Year after year, we suffer the injustice of a Greek leader coming to Britain to ask for what doesn’t belong to him, and every year, we have to play the part of the strict parent who – constantly walking on eggshells – respectfully but firmly has to deny the request.
How long before we can look at the overwhelming historical evidence and accept once and for all that the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles was lawful at the time?
Greece has claimed progress has been made in negotiations to return the Elgin Marbles to Athens ahead of today’s meeting between its Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Sir Keir Starmer.
Downing Street may insist the future of the marbles is not on the agenda, but how long before the public – Greek and British – can face the hard reality that, under international law, occupation was very different from a settled conquest of more than 340 years and that the Ottoman Empire had every right to dispose of their public property as they saw fit?
We don’t need to endorse what happened, but we certainly have a duty to understand the past for what it was, not what we would like it to have been.
Until we develop a shared narrative on the acquisition of the Marbles, we will not see real progress on this issue. The only way to achieve this is to examine the documents, the eyewitness accounts, and the material evidence without fear or favour, leaving aside the emotional appeals and the chauvinistic preconceptions.
If we dare to do that, we will start a new chapter, and I hope that the “Parthenon partnership” we have sometimes heard about can bring us closer to this goal.
Accepting that the removal of the sculptures from the Acropolis was lawful in 1801 does not necessarily mean that they can never go back to Athens, but it certainly means that we should have a balanced and honest discussion that builds on the accepted truth of British ownership of them.
Greece has spent the last two centuries in denial.
Still, there can be no healing without acceptance of the truth, and constant accusations of “theft” that are both undocumented and irrational are not helpful.
Moreover, the conversation needs to be public, just in the same way as the historical debate is open and public, and public is the ownership of the objects.
The cloak-and-dagger charade we have witnessed in the last two years, with secret meetings and frantic searches for loopholes behind closed doors, is undignified and counterproductive. We are all beneficiaries of the legacy of the ancient world, and museums are institutions funded with public money for the benefit and education of the public.
Why should the debate be held secretly among selected stakeholders, with the prospect of one day presenting the British people with a fait accompli?
I believe the lawfulness of the removal from Greece, the cultural motivations that produced Elgin’s enterprise, the ripple effects this act had in forever changing Western culture, and the prominent role played by the Marbles in the evolution of British identity in the past 200 years are reason enough to hold on to them forever.
But even if you don’t think like me, let’s have a discussion that’s fair and based on facts.
Dr Mario Trabucco della Torretta is a classical archaeologist trained in Sicily and Athens
