London, Thanasis Gavos
“Great shock” said that Michael Wood, one of the most famous historians in Britain, suffered from the “false” claim of the British Museum that many of the Parthenon Sculptures in London were collected by Lord Elgin’s associates not from the monument, but “from the ruins”.
This argument was made by the Deputy Director of the British Museum Jonathan Williams at the conference of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Commission for the Promotion of the Return of Cultural Property last week in Paris.
Speaking to SKAI, Mr. Wood, a professor of public history at the University of Manchester and one of the youngest members of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), clarified: “It is clear that most of the marbles Elgin took the monument. You can not browse the British Museum today looking at them and think that these marbles fell from 40 feet into the rubble. The biggest of the damage they suffered it was in their removal from Elgin and his envoy, the Italian Lucieri. “
The British professor, known through television historical documentaries to the British, continued: “We have eyewitnesses who describe the violent removal of the foreheads, the frieze. Even Lucieri himself admitted that he had to resort to becoming ‘a little barbaric’, as he put it, to get the pieces of the frieze, cutting the back with saws to make them lighter to carry. So it is outrageous to claim that most of the sculptures were not in the monument. “
Mr. Williams’s argument provoked the reaction of the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni who in a statement to the Guardian newspaper spoke, among other things, of “blatant theft in a row” by Elgin.
The Honorary President of BCRPM, Professor Anthony Snodgrass, commented to SKAI that the argument for rescuing sculptures from the rubble is not entirely new, but has now been formulated to an excessive degree. In any case, he added, it does not change the essence of the issue and the law of the Greek request.
Commenting on the British Museum’s argument for the legal acquisition of the Sculptures, which Mr Williams insisted at the UNESCO conference, Michael Wood said: “In 2022 such arguments do not convince most people at all. Whether they were legally acquired is a very controversial point, there is very little relevant evidence. In any case, how could he (Elgin) have acquired them legally from an occupying power?
The question we need to keep in mind is not these meticulous arguments as to whether it was legal, whether this sculpture was on the ground or not, but what is the law in this case. All over the world now these demands for reparations and for the repatriation of things that were looted by European powers during the era of imperialism are becoming a very big issue. “Now is the time to give these Sculptures back.”
Mr. Wood also stressed the importance of the ethical argument for a single work of art that must be united as much as possible. “There are also pieces in the Vatican, in the Louvre, in Copenhagen, in Würzburg. “Everything should be returned to Athens and the Marbles should be reunited.”
As for the British Museum, he stressed that it could replace the Parthenon Sculptures with other “fascinating” masterpieces offered by the Greek government.
“Furthermore, the return of the Sculptures would be a great, generous gesture from the British to the Greeks, which they even support “Most Britons, according to opinion polls,” said Michael Wood.
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