University of Nairobi Parthenon Marbles Case Study Discussion I will attach a word document with the questions and the requiremntsand i will attach an arti

University of Nairobi Parthenon Marbles Case Study Discussion I will attach a word document with the questions and the requiremntsand i will attach an article to guide you for the answersthats all thanks Survey of Art History I
Quiz 5 (50 points)
The essays should be typed. Each essay/answer should be at 8-10 sentences long.
1. Why was Lord Elgin interested in the Parthenon Marbles? What did he originally intend to
do with them? Once he had them in his possession, what did he claim was his reasoning for
keeping them?
2. Summarize (in your own words) and analyze Greece’s three main arguments for why the
Marbles should be returned.
3. Summarize (in your own words) and analyze the British Museum’s three main arguments for
keeping the Marbles.
4. According to the author, what are a few of Greece’s possible hidden motivations for wanting
the Marbles? What are a few of the British Museum’s possible hidden motivations for
wanting to keep them?
5. In your opinion, should the Marbles be returned to Greece or kept in the UK? Explain your
position, providing at least 2 reasons for returning the Marbles to Greece or keeping them at
the British Museum.
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From: Y. Rowan and U. Baram (eds) 2004 Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the
Consumption of the Past. AltaMira Press, pp. 41-56.
The Ploitics of Playing Fair, or,
Who’s Losing Their Marbles?
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MORAG KERSEL
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those who possess cultural property and those who seek its return. Competing claims for cultural artifacts
such as Greece’s Parthenon Marbles engender some of the most intractable and contentious debates in the realm of international cultural heritage.
A large number of cultural artifacts in Western museums, stately mansions, or hidden away in the private collections of businessmen have had a politically contentious history. Much of this cultural property has come under scrutiny by a
burgeoning postcolonial consciousness, highlighting the inherently problematic
nature of their current venues. Concurrently, the claims of ownership by indigenous communities are equivocal as issues of the “right” of ownership, the identity of the owner, the disposition of cultural artifacts as symbolic capital
(Bourdieu 1990) in the global economy, and modern property law persistently infringe on these repatriation claims. Unrepatriated cultural property is caught in a
type of limbo—never entirely connected to the countries where it is situated or to
the places from where it originates. The questions of who owns the past and where
cultural property belongs consistently arise.
The answer to the question of who owns the past is, with increasing frequency,
the artifact’s country of origin. A significant number of these objects have already
been returned in response to popular demand, international initiatives and legal
pressure. Notable examples include the Director of the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities Zahi Hawass’s campaign to have many Egyptian antiquities returned to Egypt (Lufkin 2002); the repatriation of the artifacts from the Sinai by
Israel to Egypt in accordance with the 1979 peace treaty (Einhorn 1996; HassanGordon 2000); the Metropolitan Museum in New York’s return of the Lydian
Hoard to Turkey (Kaye and Main 1995); and recent announcement of the intention of Italy, after years of international pressure, to return the Axum Obelisk to
HERE IS FIERCE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN
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Ethiopia (Williams 2002). The marble sculptures taken from the Parthenon in the
first years of the nineteenth century are the best-known claim for the repatriation
of cultural property, and the request for repatriation remains unfulfilled. As with
other political and highly emotional controversies, there seems to be no middle or
common ground in the dispute over where the Marbles should reside.
Superficially, this case appears to be little more than one nationalistic argument pitted against another. Even the name calls into question allegiances—the
common term “Elgin Marbles” implicitly denoting British ownership. On closer
inspection, the dispute is more complicated. The motives for requesting the repatriation of the Marbles may not be as multifarious as some voices in the debate
would suggest but boil down to the economic benefit of owning the Marbles.
Heritage tourism is a growth industry and in 2004 with additional visitors for the
Olympic Games, Greece could see an unprecedented year of economic gain. The
Marbles as an important tourist attraction in Britain continue to draw large
crowds to the British Museum. This paper illustrates the deployment of the Marbles in the global economy of cultural commodities, and the ambiguities and
ironies surrounding these transactions. The central issue of this paper is not the
repatriation of the Marbles (although the issue is discussed to some extent), but
the motives of each country to “own” the Marbles.
Historical Background
An acropolis, literally “high city,” was a central feature of most ancient Greek citystates. “No other acropolis was as successful as the Athenian: a massive urban focus that was always within view. and that at various times throughout
uninterrupted 6,000-year-long cultural history served as a dwelling place, fortress,
sanctuary and symbol—often all at the same time” (Hurwit 1999, 4). With high
sheer rock walls on all sides it was an easily defendable location. By the end of the
sixth century B.C., the Acropolis was no longer a protected residential area. Relatively more peaceful times, and resulting expansion of the city, meant that Athens
was no longer limited to this citadel and now stretched around its lower flanks. By
this time, the Acropolis had become the site of the city’s most important religious
cults and, most importantly, the center of the city’s titular deity, Athena.
Herodotus records that in 480 B.C., at the time of the second Persian invasion, the
entire Acropolis was plundered and then burned by the invaders. Among the
buildings lost were the temple to Athena Polias and the temple to Athena
Parthenos, the latter still under construction at the time of the attack.
After their victory against the Persians at Plataea in 479 B.C., Athenians returned to their abandoned city and found all the buildings on the Acropolis had
been laid to waste. Pericles wanted to rebuild the city and make it an artistic,
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THE POLITICS OF PLAYING FAIR, OR, WHO’S LOSING THEIR MARBLES?
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cultural, and political center. The Parthenon and the temple of the Maiden
(Athene Parthenos), from which the Marbles came, were erected between 447
and 438 B.C. We know the architects, we know where the marble was quarried
(Matthews 1992; Korres 1995; Pike 2002), we know that the votive statue of
Athene was by Phidias and that he supervised the carving of the Marbles (St.
Clair 1998, 46), and we also know in some detail what payments were made in
the drachmas of antiquity (St. Clair 1998, 48). The construction of the
Parthenon and the Acropolis involved a large workforce, many resources, and a
vast amount of gold. The project was an exercise in conspicuous consumption,
with clear political symbolism communicating the Athenian military victory
over the Persians (Hamilakis 1999, 305) and sending a clear message to those
city-states and warring nations contemplating a challenge to Athenian political
dominance.
In the History of the Peloponnesian Wars, Thucydides writes that “if only the temples and the foundations remained . . . one would conjecture that [Athens] had
been twice as powerful as in fact it is.” Plutarch in his Pericles emphasizes that the
reconstruction (at public expense) was a testament to the city’s wealth and power.
Both Plutarch and Thucydides believe that architecture conveys both the power
and the glory of its makers. In the past, as today, the question of whether the
Parthenon serves as an outstanding and enduring achievement as suggested by
Plutarch or only as propaganda, as Thucydides seems to suggest, is still relevant.
Over the centuries changes in the symbolic meaning of the Parthenon illustrate a
transformation in how the space and material culture was coopted for different audiences. Emptied of its deities and treasures, the Temple withstood its conversion
into a church, a mosque and, finally, an arsenal.
In 1686 an alliance of European powers led by Venice and financed by the
pope renewed their long-standing war on the Ottoman Empire. In 1687 Italian
general Francesco Morosini led an army to free Greece from the Turks. During
the siege the Ottoman military used the Acropolis as a vantage point and turned
the Parthenon into a storage facility for ammunition. The fortifications were no
match for modern warfare; the strategic significance of the Acropolis was negligible (Hurwit 1999, 291). Still the symbolic importance of the site was evident and Morosini reluctantly ordered his troops to surround the area.
“Though it was now a mosque, the Parthenon had once been the cathedral of
Athens and the Turks, overestimating European reverence for holy buildings and
the Classical past, thought that Morosini’s men would not attack” (Hurwit
1999, 192). During the siege by the Venetians, a single shell pierced the roof of
the Parthenon, directly hitting the gunpowder, igniting a colossal explosion that
blew away the roof, two-thirds of the old cella walls, and brought down a series
of colonnades that supported the metopes and frieze slabs (Hurwit 1999, 292).
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Not only did Morosini and his men attack but they also took home some spoils
of victory:
When the garrison surrendered and Morosini took possession of the Acropolis
he decided to take home to Venice a trophy of his conquest the large group of
sculptures from the west pediment which had survived the explosion. But when his
engineers were lowering the massive statues their cables broke and the whole group
was shattered. A head from one of the pedimental figures, now in Paris, was taken
back to Venice by Morosini’s secretary. Two heads from a metope, now in Copenhagen, were taken by another officer in his army. The following year Morosini was
compelled to withdraw from Athens leaving the Acropolis a heap of marble rubble. More damage was done to the Parthenon in half a year that in all its previous
history. (St. Clair 1998, 57)
For the next century or so the rubble from the Parthenon provided hearthstones and doorsteps for Athenian peasants and mortar for the building trade,
while Ottoman soldiers used the carved figures for target practice. With every
earthquake tremor more of both the building and the sculptures fell.
From the seventeenth century, with the onset of Classicism as one of the main
ideological forces in the West, the classical monuments of Greece and Rome again
became the center of European attention. Western Europeans traveled to Greece for
inspiration and to experience the Classical ideal. This led to a corpus of travel writings and memoirs, as well as the “collecting” of many pieces of antiquity (Hamilakis 1999, 306). British readers became familiar with the features and sculptures of
the Parthenon from the descriptions and illustrations in The Antiquities of Athens
(1762) by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett. The designs in their book became the
templates and models for many British stately homes and public buildings.
In 1795, Thomas Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin (known as Lord Elgin), a career diplomat posted to Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire, went in search of
classical inspiration. Elgin had been occupied for some years building a grand country house in Scotland, Broomhall. He engaged a rising young architect, Thomas Harrison, an excellent designer in the Greek style and passionate admirer of Greek
classical architecture. Harrison strongly encouraged Elgin to arrange for drawings to
be made of the Greek antiquities in Athens and especially “to bring back plaster
casts in the round of the actual surviving objects. There was no suggestion at that
time that the original remains themselves should be removed” (St. Clair 1998, 34).
Lord Elgin approached Sultan Selim III in November 1799 for permission to
sketch and to make casts of the statuary and architectural elements of the Acropolis. Here the tale grows murky. Did he bribe the Ottomans, the ruling power?
Did he exceed the authority given him by the permit? Did he remove sculptures
that were safe and secure in their high original positions? Did his appetite for rescue develop into greed, unscrupulous, corrupt, and unethical?
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The original Turkish firman (an official letter from the Ottoman government conferring favors) has long since been lost and the remaining copy is in
Italian, subject to varied interpretations. The initial legal controversy of the
Marbles turns on the seventeenth-century meaning of the Italian word qualche.
Usually translated as “some,” it should read “some pieces of stone with inscriptions and figures.” But it can also be translated as “any.”Whether or not the
original firman gave Lord Elgin this sweeping permission, Elgin’s men, led by
the Italian landscape painter Giovanni Battista Lusieri and the less scrupulous
Reverend Phillip Hunt, liberally interpreted the vague document. With Elgin’s
enthusiastic if long-distance support (Elgin only visited Athens only twice, and
very briefly), they immediately began dismantling the Parthenon frieze (Hurwit
1999, 296).
Under the law of the time the acts of the Ottoman officials with respect to
persons and property under their authority were presumably valid (Merryman
1985, 1897). Some scholars believe that the Ottomans had a solid claim to legal
authority over the Parthenon because it was public property, which the respective
successor nation acquires on a change of sovereignty (O’Connell 1956, 226–27).
In a series of articles based on extensive research into the question of the Turkish
firman, legal scholar David Rudenstine has come to the conclusion that Elgin did
not request or receive permission to remove the Marbles (Rudenstine 2000,
2001a, 2001b, 2002). Other experts have also questioned the Ottoman claim to
legal authority over the Athenian Acropolis (Eagan 2001; Reppas 1999). In absentia, Elgin was convinced by Lusieri and Hunt that the sculptures were in grave
danger from Turkish neglect. By the end of the expedition Elgin had accumulated
much of the best of what the Acropolis had to offer. Elgin thought he was rescuing and preserving sublime examples of a culture that was the heritage of the
West rather than specifically that of an Athenian culture. As Vinson (this volume)
notes, “The British Empire wished to identify with the prestige of the Greek culture. This was not out of racial identification with the ancient Greeks. Rather,
there was a sense that the British, as the greatest, freest, people on Earth, were the
most natural possessors of the objects.”
Elgin left Constantinople in January 1803. The sculptures ended up in London’s custom house in 1804, after a long and adventurous journey involving the
sinking of the ship Mentor, which carried one shipment of sculptures, subsequently
recovered by Greek fishermen (Hamilakis 1999; Hitchens 1997). The remaining
shipments of the Parthenon frieze remained in the custom’s house for two years
during Lord Elgin’s French imprisonment. Napoleon’s forces seized Elgin on his
way back to Britain and held him hostage using the Marbles as their ransom demand. Elgin refused to give up his beloved Marbles; he even lost his nose to a disfiguring disease. On returning to England, Elgin found himself destitute and with
no means or motive for returning to Broomhall, and his only option was to sell
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the Marbles. He placed the Marbles in the dirty, damp shed and grounds of his
Park Lane house, where they remained for years, decaying in London’s damp climate, while he tried to find a buyer. As the Marbles languished in Elgin’s musty
storerooms, they became the stuff of legend in London, inspiring artists, poets,
authors, architects, and the general populace.
The classical style of architecture swiftly adopted by the nation and the mystique of the Marbles added to this craze. Some twelve years later, in 1816, the
Marbles were bought by the British government through an act of Parliament.
When Elgin offered the Marbles for sale, there was much public debate on the issue, specifically centered on whether Elgin illegally exported the Marbles, whether
he abused his position as ambassador to obtain the Marbles, and whether he was
trying to get rich by selling the collection (St. Clair 1998, 274). Both the government and the public opposed the purchase. In the end the Parliament purchased
the entire collection for far less than the original asking price, by a vote of 82–30
(Trade Environmental Database 2002). Intriguing, the thirty members voting
against felt Elgin improperly took the Marbles from Athens (Greenfield 1996,
59–63). Once purchased, the Marbles were subsequently transferred to the British
Museum, where a special gallery was built and where they reside today.
According to Richard Prentice (2001, 8), museums are today immersed in a
wider commodification of culture: the extensive proffering of artifacts as a means
of attaining the real. The majority of the Parthenon sculptures now reside at the
British Museum (Hitchens 2001, 84), where the visitor can experience the “real”
Parthenon by viewing the sculptures on display in the Duveen Gallery. In the earlier part of this century Lord Duveen had the Marbles scrubbed with wire brushes
to make them look more attractive. The British Museum buried the report of this
treatment and kept the sculptures out of view for ten years, hoping that the damage wouldn’t be noticed (St. Clair 1999). Arguments have been made that removing the sculptures from the Parthenon saved them from the pollution and
earthquakes that plague Athens (Daley 2001, 88). But is this really for the best?
Is the museum providing the best educational experience for the viewers by exhibiting the Marbles out of their original context? And is the audience having the
“real” experience that the sculptor Phidias intended by considering the Marbles at
eye level against the backdrop of a stone wall instead of hundreds of feet in the
air against the brilliant blue of the Athenian sky?
In the very first years of the nineteenth century it must have seemed inconceivable to Elgin that the Greeks would in 1821 begin to wrest their independence
from the Ottoman Empire and be a Christian kingdom by 1829 that took up the
heritage of the ancient Greeks as its patrimony; he could only see his precious
Marbles in terms of more hearth stones, more marble dust for mortar, more fingers, toes, and noses knocked off by potshot musketry. Had Attica remained un-
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der Ottoman rule—as did Epirus, Macedonia, and Roumelia throughout the
nineteenth century—even the Greeks might be grateful for his preservation of the
Marbles, rather than vilifying Elgin’s rescue operation. Elgin “saved” the Marbles,
but should Britain now possess them?
To whom should the Marbles belong? According to Christopher Hitchens
(2001, 88), the eminent political writer, the Marbles belong to the collective:
Not to us, not to Greece, not to London, not to Lord Duveen nor to the Elgin
family heirs. They belong to Phidias and Pericles. To whom does the whole belong? The whole belongs to us, because it is the nearest definition of the global
continuity and artistic patrimony (Hitchens 2001, 88)
Professor J. H. Merryman (1985, 1916), a noted legal expert on cultural repatriation, argues that “everyone has an interest in the preservation and disposition…
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