by The British Museum and the Greek government are reportedly in talks to return the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Parthenon Marbles. Elgin marble – to Greece, according to media reports.
Marbles are a series of statues that adorn the exterior of the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, built between 447 BC and 432 BC on what was once the Athenian acropolis.
The 2,500-year-old statues were brought to England in the first decade of the 19th century by Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which included Greece at the time. Bruce obtained permission from the Ottoman sultan to explore the Acropolis (although Acropolis Museum disputes in Greece (opens in new tab) The Parthenon has permission to remove its statues). Bruce sent the works to London, where they were first exhibited in 1807 and sold to the British government in 1816. Today they are in the Duveen Gallery at the British Museum in London. Not all of the statues were taken, and some are still in Greece today.
Greece has been demanding the return of marbles for decades, and in 1983 made a formal request for the Parthenon statues to be returned to Greece permanently. According to the British Museum (opens in new tab).
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Greek newspaper Ta Nea (opens in new tab) and the BBC reported (opens in new tab) Negotiations between the British Museum and Greek authorities began in November 2021, but the biggest problem with returning the Parthenon Marbles is that British law stipulates that artifacts in the British Museum cannot be disposed of, a process necessary for the transfer of full ownership. The UK government has stated that it has no plans to change the law and that the two sides are exploring alternatives that British law may allow, such as an agreement that would allow the museum and Greece to share the statues.
According to the BBC, if agreement is reached, a series of exhibits of Greek artifacts that never left Greece could come to the British Museum and replace the Parthenon Marbles.
According to the museum, the Acropolis Museum in Greece is ready to house the Parthenon Marbles. Currently, plaster molds of marbles are on display to the public, as well as ancient artifacts left behind by the Count of Elgin. According to National Public Radio (opens in new tab).
Mind-blowing sculptures
The Parthenon marbles in the British Museum contain sculptures depicting the birth of the goddess Athena. According to legend, Athena was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Metis. Fearing that Athena would be stronger than him, Zeus swallows the pregnant Metis whole. This did not stop the pregnancy, and Athena grew so large that the Greek blacksmith god Hephaestus had to split Zeus’ head in two with an ax; immediately the goddess was born.
While the statues do not show the dizzying nativity, they do show the reaction of the gods, including statues depicting “the sun god Helios and the heads of two of his four gods.” horsesBritish Museum curator Ian Jenkins wrote in his book that it “seems to rise from the surface”.Parthenon Statues (opens in new tab)” (Harvard University Press, 2007).
Other Parthenon marbles in the British Museum show a legendary battle between centaurs, half-human half-horse creatures and a mythical people known as the “Lapith”. won a victory over the centaurs (opens in new tab) and drove them out of their land.
