On the subject of the Elgin Marbles, it becomes obvious that Culture, whether related to deeply held religious values or not, is open for debate. The British Museum’s perspective is that it “exists to tell the story of cultural achievement throughout the world, from the dawn of human history over two million years ago until the present day,”[1] that the culture of the British encapsulates and includes the culture of those who have come before. There is a sort of Whiggish history going on here, that fits quite naturally with the British Empire as it was when it acquired the Elgin Marbles if not the modern-day version of the same. When the British Empire bought the sculptures from the Earl of Elgin, when Elgin got permission[2] to examine and remove parts of the Parthenon in the first place, the British Empire was massive, a global power. Though not on any global scale, the Greek Empire was once as important, at least as far as Western history is concerned.
But, herein lies one problem with the Greek side in this. The Parthenon may still be important to them culturally, may have once held significant religious importance, when the Greeks were pantheist. But, the British Museum has a point when it says that “the sculptures are part of everyone’s shared heritage and transcend cultural boundaries.” Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, fits quite neatly into a history that leads to the British Empire and beyond to modern-day America, in which we discuss this topic in religion class. At this point in history—going with the Whiggish flow of things—we are the hegemon that the British Empire was for a time, that the Ottoman Empire was in its geographic realm as well, that the Greek Empire under Alexander was. Outside of the modern Greek state, there is value put upon the structures, both physical and philosophical, of Ancient Greece. We value the history of the whole world, the “share heritage” of our cultural inheritance.
Still, Greece makes a plea for the return of its sculptures, but recognizes that shared heritage. “The return of the Parthenon Marbles is a fair request of all the Greeks,” says the Prime Minister, Konstantinos Karamanli. “It is a request of all the people, regardless of nationality, who visualise the reunification of a mutilated monument belonging to the world cultural heritage.”[3] It would be nice to have the history of the Parthenon as a structure intact, sure, but what then of the history of the British Empire. Is not the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles itself a historically significant event now, worthy of coverage in a Museum?[4] There is a dangerous precedent to be set for history if everything acquired by various empires has to be returned. The history of Empire will be damaged as well. The acquisition, the act itself, of the Elgin Marbles is perhaps now so significant that to reverse it would be to undermine history.
Taking that further, the Greek position, it would seem, would forsake all museums, as any piece on display has been taken out of its original context. Not everyone can travel just anywhere; that is why museums exist today, to teach us what we otherwise, in our localities, could not learn, by giving us as much of a hands on, direct visual experience as we can get without travelling, in this case, to the Acropolis. If everyone must travel to Greece only to see these things, perhaps there would not be as much interest in this architecture. When the British Museum put the Marbles in place initially, England was effectively the cultural center of the world, so their having these marbles could do nothing but increase interest in their origins, in Ancient Greece.[5]
The question comes down this: whose culture is it? If the British Museum’s notion is correct, that the Parthenon is part of our “shared heritage,” and the museum “exists to tell the story of cultural achievement throughout the world” and “allows the world public to re-examine cultural identities and explore the complex network of interconnected world cultures,” then how do they not have some claim to the artifacts in question?[6] If the Elgin Marbles have been in London for two centuries and Ancient Greece has remained just as important to history, then why risk damaging the pieces by moving them? The return of the sculptures may be a “fair request” but is it a useful one? Will putting them in a different museum—the New Acropolis Museum in Athens—add to or subtract from the value of Ancient Greece in our world’s culture? Or will it have no effect but for the tourism levels in London and Athens? Is this debate really about deeply felt cultural and religious traditions or is it perhaps about money?
[1] http://www.britishmuseum.org/the_museum/news_and_press_releases/statements/the_parthenon_sculptures.aspx
[2] The extent of the permission he may have gotten or not gotten debated many a time before, still, he spent 11 years taking things from the Acropolis; someone had to notice and, on some level, not object, though of course that someone may have been the local Ottoman Sultan, which is part of the Greek side in this whole Elgin Marbles debate, that the Ottoman Empire, however much it may have controlled Greece at the time, had no right to give away pieces of the Parthenon.
[3] From an interview excerpt posted at http://odysseus.culture.gr/a/1/12/ea121.html
[4] I had intended to allude to the conflict between, say, the Makah Nation cultural tradition of whaling versus the younger, American (or World) culture which has come to believe, for the most part—Japanese whaling and the like excepted—that killing whales is a bad thing, but the connection here with the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles only works if the Treaty of Neah Bay is taken as representative of all the United States’ treaties with native tribes, or if the whaling tradition is taken along with so many other native traditions lost as their respective cultures were subsumed by American Manifest Destiny… and the connection could certainly be made, but would take many more pages than available here. Similarly, the matter of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and China’s views versus the Dalai Lama’s could be brought in, but the debate between the British Museum and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism quite handedly covers the subject quite well, with multiple sides making claims to a cultural relic, and each side having a good case.
[5] Taking this argument to a slightly more ridiculous end, if the Elgin Marbles remain only in the British Museum, if their place in this one museum becomes as permanent a thing as the original location, then their value to the rest of the world is devalued—after all, just as we cannot all travel to Greece, we cannot all travel to London. Either the Parthenon should be intact (inasmuch as it is possible) in its original location, or the pieces that can be moved should be travelling the world on a regular basis, not sitting in one (or, more accurately, a few) museum(s) in one location. Either we have original context or we have opportunity to see firsthand these, or any, pieces. We cannot have both. Keep in mind, even in Athens, given the New Acropolis Museum or the attempts to replace sculptures with replicas on the Acropolis itself, the Greeks are not keeping the Parthenon as it is, and it is already so very far from how it was.
[6] Similarly, if the Makah get permits for their whale hunts now, and their treaty specifically authorizes them to hunt whales, AND they actually make concessions for the modern world—i.e. using guns instead of harpoons to speed the whale’s death—then how can they not be allowed to continue with this tradition that is important to them? Of course, if they managed 70 years without it, while the gray whale was endangered, then whose to say they couldn’t manage a few more, or indefinitely, while still keeping their culture as intact as it had been for those 70 years?
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