Elgin Marbles Why All The Fuss?

Never has a crock of rubble been so over rated. The display in the British museum of the smashed bits of the Parthenon frieze is the biggest waste of space in any central London museum. School children must be driven to distraction when they look at that lot.

Nothing like as interesting as the Rosetta Stone, and virtually every other collection in the museum.

so why all the fuss about sending them back? They are not worth it. Send them back in return for Uk passport holders getting visa free travel to Greece and its islands. I honestly can’t see why we want to keep them.

The Parthenon itself is a dispiriting visit for a so called premier league of European culture relic. The thing is still roofless, and the approach makes a walk down St Albans Road seem like a joy.

 

Athens is an incredible city and well worth a visit, especially the Parthenon and museum.
Istanbul is better though.

 

Q. Why are the Pyramids in Eygpt?
A. Because they were too heavy for the British to steal.

 

**fixed**

 

Finders keepers, losers weepers. The Elgin Marbles are ours! Got that Greece?

 

I don't know why they shouldn't just be transported up to Elgin and leave them there where they truly belong.

 

The Whoosh Magnet returns! It’s been too long.

 

The Parthenon looks great from a dustance, but close up it reminded me of those kids' novelty bath soaps that lose their definition after being used a couple of times. The BM stuff has been less exposed to pollution and is in much better nick. Now that Athens has a good museum I see no intrinsic reason why we shouldn't return them and put replicas in the BM.

BUT this would open the way for claims from everywhere, including countries that are unstable now or might become unstable in the future. We've seen monuments and museums vandalised or looted in warzones all over the world, and London is probably one of the safest places to keep these treasures. But how do we explain to some peoples that they can't have their stuff back because they can't look after it properly while we're graciously returning things to others?

 

Surely it would be possible to set up some international committee via UNESCO or the like which determined whether the claimant country was secure enough and had good enough facilities to have the artefacts returned?

 

Could that committee also conclude whether Ukraine should be returned to Russia ? Would save a lot of ongoing bother.

 

shirley this place is bettr m8

 

They weren’t found discarded like an old porn mag in hedge. We took them from the Acropolis and they should be returned immediately.

Yes, it’s Acropolis Now!

 

NB Coppola loves this film.

 

Presumably the amount of porn on the internet means that kids these days don't get to experience the euphoria of finding a jazz mag in the park. Very sad

 

I went to the Parthenon once many many years ago. My abiding memory of that day is that it was so hot, I can't remember anything else.

 

Sad times brother. Sad times.

 

I think you could argue that returning the Elgin Marbles would strengthen the British Museum's ability to say "no" to those unstable countries. Being able to point at Greece and say "look, we returned their stuff when it was safe" would add credibility to their claims of holding relics in order to preserve them, since there would be clear example of preserved foreign artifacts being returned to their country of origin.

I think the technical legality of the purchase is mostly irrelevant. Greece was occupied at the time so whether or not Elgin truly had permission from the Ottomans doesn't really matter for me. The Ottomans weren't the cultural owners of those artifacts - they belong to the Greek people.

 

Constantinople you mean?

It irks me that in this era of people demanding the return of the relics of imperialism, nobody is asking Turkey to return the land and Hagia Sofia conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

 

Not arf!

 

How do things belong to a nation? Egypt for example? The people who built the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings are gone. The Arabic invasion over the 2nd millennium AD completely changed the country. Why should the descendants of the invaders have any more right to the treasures of the Ancient inhabitants than we do?

 

Why wouldn't it?

 

Return it to the Romans? Could be a tricky one that.

 

You're confusing Constantinople with Rome.

 

Easy to do, their names are very similar.

 

Just lol at thinking the Elgin marbles are shyt but then suggesting the Rosetta stone is good. Both are complete garbage, just like all other ancient artifacts.

See also: old paintings. People w anking themselves silly over a badly drawn picture of a bunch of sunflowers when I can have an photo realistic image of the same subject saved on my phone.

Oohhh how did they carry all those rocks to Stonehenge?! Who cares, I've got a crane now.

Anyone interested in this type of nonsense generally smells of piss and digestive biscuits.

 

**refixed**

Q. Why are the Pyramids in Eygpt?
A. Because they were too heavy for the British to steal.

 

No, Hagia Sofia was built by the Romans, and built very well too.

 

**re-refixed**

 

Not true. The British did in fact “re-steal” the pyramids from the French and returned them to their rightful home in Egypt. As always, the British restoring world order, and empowering local communities around the world. I learnt that during history lessons in the 80s.

 

The last 'lessons' that used to point out that the British Empire in the 19th century was, almost, continually fighting wars 'against' the 'slave trade'. Neatly circumventing the role the British Empire played in the Slave trade for the previous 300 years.

Two asides: I've just checked my photos from my very recent sojourn to Egypt and I don't have an image of a hieroglyph (on Philae?) that took my fancy: it was reminiscent of a Union Jack. I suggested to our guide, Samih, that it represented "the tribe that will steal any- and everything" who had to research it and found that it actually meant "temple". The other was that I had to continually correct Samih's use of "British colony" to "British protectorate" - they really didn't know what was good for them.

 

That's a dramatic over simplification if the Byzantine empire. The people were hellenic. They spoke Greek and were not ruled from Rome. They were Greeks. The architects were Greek. The workers would have probably come from all over. But it was a Greek building in a Greek area in a Greek world.

 

Greek X 10⁶

 

Did it have the steel reinforcement bars sticking out of the top for "unfinished" reasons?

 

In a Greek area of the Eastern Roman Empire using what looks like Roman technology. Give back to the imperial masters what's rightfully theirs.