue. The time has now come for these Sculptures to be reunited in the Acropolis Museum."

At the same time, Mr. Wood highlighted the importance of the moral argument about a single artistic creation that must be united to the greatest extent possible. "There are also fragments in the Vatican, in the Louvre, in Copenhagen, in Würzburg. Everything should be returned to Athens and the Marbles should be reunited.

As for the British Museum, he stressed that it could replace the Parthenon Sculptures with other "fascinating" masterpieces offered by the Greek government.

"Moreover, the return of the Parthenon Marbles would be a great, magnanimous gesture from the British to the Greeks, which most Britons support, according to the polls," Michael Wood concluded.

Source: skai.gr

 15 January 2022,The Times

Letters Page

Michael Wood, BCRPM's newest member, also had a letter published in the Times today: 

Helena Smith writes in the Guardian about the Palace of Aigai, the largest surviving classical Greek building, after 16-year reconstruction completed.

For historians inside and outside Greece the new palace does something better still: refocus attention away from the classical age of Pericles in Athens to the Macedonian dynasty of northern Greece and achievements of Philip and Alexander.

“History is always about what we focus on,” said the British historian and broadcaster Michael Wood, speaking from London. “And this focuses our attention on the incredible events that began there. This small, provincial, militaristic kingdom would be the catalyst for the spread of Greek culture and Aigai the launch pad for Alexander the Great’s adventure in history, his expedition to Asia and conquest of half the known world.”

If the Parthenon represented the peak of the classical age, the royal metropolis conjured the beginning of the Hellenistic age, one that would last for hundreds of years and be felt as far as Afghanistan and India.

But there was something else, said Wood, who retraced the young warrior king’s epic journey through deserts, mountain ranges, rivers and plains from Greece to the north-west frontier of Pakistan and India in the 1990s.

The palace’s reconstruction had shown, yet again, that like the Parthenon marbles, great historical monuments have “an integrity” best seen unitedin their natural landscape. “The modern Greek state, as it should be, is proving to be a pre-eminent guardian of its ancient Greek culture,” said Wood. “What the palace also does is draw attention to the fact that the fifth-century sculptures should all be in the same place, back in Athens.”

Read Helena Smith's article in the Guardian, here.