Talks in London on Tuesday between British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis have rekindled hopes of a deal for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum in 2025.
Here are some key facts related to the 200-year-old debate:
What are the Parthenon Marbles?
Known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles, for centuries the 2,500-year-old sculptures grace the Parthenon Temple, built at the height of ancient Athens’ power in the Acropolis citadel in honor of the city’s patron goddess, Athena.
It was partially destroyed during the bombardment of Venice in 1687, and in the early 1800s, workers ordered the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, the Scottish nobleman Thomas Bruce, known as Lord Elgin. Took the friezes from the monument.
Elgin sold the marbles to the British government, which in 1817 handed them over to the British Museum, where they remain one of its most prized exhibits.
The British Museum says the smaller Parthenon Frieze collection and fragments are also in the Louvre and the museums of Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna and Wurzburg.
Greek and British positions
Athens has been demanding the return of the statues for decades, with a campaign revived by iconoclastic Greek actress Melina Mercouri during her tenure as culture minister in the 1980s.
Greek authorities say that the statues were looted by Elgin.
But London says the sculptures were “legally acquired” by Elgin.
The British aristocrat has long said that he had permission from the Ottoman Sultan to remove antiquities from the Acropolis.
But in June, at a meeting of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Promotion of the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Cases of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP), a Turkish spokesperson said that no such document, which could be obtained under the decree As is known, not found. Ottoman Archives.
Where are we now?
The Guardian newspaper said on Monday that negotiations on returning the statues to Athens were “well advanced”.
“Sources have said talks between the Greek Foreign Ministry and British Museum chairman George Osborne are moving towards ‘an agreement in principle’ to reunify the antiquities in Athens,” the daily said.
Since coming to power in 2019, Mitsotakis has made the repatriation of marbles a personal priority.
Greek media have reported that his close confidant George Gerapatrisis, now foreign minister, was tasked with carrying it out years ago along with Culture Minister Lina Mendoni.
Mendoni told state TV ERT on Tuesday that there was a “positive atmosphere” globally in favor of the repatriation of antiquities, but that the issue needed “time and proper maturity.”
Three pieces of Athens’ Parthenon temple, held by the Vatican for centuries, were returned to Greece last year in what Pope Francis called a gesture of friendship.
Public opinion in Britain has steadily grown in favor of returning the Marbles over the past decades.
A YouGov poll on Monday found that 53 percent of respondents said the British Museum should return the statues to Greece, while 24 percent were opposed.
A 1963 British law prevents the treasure from being given to a museum.
In October, Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said that an agreement could include “some partnerships on the conservation of antiquities, exchange of exhibits in temporary exhibitions and other joint initiatives to raise awareness of ancient Greek culture”. Are.
Officials have suggested that using the word “deposit” in a potential agreement could allow both parties to avoid the ownership issue altogether.
In 2022, when the Antonino Salinas Museum in Palermo sent a Parthenon marble fragment to Greece, the Greek Ministry of Culture said it was “a deposit, not a loan” and would remain in the Greek capital for the next eight years.
Greece later said it had reached a legal agreement with the Sicilian regional government to make the withdrawal permanent.
In 2022 the Greek Ministry of Culture also struck a deal to acquire 161 Bronze Age antiquities formerly in the collection of American billionaire and philanthropist Leonard Stern.
The agreement included the artworks being gradually returned to Greece over the next 25 years after being put on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
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