The British are changing the narrative about Sculptures of the Parthenonwho now claim that they did not detach them from the monument but found them thrown in the ruins!
According to the article, the controversy over the sculptures of the Parthenon has deepened after Greece rejected a claim by the British Museum that much of the statue, which was removed by order of the Lord Elginwas pulled “from the ruins” around the monument.
The statement, made at a meeting Unesco last week, gave a new lease of life to the long-running cultural controversy and came just days after it was revealed that the The United Kingdom was willing to discuss Greece’s request that the ancient sculptures be reunited with other treasures in Athens.
«Much of the frieze was actually pulled from the ruins around the ParthenonSaid the museum’s deputy director, Dr. Jonathan Williams, at the annual meeting of the World Heritage Organization’s intergovernmental committee to promote the return of cultural property. «These items were not all tampered with by the building as reported“, He added.
Campaigners, citing witnesses at the time, have long argued that the sculptures were forcibly removed from the temple of the 5th century BC. with the help of marble saws to Elgin’s full knowledgethe then British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
In a statement to the Guardian, the Greek Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoniaccused Elgin of committing serial theft.
«Over the years, the Greek authorities and the international scientific community have proved with unshakable arguments the true facts surrounding the removal of the Parthenon sculptures.“, he said. «Lord Elgin used illegal and unjust means to seize and extract the Parthenon sculptures, without real legal permission to do so, in a blatant act of serial theft».
Lucieri admitted in a letter to Elgin in 1802 that he had “forced to be a little barbaric»During an operation to remove a relief or metope sculpture, depicting a woman being dragged by a centaur from the temple.
The British Museum, which bought the antiquities from its counterpart in 1816, has in its collections 15 metopes, 17 pediments and 75 meters from the original frieze 160 meters long. Much of the remaining statue – considered the pinnacle of classical art – is located in Athens, on display in a specially constructed museum at the foot of the Acropolis.
“The last controversy comes after Greece revived its campaign to reunite the masterpieces. Its prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, brought the issue to the forefront during Downing Street talks with Boris Johnson in November. “The new move is widely believed to have put the British Museum in defense.”
Responding to Jonathan Williams’s claims, the famous classical archaeologist Anthony Snodgrass said that there was no doubt that Lusieri’s first target – the metopes on the south side of the Parthenon – had been “violently detached” and invoked the horrific narratives of travelers who had seen what he described as “irreparable damage»Caused in the project.
Snodgrass, who is the honorary chairman of the British Commission for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles, said the lack of evidence makes “impossible to quantify or even documentThe percentage of sculptures that were among the ruins during the four years that Elgin’s team worked on the site. But it remained undisputed that in its quest to obtain as many statues and sculptures as possible, pieces had been mutilated from the monument.
“To reduce the weight of the carriage, Lusieri had sawed and discarded the backs of most of the bricks, so as to keep only the sculpted face intact.“, He said about the monumental frieze that depicts the procession of the Panathenaic festival.
«This in itself does not mean that each square had to be lowered from its place at the top of the building first. but the state of preservation of the vast majority of the slabs of the British Museum is certainly sufficient to show that they had not fallen from 40 feet high, but had been carefully detached and lowered, to be sawn to the ground; in general, it is wrong to say that many of what Elgin got was already on the ground».
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