A replacement exhibit is planned.
I see things in your peritoneum
That belong in the British Museum
- Allan Sherman
Of course the elgin marbles should go back
In fact all loot should go back, if its going to a competent public museum in a stable polity.
In what way were the Elgin marbles looted?
Start with the Wikipedia article:
So…they should be returned to the owner from whom they were removed by Lord Elgin.
That was the The Ottoman Empire, which is now Turkey.
Elgin got them fair and square from what was the most corrupt Empire on earth. He paid all the proper payments, many of which were bribes, but that is how the Ottomans ran their Empire.
They weren’t “looted” or stolen or taken by force.
There are other things the the British out and out looted, stuff where their only claim is “we had guns and they didn’t”. Why not start with that stuff first? The Beni Bronzes would be a great start, assuming there is a stable uncorrupt government there that would take care of them properly.
The Maori heads certainly need to go back to New Zealand, as they certainly have the requisite government.
The Maqdala Manuscripts also were looted, but how stable is Ethiopia?
Other items, such as the Kohinoor, have too many issues and too many claimants.
The Rosetta stone? Well the Brits stole it from the French, who looted it, so that can go back.
The Elgin Marbles are just not the best poster boy for this. Return the Stone and the Heads, asap.
One could argue that the Ottomans had taken all of Greece by force. If so, Elgin was guilty of buying stolen property.
Exactly. Purchasing looted artworks from an occupying power has always been considered a crime. The Ottomans had no more right to Greek property than the Nazis had to the artwork they stole from all over Europe.
Does that mean the Turks should surrender Hagia Sophia? Acquired by conquest.
The Ottomans dominated Greece and half of Europe since the mid 15th Century until 1822, about 400 years. Before that, it was the Byzantine Empire, which dominated large parts of what is now Turkey and the Byzantine were Greek
It would be a challenging exercise to unravel the competing claims of ownership by the many political powers that have existed over the 2500 years since Ancient Greece. The political nation state has only been around a few hundred years but derives its legitimacy from some unifying creation myth. Arguments over ancient relics and monuments are often linked to the careers of nationalist politicians and this is certainly the case in Greece. It is also the case in India with the Hinhu nationalists. It is also the case in Russia where Putin lays claim to Ukraine, regarding the churches and relic rightfully belonging to the Rus. In the latter case, his ambitions extend further than property to annexation of the entire country.
In some places nationalism is not so relevant and reverence for the past does not exist. So it was with ISIS in Syria who destroyed heritage sites, looted museums and persecuted the curators. The Taliban destroyed ancient Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan. These regimes were trying to destroy heritage to create their own new politics unified by a religious dogma. This also happen in Europe during the Reformation.
The thing that these campaigns have in common is the authority of contemporary politicians. Do they really give a stuff about heritage? I think not.
The conversation needs to be between heritage organisations like museums and galleries. There are a lot positive developments happening. Heritage is an asset and tourism is economically significant. But there many countries where there is no tradition of conservation. It is fairly modern development that should be encouraged in countries that have inherited artifacts from a culturally rich past.
The whole question of where objects should be exhibited is an interesting one. Some collections can go on tour. Though not so easy with marble monuments.
Soon enough, there will be an immersive gallery experience coming to a virtual reality headset near you. So maybe arguments over which museum should hold what object will become itself a matter for political and cultural historians to study in years to come.
I am sure the Greeks will get their marbles back, I am also pretty confident there will be something put in their place for the millions of visitors to appreciate in the British museum. Museums have an awful lot of collections and premium exhibition space is limited. The reason the marbles were collected was because of the reverence for Classical Greek culture and I am sure there are many other museums with collections.
Please leave India out of it 
I was talking to some senior Indian government officials about this at a party. He remarked that India understood how to “convince” the Brits to do the right thing. A Free Trade Agreement is in the works between the UK and India, and (unrelated to the FTA) things related to “artifact returns” are also worked on “behind the scenes”.
He offered the following as proof of a small beginning :
Every inch of Europe has been conquered and reconquered dozens of times. The Ottomans were the legit government of Greece for 400 years. Do we have to track down those with the highest % of Neanderthal DNA and cede all Europe back to them?
But based upon this theory - Greece has no claim to relics of the City State of Athens.
Right.
I mean, sure with the Nazis it is different, as they were not the recognized government of the nations they briefly occupied. But the world dealt with the Ottomans for centuries as the legit government.
So if the Nazis had won, then they’d deserve to keep all the stuff they stole?
If they had not only won, but been the world-wide recognized government of those areas for centuries.
We have no problem recognizing the the descendants of the Norman Conquest. The world seems fine with the USA and all the Indian territories it conquered.
Russia used to be just a small nation around Moscow, and similar with France.
I was thinking more of the dispute over places of worship in India. The fierce confrontations between the Hindu nationalists and the Muslim community. That is the stuff of nightmares and it is centred on who controls a temple site.
The Koh-i-Noor diamond in the Crown jewels is also claimed by Pakistan on the grounds it was owned by the Muslim Murghals who dominated India before the British. Though its history and ownership is complicated. Some ancient items have long chains of owners.
The historical case for ownership will always be more about contemporary politics than righting historical wrongs.
I suspect Indian professionals are far more interested in liberating job opportunities in London rather than who gets to wear this diamond. British politicians are in the blackfoot at the moment because of the disasterous effects on trade following Brexit and they want a trade deal with India. India, however, is more interested in trade with Russia. So it goes, it is all very contemporary political dealings. There are lots of political undercurrents going on in the background that are far more relevant than the condemnation of the misdemeanours of the long gone British Empire.
Within the UK there is also a debate regarding ‘decolonisation’. Monuments, mainly centred over which statues if the great and good were involved in the slave trade and should be to pull down. Museums and galleries have some latitude to exhibits then is a place alongside a fuller explanation of the cultural context. That, I think, is to be welcomed.
This part of the ‘culture wars’, the politicisation of culture where it becomes the battleground for factions to mark out their opposing positions. It is fought by protagonists who usually care little for culture. They are yahoos.
The museums and galleries are themselves having this debate. The policy in the the UK seems to be to let them get on with it and develop ethical policies regarding some of their more questionable items, rather than for national politicians to get involved. There is also progress internationally to develop well thought out policies to use as a template. This is constructive and progressive.
I think there will be progress on the Elgin marbles, just as on the Benin bronzes. But there and many museums with huge, varied collections and the provenance of many items is unclear. It is the easy bits that make the news.
There are also a great many other museums and galleries in the world that possess questionable items. And there are many private collections.
Then there is the question of where and to whom items should be returned. It is not as if there is always a well funded museum waiting for the their return. Greece and Egypt are exceptions with some grand museums being established.
If this issue is to be resolved it requires agreements to be in place that last longer than the career of any politician. Cultural institutions often have strong international links with others and that can be a way forward as long as international tensions does not intrude. Sadly this is sometimes the case. Exchanges with Russian museums are currently on hold. Institutions usually are long lived and can return to their exchanges when the political heat is turned down.
So yes, I am sure the Elgin marbles will return to Greece at some point. It would be simple if that was all that is on the list. Benin will get its Bronzes, at least from some UK museums. Will the Koh-i-Noor diamond be plucked from the British crown to grace some Indian princess? Not a chance!
The repatriation of cultural items and their ownership only become news very infrequently. I suspect the museums of the world all made an inventory of what they have and where it came from, the list where there is a case for repatriation would be very long indeed. These institutions have millions of items. Not all are glamourous jewels or works of high art. But that is, of course, what gets the attention. Some things are valuable only in a cultural or religious sense. Their political significance is long gone, if it ever existed. Nonetheless, the debate is pre-occupied by the concerns of politicians looking for symbols of power from ancient times in the hope they will reflect some former glory onto their own regime. That sentiment can easily flip to some artifact becoming a symbol of an old regime they disapproved of, and so to be smashed.
It is really a wonder that we have any heritage left. If it were not for the peculiar instinct to collect things from across empires, museums would have little to show.
I am not sure if we are talking about the same Country - we are talking about UK - right ? The same country that abandoned Hong Kong and its loyal people to China, fully knowing the fate awaiting them. In the run off to the abandonment, I remember Hong Kong people desperately looking for passports while the Brits stopped all passports.
UK had no qualms handing over human beings to an authoritative regime fully knowing the fate awaiting them. And UK has qualms handing over stolen artifacts to a Democratically elected government in India, which is now presiding over the UN Security Council as of December 2022 !!
And I am not going to humor your claims on nightmares and the such by responding.
The naïveté was almost touching!!
If we’re going to talk about the Brits in 1999, let’s talk about the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, in which something on the order of 8,000-15,000 people were murdered, many burnt alive, with the collusion of the Indian National Congress and the Delhi police. Congress Party members provided the assailants with school registration forms and voter lists so the mobs would be sure to find Sikh families; a member of parliament was eventually (in 2018!) sentenced to life imprisonment for his role. How about the Gulbarg massacre in 2002, with children being hacked to death just because they were Muslim? (A deputy superintendent of police in Gujarat, K. G. Erda, was arrested for dereliction of duty and tampering with evidence for helping rioters burn the victims’ bodies, but the judge overseeing the case subsequently stated, “It is very difficult to establish beyond reasonable doubt the culpability, involvement and guilt of a single police officer when the entire police force could be said to have been highly ineffective on that fateful day.” (cite) The US Commission on International Religious Freedom ranks India right up there with such paragons as Saudi Arabia and North Korea in government-sponsored or -tolerated persecution and harassment of Christians and other religious minorities.
They should definitely put it back in Istanbul; I think that’s where it belongs.
As for the Marbles, they are recently stolen and ought to be returned, I suppose. The Koh-i-Noor is a tough call. It was stolen from a family that more or less stole it themselves.
To me it is an interesting moral question. How far back to we have to go to right the wrongs of our ancestors? At what point to we stop feeling sorry for the Cro-Magnons? Europe was stolen by the Romans who had it stolen from them in turn. Australia was stolen from its native peoples, but it is now owned by fine people who got it in good faith.
We ought to do what we can to reduce and repair old injuries, but this is a messy moral affair and no actions we take can be complete, or follow a rational argument.
Or at least I do not see how we can apply too much logic to an emotional issue.
Should they surrender it to the Orthodox Church? That’s who they took it from, just five years before they conquered Athens.
If four centuries of possession of Athens wasn’t sufficient to give the Turks title to the Parthenon, then does that mean they don’t have good title to Hagia Sophia?
Both claims depend on right of conquest.