A British aristocrat was sent as an ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan — Selim III. The aristocrat was Lord Elgin, the year was 1799 and what ensued in the following years forms a basis for passionate debate even today between Britain and Greece ever since Greece became independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1832. But what was this incident? This post is about how a almost half of the beautiful collection of sculptures of the classical Greece called the Parthenon Sculptures adorning the magnificent Parthenon of Athens found their way in the British Museum in London.
There has been a very hot debate around this as the Greeks have been rightfully demanding their return to Athens. My sympathy though unsurprisingly are towards their restitution, but in this post, rather than discussing the either side of the debate on whether sculptures should be restituted or not, I will be describing that journey, that fateful journey of thousands of miles — from being Parthenon sculptures to being Elgin Marbles! Although now they are usually and justly so, addressed as the Parthenon sculptures.
Surviving figures from the East Pediment of the Parthenon, exhibited as part of Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.
Background
A temple of Athena — Goddess of wisdom, war and the crafts, daughter of Zeus and the patron goddess of the classical city of Athens, is said to have already been under construction “just before or after the battle of Marathon in 490 BC but had been razed to the ground by the Persians during their brief occupation of Athens in 480 BC.”1 Then in 448 BCE, the Athenian Assembly voted in favour of the construction of a new temple – The Parthenon. The work on temple began very next year and by the year 432 BCE, the temple was complete. Its principal architect was Iktinos and the sculptor of this magnificent monument was Phidias. Famous personalities of history who saw its rise into magnificence included statesman Pericles and philosopher Socrates.
An 1868 painting by Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema – Phidias showing frieze of the Parthenon to his friends (Wikimedia Commons)
The Parthenon (Photo Credit)
Unfortunately, the Parthenon was later converted like many pagan temples, into a Christian Church and continued as such for the next thousand years, first as the church of the Holy Wisdom from fifth century CE and then from early thirteenth century as the church of Our Lady of Athens. In fifteenth century, Greece became part of the Ottoman Empire. During the rule of Ottomans, the entire Acropolis, of which the Parthenon was an integral part, was “occupied by the Turkish troops and not easily accessible to the visitors.”2 As a result, the Parthenon was now converted into a mosque to be used by the Turkish garrison. “It’s mosaics and frescoes were whitewashed or plastered over.”3
In 1687, the Venetian army which was mostly a mercenary army, besieged Athens. A war raged between Venice and the Ottomans. During this war, the Parthenon was being used as a storage facility for gunpowder. A deadly blow struck by a Venetian mortar caused the entire roof of the Parthenon to collapse, leaving only the pediments. Many sculptures including a large Poseidon were later smashed to pieces during an unsuccessful attempt by the engineers of the Venetian general Franceso Morosini who tried to bring down the sculptures and take them back to Venice.
Lord Elgin
In 1799, Thomas Bruce, seventh earl of Elgin was appointed as an ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. This was not his first assignment. He had been previously posted as a diplomat at various places like Vienna and Berlin. His original intentions were debatably, to get the drawings of the famous Greek sculptures. He even put together a team of artists headed by a painter named Giovanni Battista Lusieri.
Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin in 1788 — drawing by Harding, after Graff. (British Museum)
On their arrival, the entire party was given a very lavish welcome. The British on their part didn’t waste much time and started to draw the beauty of various Greek monuments and sculptures. But, the Acropolis at Athens was a different scenario. Permission by the Ottoman officials was given only on the condition of monetary benefits. Lusieri thus, asked Elgin to surpass all of this by directly demanding a firman from the Sultan himself.
Now, the question which naturally arises is why the Ottoman Sultan was being so generous about this whole affair ever since the arrival of the ambassador? Why was it likely that the British might as well get the said firman? The answer is good old politics. To bad luck of Greece and to his luck, Lord Elgin was at the right place, at the right time. Due to ongoing struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Napoleanic France for the control of Egypt, Sultan was eager to gain allies and Britain was being fostered for the same.
“As a result, Elgin was able to obtain a firman from the Sultan’s ministers authorising him to make casts and drawing of the sculptures in place on ‘the temple of the idols’, to excavate around the building for fragments, and to remove ‘some pieces of stone with inscriptions or figures’.”
Robert Browning in The Elgin Marbles: Should They be Returned to Greece?
This is where things start to become really complicated and grey. This “astonishingly vague document” has been under scanner for many years. Many scholars doubt that Sultan gave the permission to Elgin to obtain as many sculptures as he could by demolishing the Parthenon. The amount of sculptures taken away or should we say looted by Lord Elgin clearly were not what the Sultan meant by ‘some pieces of stone with inscriptions or figures.’ The other sordid aspect of this saga is that it was the very existence of unsympathetic Ottomans to say the least, that led Elgin to get these sculptures out of the Parthenon. Had it been under control of the Greeks, the whole story could have been very different! Even during the Greek War of Independence in 1822, the Turkish garrison had started to break the “surviving walls of the cella to get at the lead shielding of clamps and melt it down to bullets. The Greek besiegers sent a message offering to give them bullets if they would leave the Parthenon undamaged.”4
Removal of Sculptures
Very soon after getting the firman in 1801, the removal of the sculptures was started. A large part of the frieze was dismantled and they even took various capitals and metopes. Lord Elgin along with Lusieri “sent to England fifty slabs and two half slabs of the frieze and fifteen metopes- all that he considered worth taking as he says.”5 This included a metope panel depicting a battle between Lapiths and Centaurs and almost 75 metres of the Parthenon Frieze. Some more sculptures were taken from other monuments on the Acropolis including four slabs from the frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike. The entire process of removal also resulted in damaging the Parthenon, especially the manner in which the slabs were sawed through. “Parthenon was despoiled of a greater part of its sculptured decoration.”6
Section of a frieze from the Parthenon Marbles (Credit)
Transportation
In 1803, the entire collection was “packed up into two hundred boxes which were then loaded on to wagons and transported to the port of Piraeus to await there passage to England.”7 The journey of the marbles from there was even more arduous. One of the ship wrecked near the island of Kythira or Cerigo as it was known at that time. It was almost three years after that finally the marbles were recovered. For two entire years, the “cargo of the treasures lay on the seafloor”.8
Arrest of Elgin and ‘Worth’ of Marbles
The story from here takes another turn. When Elgin was returning to London, he was arrested in France and stayed there for three years due to breaking of Peace Amiens and subsequent hostilities between England and France. After finally arriving in London in 1806, Elgin started the negotiations with the British Museums. He had incurred quiet an expenditure on the removal and transit of the sculptures and wished that he should be ably ‘compensated’. He estimated their worth at 75000 Euros but the deal could only be made finally in 1816, when Britain bought it for 35000 Euros. The ‘worth’ was decided by a Parliamentary Committee.
Conclusion
It has to be stated that this entire affair was very controversial from the start with British society divided on whether this was a good ‘investment’ for the country or not. Some considered it a vandalism like famous poet Lord Byron and some supporting the move. The Parthenon marbles were then given by Britain to the British Museum where they are displayed today in the Duveen Gallery. Thus, the journey of more than half of the splendid Parthenon Sculptures from Athens to London was completed. Who knows, if there is a return journey in the future or not!
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C'est la vie Priyā 