The vast majority of Greek people want the Parthenon Marbles to be returned. The demand for ‘restitution’ transcends traditional party lines and the Right-Left divide. For Greek politicians, it’s a safe claim to make before a disillusioned, sometimes outright hostile electorate, while bearing zero costs on the international front, as Britain would dare not lash out, unlike our neighbouring foreign governments towards which the Greek state holds rather more devastatingly broad claims of ‘restitution’.
“It is not a question of returning artefacts whose ownership is in question. These sculptures belong to Greece and they have effectively been stolen,” said the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in his most recent launching of the familiar claim, talking to the BBC on his last visit to London. And alas, for the first time, a rather promising (for him) sounding response has been elicited. The new Director of the British Museum, Nicholas Cullinan, went on record this summer to say that a lending scheme was in the works and that, although he couldn’t “get into the particulars”, a new era of “sharing” between the United Kingdom and Greece was set to begin.
This response on the part of Britain – or perhaps just on the part of Cullinan – has the peculiar advantage of bringing out the incoherence of the Greek claim: what, exactly, is meant by a “return” of the marbles? Would an indefinite “loan” of the ancient artefacts to the newly-established, hyper-modern Acropolis Museum suffice? Then again, isn’t the whole point of ‘historical justice’ supposed to be taking back something that was stolen, some 200 years ago, by the Earl of Elgin? Are Greeks really going to tolerate being leant something that was plundered from them, and thus be obliged to share it with the thieves?
If the lending scheme was to be tolerated as a ‘lesser of two evils’ – or even, perhaps, a first step towards permanent restitution – then the moral basis of the claim is subverted and we are left with nothing but a shabby compromise. The Greek PM admitted as much in his BBC appearance – the marbles would “look better” in the Acropolis Museum, he said. But if it’s simply a question of which museum would display the marbles to better effect, the British Museum far surpasses the Acropolis Museum.
It is here that the astonishing shortsightedness of the British response is brought to light. For while it may be true that there was something questionable about the original acquisition of the marbles, their current ownership by the British Museum is perfectly above board. And while there, they can be studied, analysed and obsessed over by leading experts in the field. The Parthenon marbles are kept there as exemplars of the highest achievements of human civilisation, for which the British Museum serves as steward and trustee. If it’s going to start returning artefacts to the places they’re originally from in some misguided attempt to ‘decolonise’ its collection, won’t the British Museum eventually become an empty building? What then? A nice residential development in Bloomsbury?
Maria Kornarou is a Greek journalist and lawyer. She is currently a Probationary Research Student at the University of Oxford.
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