British Museum kicks question of Parthenon Marbles into the long grass

Will the Parthenon Marbles be returned to their original home in Greece?

A Downing Street meeting in December between British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Downing Street prompted fresh debate about whether the Elgin Marbles will ever return to Greece.

The PMs ostensibly met to discuss foreign policy. Official accounts of the meeting made no reference to the sculptures, but former Greek Culture Minister Professor Stamatoudi told BBC Radio 4 that she believes “a deal is close.”

This meeting comes a year after former UK PM Rishi Sunak snubbed his Greek counterpart in the eleventh hour after Mitsotakis indicated he would raise the issue of the marbles.

Dr Georgios Giannakopoulos, Lecturer in Modern History at City St George’s, University of London, spoke with BBC London to explain the deeper historical context behind this diplomatic issue and resolve remains elusive.

What are the Elgin Marbles?

The Parthenon Marbles are a collection of ancient Greek sculptures that originally adorned the Parthenon and the Acropolis of Athens.

The sculptures are also known as the Elgin Marbles because they were removed between 1801 and 1815 by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.

Lord Elgin claimed he received permission from the Ottoman authorities to remove the sculptures, although no official document supporting this claim has ever been produced.

After their removal, the sculptures made their way to London in the early 1800s and were eventually acquired by the British Museum in 1816.

The British Museum has argued that the sculptures were legally acquired, but last year an official representative of Turkey to UNESCO confirming that no document exists to substantiate his claim.

A cultural symbol and a diplomatic spat

The question of the marbles' return became a key issue in Greek-British relations in the 1980s, when Greece began formally requesting their return.

Until now, the British response has been twofold: the UK claims the removal was legal, and that the sculptures are better preserved in the British Museum.

Dr Giannakopoulos explained that this argument shifted in recent years:

The removal of the Elgin Marbles was likely an act of dubious legality.

Greece has moved away from merely claiming ownership, and now frames the issue as one of reunification.

The British Museum is under huge pressure from its donors and trustees to come up with a framework of agreement [on what to do with the Parthenon Marbles] but at the same time it's undergoing a process of rebranding and reconstruction.

The urgency right now is because the British Museum wants to move fast with this story and come up with some kind of a deal.

The interesting point here is that this is a discussion between the Greek government and the British Museum. The British Museum acquired this collection of marbles 200 years ago, by a British Act of Parliament. Therefore the British Museum is its own actor in trying to come up with a solution to this.

On the other hand, you have a Greek museum that is state of the art and ready to house these marbles so long as there is an agreement that they come back to the museum not as a loan. This is the sticking point.

This is a wider question about English and British cultural heritage.

The V&A, which is governed under a different type of law (the 1983 Heritage Act), is pushing for a reform for this. The British Museum is operating under a different legal regime.

The big problem that the British Museum faces right now is how to enter this new period of restitution, of giving back artefacts, but doing it in a way that allows the museum to be significant and still have a collection.

It's a difficult problem for the museum to have, how to come up with a framework that allows for restitution without naming it as such.