Elgin Marbles - the endless Britain Vs Greece conflict.

The Elgin Marbles aka Parthenon sculptures were a marble frieze Doric temple on the Acropolis Greece, built in c440 BC and dedic­at­­­ed to Goddess Ath­ena. The temple was the centre­piece of an ambit­ious building programme in Athens. But in 1687 the temple, after c2,000 years, was damaged in the Venice-Ottoman Empire War. 

Acropolis of Athens,
world's most striking extant ancient Greek monumental complex

The Marbles were str­ipped from the Acropolis and shipped to UK by Scot­tish nobl­eman 7th Earl Lord Elgin Thomas Bruce, who served as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (1799-1803). Elgin’s let­ter granted him permission to take the art objects as a personal gest­ure, after encour­ag­ing the British forces into Ottoman Egypt.

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin (1766-1841)

Wiki

The collection holds half of the surviving Parth­enon: 247’ of the original 524’ frieze; 15 of 92 metopes; 17 figures from the pedim­ents, and objects from other Acropolis temples. At first the art was publicly ex­hib­ited in Elgin’s Park Lane mansion, at­t­r­acting in­terest from pot­ential buyers. Then, invited by British Mu­seum trust­ees, Elgin chose to sell to the Briti­sh government, to pay his debts. 

Elgin Marbles on display at the British Museum, 1961.
History Today

In June 1816 a Commons’ Select Committee found the Mar­bles had been hon­ourably acquired and would great­ly increase Britain’s art­ist­ic wealth. The Committee set the price at £35,000, not the £74,000 that El­g­in re­qu­ested. The House won the vote for the pur­chase and a sub­sequent Act of Parliam­ent gave the collect­ion in perpetuity to British Museum trustees. 
                       

marble slabs were part of the frieze that ran around the Parth­en­on

The Chronicle

Britain never seriously con­sidered returning the Elgin Marbles sc­ulpt­ures to Athens. Since c1890 successive govern­­ments have argued that:
1.they are more accessible in the British Mus­eum;
2.their return will be a pre­­­c­edent that's reg­ret­ted later;
3.Athens offered less secur­ity than London.

Architect Robert Smirke built the Elgin Room, finally completed in 1832 and later ext­ended into ad­jacent galleries. Bec­ause the marble slabs were actual­ly part of the frieze that ran around the Parth­en­on ins­ide the peristyle, they should have been called the Parth­enon Frieze.

Domestic consensus about keeping the Mar­b­les broke down when Parliament debated their purch­ase. MP Hugh Hammersley urged the Commons for an am­endment, saying Britain holds these mar­bles only in trust till they are demanded by the present, or future owners of Athens City. This was bef­ore the Greeks revolted against the Ottomans and, with Brit­ish assis­t­ance, set up their own state in southern Bal­­kan Pen­in­sula. In 1834 the Bavarian reg­en­cy, assist­ing Greece’s first king Otto, chose Athens as the king­dom’s new cap­ital, insp­ired by old western civil­is­ation!

Elgin’s marbles were acquired in 1801-5, but it was Greece’s entry in­to WW2 that reheated the issue. When Mussolini’s army invaded Greece from Italian-held Albania in Oct 1940, Britain and its Empire st­ood vir­tually alone in the war. The Greeks soon pushed the invaders back into Albania. Still reeling from defeat in France and from the Blitz, the British public could finally be optimistic about this Axis reversal.

Greek dictator Ioannis Met­axas feared pre­cip­itat­ing a German attack, yet keeping Greece in the war was a major British policy. Winston Churchill wanted the war in Albania to become a ma­jor divers­ion against both Italy and Germany. For months British sup­port for the Greek war effort was limited to scarce supplies, and the idea of British con­cess­ions to Greece couldn’t be ne­gotiated until af­ter Germany invaded Greece in Ap 1941. Greek nation­al­ists also laid claim Britain’s Cyprus, with its majority Greek population.

The Marbles were discussed in The Times by writer H.B Fyfe in Dec 1940 when the British Museum’s objects were hidden in the old Aldwy­ch Tube St­ation. Fyfe wanted a prime minist­erial pledge to return the Mar­bles post-war, tangible proof of Brit­ish gratitude to their Greek ally. By Jan 1941, 9 more Times articles appeared, for or agin Fyfe’s proposal.

Conservative MP Thelma Cazalet-Keir raised the issue in the Commons in late 1940, asking the prime minister for legislation to return the Mar­b­les post-war. Being the interm­ed­iary between the British Mus­eum and Par­l­iament, Treasury undertook to prepare the govern­ment’s reply. In Jan 1941, Fo­r­­eign Secretary An­thony Eden’s view was that the dis­cus­s­ion re­quired a neutral reply. But in its reco­m­mendation to the Treas­ury, the Foreign Office remained open to sympathetic consid­erat­ion of the issue. Yet Lord Privy Seal Clement Attlee brought no legisl­ation.

Melina Mer­couri, Greek minister for Cult­ure campaigned for the Marbles’ return until 1994. Later the rebuilt Acropolis Museum in Athens tried to offset counter-arguments i.e 1] safe-keeping and 2] access­ib­il­ity. The rectang­ular cement core of its Parth­enon Gallery was designed for the missing parts of the frieze!

                             

Parthenon sculptures of Ancient Greece, British Museum.
ARTnews

We cannot judge Lord Elgin by today’s standards. While taking artworks would trigger disgrace now, during Elgin's era it was common for wealthy tourists to collect ancient treasures, inc­l­uding the Parth­enon. As a genuine art lover, Elgin received authority to take what he wished.

In Aug 2013, UNESCO’s Director General for Culture wrote a letter to the Director of the Brit­ish Mus­eum and British Minister for Culture, pro­pos­ing a mediat­ion process. But the UK Government and the British Museum Tr­ustees each declin­ed in 2015; so Athens returned to reclaiming the arte­facts via diplomatic-political means. Greece noted that its nation­al goal, returning the Parthenon Scul­p­tures to Ath­ens, was agreed by UNESCO’s decision in Sept 2021. 

Fragments of the Parthenon frieze remain, in other European museums. Recently Palermo reported that a Goddess Artemis fragment be­l­ong­­ing to the Parthenon’s east­ern frieze on loan from Sic­ily’s Archaeol­og­ical Museum will remain in Ath­ens. And the Vatican will return Marble fragments from the Vatican Museums, "donations from the Pope".

Read William St Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles (1967)  and Tessa Solomon in Artnews.