Is smuggling the Elgin Marbles from the UK back to Greece in the realm of possibility

[astro]

Is there any conceivable way to steal the Elgin Marbles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles) from the British Museum and smuggle them back to Greece? They're pretty hefty so I'm assuming you'd need large equipment. I have no idea how well they are guarded. Any dopers ever seen them in person?

Based on news reports over the years in many of the smaller European countries it seems you can pretty much pop a lock after hours, and walk away with millions in valuable paintings.

[Ms Boods]

I've seen them many times, and when I used to work at the Museum, spent happy times after hours sliding in my socks across the floor in their gallery. :)

They'd be very difficult to sneak out as they're huge; I'm sorry I don't have the dimensions for the gallery to give you a better idea what sort of complicated operation would be involved to shift them at all, let alone stealthily.

There's usually two or three wardens on shift in that gallery during the Museum's opening times, but they're there mainly to answer questions and to keep people from touching the bits within grabbing distance.

You can see on this floor plan of the Museum the relative size of their room
http://www.britishmuseum.org/visiting/floor_plans_and_galleries/ground_floor.aspx

They're in 18.


edited to remove too many 'gallery's.

[Mops]

Greece operates eight type 209 submarines of more than 1200 t displacement; they might serve for transport once you got the Elgin Marbles to the coast...

[GorillaMan]

Greece operates eight type 209 submarines of more than 1200 t displacement; they might serve for transport once you got the Elgin Marbles to the coast...
Once you find a friendly harbour-master, and a populace willing to ignore such goings-on at unusual hours...

[Tamerlane]

.

Any dopers ever seen them in person?

Yup. The British Museum actually made me drool a little - I may have reached a zenith of personal geekiness wandering around in there. Which, believe me, is saying something.

The biggest ones are pretty darn large. My inclination would be to say that it's just not possible en masse. Smaller pieces would no doubt be possible, but I doubt that museum security is easy to penetrate, considering the enormity of looted treasure it holds.

[aruvqan]

Frankly the thought is fucking absurd. The marbles were not stolen, they were removed with permission from the legal government in place at that time. Subsequently, the British government ended up paying for the removed marbles.

It isn't like Elgin wandered in, looked around and strolled off with several thousand tons of marble.

now if Greece wants to BUY them back, and the museum would like to make some cash, that isn't a problem.

[silenus]

The Marbles are fine right where they are. If the Greeks don't like it, fuck 'em. They were stolen fair and square.

[samclem]

From the Wikipedia article, I found this to be compelling:
Another argument for maintaining their location within the UK has been made by J. H. Merryman, Sweitzer Professor of Law at Stanford University and co-operating professor in the Stanford Art Department. He argued that if the Parthenon were actually being restored, there would be a moral argument for returning the Marbles to the temple whence they came, and thus restoring its integrity. However, the Greek plan is to transfer them from a museum in London to one in Athens. The sculptures which Elgin spared have now been taken down and put in the Acropolis Museum where the remaining caryatids from the Porch of the Maidens now peer at visitors from behind glass. "Is it more spiritually satisfying to see the Marbles in an Athenian museum gallery than one in London?" [44]

[Ms Boods]

Interestingly enough, the best preserved carytid from the Erecthion is in the British Museum...

[pendgwen]

I apparently have no culture. I clicked the thread wondering why it would be hard to smuggle little round bits of glass.

[Elendil's Heir]

I think, given their size, bulk, the security of the British Museum and the near-impossibility of spiriting them undetected out of the country, the answer to the OP is not only "No," but "Hell, no." Elgin may have cut a few corners getting them from Greece back in the day, but had he not done so they would long ago have been destroyed or degraded by war, vandalism or pollution. Now the British Museum has them fair and square, and I haven't yet read a compelling argument for why they should go back to Greece.

[kaylasdad99]

Charlie Brown once proved he was a pretty good player at marbles. Greece should hire him to play the British Museum for them...

[Alive At Both Ends]

if Greece wants to BUY them back, and the museum would like to make some cash, that isn't a problem.
Yes it is. The British Museum is forbidden by law to sell any of its holdings without the permission of Parliament.

[Ms Boods]

I apparently have no culture. I clicked the thread wondering why it would be hard to smuggle little round bits of glass.

:) People really *do* wander around that gallery and then ask where the actual marbles are, because they think they are playing marbles from Ancient Greece.

We used to get some funny, but sweet, inquiries along these lines, especially from the little'uns.

[Cluricaun]

I came in here wondering who had taken my marbles......

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Frankly the thought is fucking absurd. The marbles were not stolen, they were removed with permission from the legal government in place at that time. Subsequently, the British government ended up paying for the removed marbles.

It isn't like Elgin wandered in, looked around and strolled off with several thousand tons of marble.
.
This is an example of how authorities in the archeologically rich countries can go too far. Although they rightly demand repatriation of objects that were illegally taken out of their countries, in some cases they are also demanding items that were legally taken. There was an article in the New Yorker some time ago that mentioned how Greece wanted something back now that had been legally acquired in--1895.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

I wonder why the Google adds are three for sober living communities, and one for a school for troubled kids?

[APB]

As a signatory to the 1970 Unesco Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html), the Greek government would be obliged to assist in the return of anything stolen from the British Museum.

OK, so they might be very tempted to renege on the Unesco Convention if it was the Elgin Marbles that were involved. But claiming that the Marbles had been removed illegally from Greece in the first place, while, at the same time, disregarding the rules intended to prevent the illegal trade in antiquities would surely appear a touch inconsistent. Not exactly the best way to claim (or retain) the moral high ground.

[Szlater]

I heard a suggestion a while ago, I've no idea where. Copies of the marbles should be made and displayed side by side in a double-blind randomised fashion. A team from the British Museum and the Greek authorities would then be asked alternately, to select which of the two copies of each they would like. No one would know whether they got the original or the copy without extensive testing.

Personally, I think the Greeks are just SOL.

[Ronald C. Semone]

I have been to more than 50 countries around the world and have seen everything from the pyramids to the Alhambra to the Taj Mahal. The Elgin Marbles are simply the most impressive, awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen. They are perfectly displayed in the British Museum. It would be a crime to move them.

[Tamerlane]

I have been to more than 50 countries around the world and have seen everything from the pyramids to the Alhambra to the Taj Mahal. The Elgin Marbles are simply the most impressive, awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen. They are perfectly displayed in the British Museum. It would be a crime to move them.

I thought the Alhambra was more impressive. But then I have a castle fetish :).

[WotNot]

They'd be very difficult to sneak out as they're huge; I'm sorry I don't have the dimensions for the gallery to give you a better idea what sort of complicated operation would be involved to shift them at all, let alone stealthily.

There's usually two or three wardens on shift in that gallery during the Museum's opening times, but they're there mainly to answer questions and to keep people from touching the bits within grabbing distance.

Aha! Now, with this inside information, I begin to see my way towards a plan.

All you do, right, is pay a visit to the gallery, okay? Then, while your accomplices distract the guards (a faked heart attack, maybe), you whip out the hammer and chisel you have secreted about your person, and knock a segment off the nearest marble. Make it fairly small, so they don't notice, and then you can simply saunter out of the museum with it in your pocket, pop it into a Jiffy® bag, and post it off to a confederate in Greece. Repeat as often as necessary (I suppose you'd need to vary your MO a little – different times of day, different accomplices and distractions, and so on), but there's no heavy lifting involved, and all the guy in Greece has to do is glue the bits together as they arrive.

I really don't see what could go wrong.

[silenus]

You fool! That's just what they'll be expecting!

[Ms Boods]

Aha! Now, with this inside information, I begin to see my way towards a plan.

All you do, right, is pay a visit to the gallery, okay? Then, while your accomplices distract the guards (a faked heart attack, maybe), you whip out the hammer and chisel you have secreted about your person, and knock a segment off the nearest marble. Make it fairly small, so they don't notice, and then you can simply saunter out of the museum with it in your pocket, pop it into a Jiffy® bag, and post it off to a confederate in Greece. Repeat as often as necessary (I suppose you'd need to vary your MO a little – different times of day, different accomplices and distractions, and so on), but there's no heavy lifting involved, and all the guy in Greece has to do is glue the bits together as they arrive.

I really don't see what could go wrong.

Aside from the fact that I think the Marbles belong safely in the British Museum, security would think I'd gone mental if they saw me with accomplices, let alone doing anything like that!* :) They're all sound people, the warders; I've got to know quite a number of them socially over the years from visits and as well as my work P & E, and am looking forward to seeing them again this August.

*I admit, I was and am a terror when I had/have my security clearance as people will not keep their hands off 'my stuff.' :p

[WotNot]

Aside from the fact that I think the Marbles belong safely in the British Museum, security would think I'd gone mental if they saw me with accomplices, let alone doing anything like that!* :) They're all sound people, the warders; I've got to know quite a number of them socially over the years from visits and as well as my work P & E, and am looking forward to seeing them again this August.

*I admit, I was and am a terror when I had/have my security clearance as people will not keep their hands off 'my stuff.' :p
Well, now, this is my fault for being unclear: when I wrote “you” I didn’t mean you, I meant a more general “you”, ie anyone contemplating this particular heist – astro, possibly.

No offence, but you wouldn’t be my first choice for the job in any case. For one thing, you’re already a known face to the guards, which is going to make the whole “slipping in and out anonymously” thing a bit tricky. For another, the fact that you haven’t grasped that you’re not supposed to let the guards see you with the accomplices suggests to me that people who work in museums probably have a poor understanding of the subtleties of the criminal mind.

Which is pretty much what I'm counting on, if I’m honest.

[Sunspace]

So... were they stolen or not?

[Ms Boods]

No offence, but you wouldn’t be my first choice for the job in any case. For one thing, you’re already a known face to the guards, which is going to make the whole “slipping in and out anonymously” thing a bit tricky. For another, the fact that you haven’t grasped that you’re not supposed to let the guards see you with the accomplices suggests to me that people who work in museums probably have a poor understanding of the subtleties of the criminal mind.



Fortunately, I don't work in a museum (my gig at the BM was a sabbatical contract); I'm a university professor. :p My work there now is research-orientated.

As far as pinching things from museums, in my experience, some of the best criminals have been people well-known and in positions of trust -- because they are the ones you'd least suspect, and it has come as a shock when some of them have been discovered (my apologies for being so cryptic, but the one case I'm best familiar with is still being sorted, and I'm not sure how to describe it without giving away too many details.)

As for the warders -- while they are brilliant at their jobs, the museum can get so busy, especially in summer, that sometimes things go awry -- Banksy managed to plant a fake 'artifact' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4563751.stm) recently in one of the galleries that was there for about three days before anyone twigged.

I am sorry I misunderstood your plan -- what I had meant was your particular plan would not have been suited for me. :)

The acquisition of the Marbles is a subject of argument, but they were purchasd by Lord Elgin (the Museum still has the receipt); as I understand it, the gist of the argument of the Greek government is that they (the Marbles) were purchased under complicated circumstances which they (the Greeks) claim is a valid argument for the Marbles' return to Athens. Someone more familiar with the case can undoubtedly give you a much better explanation.

[WotNot]

As far as pinching things from museums, in my experience, some of the best criminals have been people well-known and in positions of trust -- because they are the ones you'd least suspect, and it has come as a shock when some of them have been discovered (my apologies for being so cryptic, but the one case I'm best familiar with is still being sorted, and I'm not sure how to describe it without giving away too many details.)
In fact, I did initially consider an inside job. The old “taking them away for cleaning” ploy is a classic, but I thought that in the case of the Elgin Marbles it might raise a red flag. ;)

The acquisition of the Marbles is a subject of argument, but they were purchasd by Lord Elgin (the Museum still has the receipt)…
Very sensible – I always do the same myself. Means you can take them back if you find you’ve bought the wrong size, or whatever.

[Martini Enfield]

The Marbles are fine right where they are. If the Greeks don't like it, fuck 'em. They were stolen fair and square.

This is why I love the British Museum- the whole place is full of all sorts of weird and wonderful things nicked by British soldiers rescued from all manner of exotic places and put on display so we can marvel at the effectiveness of Gunboat Diplomacy at the rich and colourful history of our world of which the British used to rule a sizeable percentage, but don't anymore. :D

Seriously though, I love the British Museum- it's one of my favourite places, along with the Imperial War Museum- and most of the rest of London, for that matter. :)

[Slithy Tove]

Purely non-constructive point: how much longer would Greece have been Ottoman without the British (well, overwrought British poets like Byron, and British soldiers still laid-off since Waterloo)?

If we can always use the "If it wasn't for us you'd be eating knockwurst in your toad-in-the-hole" line, why begrudge the Bits "If it wasn't for us you'd be drinking cardamom in your coffee?"

[Martini Enfield]

Purely non-constructive point: how much longer would Greece have been Ottoman without the British (well, overwrought British poets like Byron, and British soldiers still laid-off since Waterloo)?

Given that the Ottoman Empire collapsed shortly after the end of WWI, I would say that- assuming the British hadn't been cruising around the Mediterranean for much of the 19th century and carting anything of interest back home (not to mention getting involved in various local conflicts along the way)- Greece would have ceased to be under the rule of the Ottoman Empire around July 24th, 1923. :)

[tagos]

So... were they stolen or not?

We prefer to think of them as 'borrowed with extreme prejudice.'