In this episode, I briefly explore the story behind the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures that were taken from Athens and transported to London in the British Museum.
The Elgin Marbles are more than 30 ancient stone sculptures from Greece held in the British Museum, dating back more than 2,000 years. These Parthenon sculptures are known as Elgin Marbles because they were transported to Britain in the early 1800s by Thomas Bruce, who was the 7th Earl of Elgin.
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Thomas Bruce, 7th earl of Elgin (born July 20, 1766, Fife, Scotland—died November 14, 1841, Paris, France) was a British diplomatist and art collector. The third son of Charles Bruce, the 5th earl (1732–71), Elgin succeeded his brother William Robert, the 6th earl, in 1771 at the age of five. Entering the army in 1785 and rising later to the rank of major general, Elgin began his diplomatic career in 1790. Envoy at Brussels in 1792 and at Berlin in 1795 during the first phase of the war against revolutionary France, he was appointed envoy extraordinary at Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1799, retaining the post until 1803. Detained in France on his way home through the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens, Elgin did not reach England until 1806 and found his reputation under heavy attack. Though serving as a Scottish representative peer between 1790 and 1840, he took little further part in public life.
The objects were removed from the Parthenon at Athens and from other ancient buildings and shipped to England by arrangement of Thomas Bruce who was British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. And the region is question at the time was under the Ottoman Empire. And although what we recognise as Greek civilisation dates back centuries, it was never a unified country, and the Greece we know today gained its independence and formation in 1830. The Elgin Marbles decorated the walls and grounds of ancient temples and show scenes from Greek history and mythology. The biggest stretches for 75m, showing a procession for the birthday of the goddess Athena, while others feature gods, heroes or mythical creatures.
Elgin was a lover of art and antiquities. He was concerned about damage being done to important artworks in the temples of Greece, then under Ottoman sway. Fearing that they would eventually be destroyed, he asked permission to have artists measure, sketch, and copy important pieces of sculpture and architectural detail for posterity from the Ottomans as they were the only legal authority to grant him permission. At length the request was granted—along with the authority “to take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon.”
When Elgin's men removed the sculpture from the Parthenon, the building was in a very sorry state. From the fifth century BC to the 17th century AD, it had been in continuous use. It was built as a Greek temple, was later converted into a Christian church, and finally (with the coming of Turkish rule over Greece in the 15th century) it was turned into a mosque.
Although we think of it primarily as a pagan temple, its history as church and mosque was an even longer one, and no less distinguished. It was, as one British traveller put it in the mid-17th century, 'the finest mosque in the world'.
All that changed in 1687 when, during fighting between Venetians and Turks, a Venetian cannonball hit the Parthenon mosque - temporarily in use as a gunpowder store. Some 300 women and children were amongst those killed, and the building itself was ruined. By 1800 a small replacement mosque had been erected inside the shell, while the surviving fabric and sculpture was suffering the predictable fate of many ancient ruins.
Elgin arranged for a series of shipments to take the treasures to England in 1802–12 with but one mishap—HMS Mentor sank in a storm off the Greek isle of Cythera in 1804, but the entire cargo was recovered afterwards. Elgin left the embassy in 1803 and arrived in England in 1806. The collection remained private for the next 10 years.
An outcry arose over the affair, and Elgin was assailed for rapacity, vandalism, and dishonesty in hauling the Greek treasures to London. Lord Byron and many others attacked Elgin’s actions in print – however this was very much a protest without understanding the context by people including Lord Byron who have had a bit of sheltering from the realities of how the outer world operated at that time – the remnants of such virtue signalling can be witnessed in modern times as well. Below is a fragment from ‘The Curse of Minerva’ written by Lord Byron to illustrate the point:
“Mortal!” -twas thus she spake- “that blush of shame
Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;
First of the mighty, foremost of the free,
Now honourd less by all, and least by me;
Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.
Seekst thou the cause of loathing? -look around.
Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,
I saw successive tyrannies expire.
Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,
Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.
Survey this vacant, violated fane;
Recount the relics torn that yet remain:
These Cecrops placed, this Pericles adornd,
That Adrian reard when drooping Science mournd.
What more I owe let gratitude attest-
Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.
That all may learn from whence the plunderer came,
The insulted wall sustains his hated name:
So. As mentioned before. These important pieces of Athenian history did not really escape their occupier’s wrath or the indifference of the people around, they were being set upon, and had it not been for Lord Elgin, there probably won’t have been anything left of them apart from a distant memory.
A select committee of Parliament was established to examine the sculpture and the possibility of acquiring it for Britain. In 1810 Elgin published a defense of his actions that silenced most of his detractors. The final shipment of the Elgin Marbles reached London in 1812, and in 1816 the entire collection was acquired from Elgin by the crown for the sum of £35,000, about half of Elgin’s costs, where they are displayed now.
The Greek government has been requesting its return so that it can be held in their museums. This is a matter of open debate between historians, archaeologists, and politicians. And no matter which way it is decided, I am sure it will remain a topic of debate for some time to come. I discuss this topic in detail along with the controversies surrounding Lord Elgin and the many accusations made against him with Dr. Mario Trabucco della Torretta. Dr Mario is a classical archaeologist trained in Sicily and in Athens. His expertise covers classical Greek architecture and sculpture, Ancient Athens and the Elgin Marbles.
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