AS A British parliamentary committee begins, next week, to take oral evidence in an inquiry into trading in looted antiquities and the return of cultural objects to their country of origin, a poll of British MPs conducted by The Economist shows a surprising degree of support in the House of Commons for the Greek side of the most controversial of cultural-return cases—the Elgin marbles in the British Museum.

Lord Elgin’s collection of classical antiquities has long been a cause of dispute between Greece and Britain. The sculptures and architectural fragments that once decorated the Parthenon, the temple that looks down on Athens from the top of the Acropolis, were carved in the fifth century BC under the direction of Phidias, probably the greatest classical Greek sculptor. Today more than half the panels from the frieze, a third of the metope slabs from the outside of the Parthenon and 17 figures from the pediments—together representing most of the finest and least damaged pieces to have survived—are the pride of the British Museum’s collection of Greek antiquities. The Elgin, or Parthenon marbles as they are called in Greece, were removed from the Acropolis on the orders of Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, in the years after 1801. Some pieces were found in excavations, but most were taken from the building by Elgin’s agents and a large force of workmen. Housed in the British Museum since they were purchased under a British act of Parliament in 1816, their exile has been a source of hurt to the Greeks ever since Greek independence.

The struggle intensified in 1983 when the then culture minister, Melina Mercouri, called for them to be reunited with the Parthenon sculptures that remained in Greece. Successive Greek governments have made the same demand, some more loudly than others, but all have been told no by Labour and Conservative prime ministers alike. Three days after Tony Blair took office in 1997, the new secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Chris Smith, told the BBC that returning the Elgin marbles was “not a feasible or sensible option. We won’t do it.”

Yet the first newspaper poll to be conducted on this issue since Labour swept to power in May 1997 shows that a large number of MPs disagree with the government view. A weighted sample of 183 MPs suggests that 66% of members would return the marbles if there were a free vote in the House of Commons today. Crucially, nearly 85% of the Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs who replied favour returning the sculptures. Only among Conservatives and Ulster Unionists, who together account for 174 of the 659 seats in the House of Commons, is there any feeling for keeping the marbles in Britain.

The poll’s findings will hearten the Greek prime minister, Costas Simitis, as much as it will dismay the British Museum and the British government. Mr Simitis faces a general election on April 9th, which he called early to seek a mandate for Greece’s entry into the European single currency. If his Pasok party wins the election, Mr Simitis will be in office when Athens hosts the Olympic Games in 2004. Mr Simitis hopes that Greece’s improved European credentials will help persuade the British to return the marbles in time for the Olympic Games as an act of European generosity.

To make sure no one missed the point, Mr Simitis kicked off his campaign with a visit to the Acropolis and the site of the proposed new Acropolis museum where part of the exhibition space will remain empty until, as one official said, “the British Museum returns its collection”. Construction has been fraught with problems, first because of difficulties in compulsorily purchasing properties around the site, and later when the discovery of important archaeological remains meant that plans had to be revised. Mr Simitis has let it be known that he will be personally involved in selecting a new architect for it.

In Britain, meanwhile, the 11 members of the House of Commons select committee, under the chairmanship of Gerald Kaufman, have begun their inquiry into the return of cultural objects. The committee will investigate how Britain might help to restrain the illicit trade in looted antiquities and will also consider historic claims. It will travel to Italy to hear about the trade in stolen antiquities, and, at the end of this month, to Athens to hear the Greek claim at first hand.

The British Museum is dismayed at the possibility that the select committee may be swayed by Greek arguments. A briefing document, believed to have been written by the museum and leaked by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, describes the committee’s visit to Greece as “unfortunate”.

The museum takes heart from the fact that, publicly at least, British government policy has not changed. Some, however, believe that the government may be looking for an honourable way out of the impasse over the sculptures. Both Mr Blair and Mr Smith declined to take part in The Economist’s poll. Yet in a letter dated February 17th, Mr Smith referred to the sculptures as “the Parthenon marbles”, the term by which they are always known in Greece and among restitutionists, signalling perhaps that he has more sympathy with the Greek position than he can admit.

If there is to be any change in the present status of the Elgin marbles, it will not be brought about by diplomacy or legal action, but as a result of political opinion and political change in Britain. That in turn will depend in large measure on how sophisticated and persuasive a campaign the two sides are able to mount. Are the Elgin marbles truly better off as part of the British Museum’s permanent collection, or should they be reunited with their remaining fellow sculptures in Athens?

What distinguishes the Parthenon is the dramatic narrative told by its sculptured frieze which is carved in low relief. The frieze along the top part of the outside wall of the main temple, within the outer colonnade, is generally believed to depict the Panathenaia, the great civic and religious festival of the city of Athens, held every four years. Among the figures shown are the 12 Olympian gods and goddesses, the elders of the city, a procession of troops of idealised horsemen, and men and women bearing offerings and leading sacrificial animals.

By the time Lord Elgin, was appointed ambassador to the Porte in 1799, part of the frieze, many of the sculptures in the pediments and a number of the metopes had been destroyed; some by Christians who took over the building in the sixth century and more by a Venetian shell fired into the building while it was being used as a gunpowder magazine in 1687. A series of drawings by a French artist named Jacques Carrey made 11 years earlier are all that remain of ten of the slabs from the frieze and four of the metopes.

The earliest firman, or authority, that Lord Elgin obtained from the Turkish authorities (which is now lost) restricted Elgin’s agent, Giovanni Battista Lusieri, to drawing the sculptures and making casts from them in situ. A second firman, of which only an Italian translation now exists, goes further, allowing Lord Elgin to remove what is described as “qualche pezzi di pietra”. Occasionally translated as “some”, “qualche”, in modern Italian, at least, is more usually taken to mean “a few”, in part because it is followed by a singular noun. Whatever the legal niceties, Lord Elgin’s agents were permitted, over many months, to use saws, crow bars and naval pulleys, to take off most of the best surviving pieces and later ship them from Piraeus, evidence of the Turkish authorities’ willingness to accommodate their most important ally and of the bribes Elgin paid to get his way.

William St Clair, a British historian and author of the classic, “Lord Elgin and the Marbles: The Controversial History of the Parthenon Sculptures” (OUP; $16.95 and £12.50), has recently published extracts from the financial accounts of Lord Elgin’s agent. These show that bribery amounted to a quarter of the costs of removing the antiquities. During the first 18 months, Lord Elgin paid the military governor of the Acropolis a sum amounting to 35 times his official annual salary in return for being allowed to stretch the terms of the firman.

The most impassioned restitutionists claim that it was only Lord Elgin’s bribes to an occupying force that led to the dismemberment of the monument. However, John Henry Merryman, an emeritus professor of international law at Stanford University in California, who has studied the case, has concluded that the firman gave Elgin good title. Although he believes Elgin’s bribes muddy the waters of the case, Mr Merryman still feels Greece would be unlikely to win the marbles back in court. And indeed Greek governments have avoided making a narrow legal claim.

The British legal position is in any event more complex than might appear. Lord Elgin was nearly bankrupt at the time the government bought the marbles for £35,000. Under the British Museum Act of July 1st 1816, they were vested in the trustees of the British Museum in perpetuity, provided they were “preserved and kept together” in the museum. Early the following year, they were moved to a temporary exhibition space within the museum, and in 1961 to the Duveen Gallery where they are now to be seen. It is not within the power of the British Museum, or indeed the cabinet alone, to return them; only an act of Parliament can reverse the government’s acquisition.

The Elgin marbles were controversial from the start. In 1816, the parliamentary vote to purchase the sculptures was carried by a narrow majority, 82 to 80. Since then, British sentiment about returning them to Greece has been influenced by wider political considerations. Among the early dissenters was a small group of MPs who felt that the marbles had been improperly removed by Lord Elgin and should be held in trust only until their return was demanded by the city of Athens. These voices faded as Victorian expansionism made Britain feel it had become the centre of the civilised world. And in 1864, when Anglo-Greek relations blossomed after Britain transferred sovereignty of the Ionian islands to Greece, even the mildest call for the marbles’ return was blocked.

After the fall of France in 1940, however, when Britain needed Greece, the Foreign Office went as far as to draft a scheme for the marbles’ return after the war. The military danger passed, and that plan was shelved. Fresh hints were again dropped during the Cyprus insurgency in the 1950s when Britain wanted Greece to stop supporting the terrorist campaign against the British colonial government on the island. When Labour was in opposition in the 1980s, Neil Kinnock promised he would return the marbles to Greece as soon as the party was returned to power. When Labour won the last election, it quickly told the Greeks the marbles were staying in Britain.

The British Museum, like the Louvre though unlike a number of American museums, cannot deaccession anything it holds. Politically, the present defence of the status quo combines a claim that the marbles were legally acquired with the “slippery slope” argument that, if Britain were to agree to the Greek request, other nations would mount claims to have other cultural treasures returned.

There are a number of other arguments that have been used in Britain to ensure that public opinion stayed firmly in the retentionists’ camp. The most common are that, if the British hadn’t removed them, someone else (probably Napoleon) certainly would have done; that had the marbles remained in Greece they would have been destroyed because of air pollution and poor stewardship; and that they have been particularly well cared for by the British Museum.

Some of these arguments have been worn thin, if not through. The museum has not always protected the marbles well; in the late 1930s, for example, they were cleaned by unskilled workmen using carborundum and wire brushes on the orders of Lord Duveen, an art dealer and wealthy patron who was planning to finance a new gallery for the marbles and wanted to make them appear more white. Details of the botched cleaning, during which the surfaces of the marbles were badly damaged, and the subsequent cover-up by the museum were still emerging in November last year. This particular episode notwithstanding, the museum has been an excellent guardian. In recent years, however, developments in Greece have done much to invalidate the argument that the marbles would be endangered if they were to be sent back.

Research into the chemistry of antiquities, conservation and restoration is probably more advanced in Greece than anywhere else. The work of an elderly chemistry professor, Theodore Skoulikides, on reversing the worst effects of pollution on marble surfaces, and by Manolis Korres on the technology of constructing ancient buildings, are considered the finest in the world. One curator at the British Museum insists that, “Because of the Greeks’ work we know more about the marbles than we have ever known.” A seven-year restoration project for the Acropolis is well under way, and has been boosted recently by a loan from the European Union. The budget has increased from 300m drachmas ($900,000) in 1997 to 800m this year. Plans are to stabilise the structure and reconstruct some of the fallen columns with newly cut marble.

Second, Greek government efforts to ban the use of cheap heating oil and low-grade diesel have gone some way to improving the air quality in the city, though much still needs to be done. The whole building, including the sculptures that remained in place, began to suffer badly when atmospheric pollution increased in the 1960s, and some features were lost to sulphur dioxide. However, all the pedimental pieces and the west frieze have now been taken indoors to the museum, some being replaced with copies. By 1998, however, sulphur-dioxide levels had decreased, from 200 micrograms per cubic metre to less than 40. Smoke and nitrous-oxide levels are also falling.

One point that no restorationist can deny is that, even if the marbles were returned to Greece, they would not be returned to the Parthenon. Indeed, the Greeks have had to take down yet more sculptures in order to safeguard them from the polluted environment. Yet the metopes which remain in place, including the finest which is in the best surviving corner of the building, are deteriorating, and no one in Greece seems to want to be responsible for taking a decision that might mean dismantling part of the 2,500-year-old building. Furthermore, with little exhibition space available, many of the pieces that have been removed are not yet on display.

The new Acropolis museum could change all that. Originally designed eight years ago by a firm of Italian architects, the museum was to have included large exhibition halls and a clear view of the Parthenon through an exhibition window in the roof. The museum will now be completely redesigned. A new architect will be chosen in May, with full drawings due by September. Even if construction were to start on schedule, a year from now, it is extremely unlikely the building will be finished in time for the Olympics.

Despite that, the British Museum is growing nervous about the possibility of losing what it regards as the centrepiece of its permanent collection. It worries that the select committee inquiry may stoke up public support for return to a point where the Greek claim is hard to resist. Both the museum and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport regard the effort to keep the marbles in Britain as something of a strategic campaign.

So much is obvious from a briefing paper sent out last month by a press officer in the department. The paper describes a number of tactics that have been used to delay or derail the Greek efforts. One in particular is the argument, used in the past at UNESCO meetings, that removing the marbles from the British Museum by law could be interpreted as confiscation and would be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. “This argument is of limited value,” the paper comments. “It was raised as a delaying tactic and may have run its course.”

LINKS

Read more about the history of the marbles at the Parthenon Marbles website. Greece’s Ministry of Culture has put together pages on the restitution of the marbles. The Melina Mercouri Foundation is dedicated to the construction of the New Acropolic Museum, with space reserved for the marbles.

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