January 22, 2020 • 43 mins
Today's episode covers how the removal of Ancient Greek artifacts from Greece by Lord Elgin played out, how these sculptures became part of the collection of the British Museum, and why the controversy over all this has continued until today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
This is part two of our two part podcast on
Lord Elgin and the Parthenon Marbles. I really recommend listening
(00:23):
to part one. That's the whole story of of how
he got these marbles in the first place. Very briefly,
in that episode, we talked about how he became the
British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, how he decided to
document classical Greek ark and architecture while he was there,
and how that project morphed to include removing the artwork
(00:43):
rather than just drawing it and making casts and molds
of it. These are often called the Parthenon Marbles, although
the pieces that are involved were not just from the Parthenon,
they were also from other parts of the Acropolis and
Athens and elsewhere in Greece. So today we're going to
talk about how all of that played out, and how
these sculptures became part of the collection of the British Museum,
(01:05):
and why there's still controversy about this that has continued
until today. Just a quick recap on sort of the
cast of characters people involved. At this point we have
Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and eleven of Kincarten.
He was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and
was stationed in Constantinople. Giovanni Batista Lucieri was a landscape
(01:26):
painter from Naples who was recruited to oversee a team
of architects, artists, mold makers and others in a project
that was originally meant to document classical Greek art and architecture.
The Reverend Philip Hunt was an Anglican priest and the
chaplain to the British embassy in Constantinople. He was appointed
as Lord Elgin's temporary secretary to act on his behalf
(01:48):
in Athens. And then in Athens, the team mostly interacted
with people who occupied two different government positions. The exact
people in those positions varied over time. They included the Voivode,
who was the governor of Athens, and the Dizdar, who
was the military governor with authority over the acropolis itself.
Elgin asked for permission to return to England in late
(02:09):
eighteen o two. He had taken this position in part
because he thought that the climate and warm sea bathing
available in Constantinople would be good for his health, and
instead I had the opposite effect. In addition to not
bringing about any improvement in the chronic illnesses that had
motivated him to go, he had developed some kind of
wasting condition that eventually caused him to lose the lower
(02:30):
half of his nose. He was also just tired of
a Constantinople and he wanted to go home, and he
was given permission to depart in January of eighteen oh three.
He seems to have understood that future Ottoman administrations might
not look kindly on the removal of so much material
from the Parthenon and elsewhere at the Acropolis, and he
(02:51):
also worried about what that might mean for the Ottoman
officials he had worked with while he was an Athens.
So before he left, Elgin got ds from Ottoman officials
saying that they had approved of the actions made by
the Voivode and the dISTAR, and he left those letters
with those two men as protection in case politics shifted.
Later on, as Elian was preparing to leave Constantinople, France
(03:15):
was also withdrawing from Egypt, and it seemed likely that
peace would soon be negotiated between France and the Ottoman Empire.
This meant that the Ottoman Empire had way less need
of the British as allies, which gave Ottoman authorities less
incentive to cooperate with Britain's plans. It also meant that
the British Navy ships that Elgin had counted on to
take all of this marble back to England were now
(03:38):
occupied with the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt. Even
though Elgin's project wasn't an official government effort, everyone had
taken for granted that the British Navy would help get
all of this material back to England. Yeah. This this
shift in relationships among Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire
went so far as the fact that, like the British
(03:58):
Embassy was being shut down and in Stantinople, when it
was established in Constantinople, it was in a former French embassy.
Like there was a lot of of international back and
forth with this, on top of the lack of availability
of British Navy ships moving a whole bunch of marble statues, reliefs,
architectural elements, and other work by sea is just an
(04:18):
inherently difficult task. I mean it would be difficult overland also,
But most of the captains that Elgin and his team
talked to trying to get all this stuff to England
were not at all eager to weigh their ships down
with such heavy cargo, which would make the ship a
lot more likely to wreck in bad weather. So Elgin
used his own ship, the Mentor, for a lot of
this transport. The Mentor successfully made a round trip from
(04:41):
Athens in late eighteen o one. Then in September of
eighteen o two, two days after setting sail from Athens,
it sank in a storm off the coast of Cithera.
And when it sank, the Mentor was carrying seventeen cases
of classical Greek sculpture, including fourteen pieces of the parts
non freeze and four pieces of the freeze from the
(05:02):
Temple of Athena Nike. Various other pieces were on board
as well, although the largest heaviest pieces were still in Athens.
With the help of passing ships and sponge divers who
had been recruited from islands in the agency. Four of
the seventeen cases were salvaged from the shipwreck pretty quickly. Then,
in November of eighteen o two, plans were made to
(05:24):
try to raise the Mentor from the sea floor. Two
ships were supposed to work together to do this, but
due to a miscommunication, one of them didn't arrive, so
the HMS Lave Victorious tried to do it alone. The
cable that they were using to do this snapped, The
mentor sank back down to the sea floor, and soon
afterwards salvage operations had to be suspended for the winter.
(05:45):
It turned out that the crew of the other ship
had incorrectly heard that the Mentor was in pieces and
was impossible to raise, so they thought that they weren't
needed after all. Although that wasn't true in November of
eighteen o two, it was true by this ring of
eighteen o three, after it had sat there underwater in
months of winter storms. By that point, Elgin was on
(06:06):
his way home, having left Constantinople on January sixteenth of
eighteen o three. When he left, England and France were
not at war, peace had been established. He decided to
make part of the journey home over land through Italy
and France. Part of his motivation here was to try
to avoid the seasickness that had really just plagued his
(06:28):
wife on their first journey to get to Constantinople in
the first place. But he also wanted to talk to
artisans in Rome about restoring the statues that he was
removing from Athens. At the time, it was really common
for restorers to replace broken and missing parts of things
like classical statues, so like if the arm had broken off,
they would make a new arm for it, right. And
(06:50):
you will still see in some museums some pieces where
they will point out, yeah, hey, that's not the same stone,
that's a repaired piece. Right. We wouldn't do that if
we had recovered this piece today. Um. But then England
declared war on France again on eighteen o three, which
is often marked as the start of the Napoleonic Wars.
(07:13):
Elgin and his wife were in French territory and they
became prisoners of war. Their children were allowed to continue
home to Britain and they had some degree of freedom,
but Elgin and his wife were not permitted to leave France. Meanwhile,
the salvage operations at the wreck of the mentor were ongoing,
with five cases brought up in eighteen o three. These
(07:33):
cases were partially buried on the beach and covered with
things like seaweed and stones to try to protect them
from the wind and the water until a ship could
be dispatched to pick them up. Divers brought up the
remaining cases in eighteen o four, and finally Admiral Nelson
ordered a ship to the area to retrieve them all.
Elgin later estimated that the salvage effort cost him about
(07:53):
five thousand pounds, but it didn't recover everything from the ship.
He was really focused on those seven team cases of sculptures.
Divers have continued to bring up other items in the
century since then, with dives in and Steen bringing up
things like ancient amphora, coins, jewelry, and statues. In August
(08:16):
and September of archaeologists from Greece's effort for underwater antiquities
brought up other items, including jewelry, cookware, and even a
prosthetic leg. Also still ongoing was lucy Aries work around
the Parthenon. He continued to work for years after this,
Long after Elgin had gone back home, he kept collecting
(08:36):
and documenting various antiquities. In eighteen o four, France convinced
the Ottoman Empire to rescind their earlier firmans, and in
October of eighteen o five, the Empire implemented a total
ban on removing antiquities from Greece, and from that point
Lucy Area had to confine his work to Elgin too,
drawing and painting and guarding the statues that Elgin had
(08:58):
already collected that had not been taken to Britain yet.
While Elgin was being detained in France, the British captured
a French ship that had been carrying Greek sculptures and
other pieces that had been collected by Schwizoi Guffier, who
we mentioned in Part one. British authorities didn't think the
cargo was important enough to worry about, so it remained
in a British customs house until Elgin eventually found it
(09:21):
there years later. At various points between eighteen o three
and eighteen o six, elgin situation went beyond just not
being able to leave France. He was actually imprisoned. His
wife was allowed to leave in eighteen o five after
the death of one of their sons. Basically let her
go home for humanitarian reasons. Elgin finally arrived home in
(09:41):
June of eighteen o six, after signing a par role
that promised the French government that he would go back
to France at any time they demanded. That parole was
in place until Napoleon abdicated in eighteen fourteen. We will
get to what happened after Elgin finally got home after
we first paused for a little sponsor break. Elgin's life
(10:07):
changed dramatically after his return to England. As we noted
in part one earlier in his career, he was thought
of as a pretty promising young man, but after being
detained in France, he could not get any kind of
appointment that would be typical for a man of his station.
The idea that he might be called back to France
at any moment and would have no choice other than
to go was just too big of a risk for
(10:29):
anyone to take on him. He also went through a
really embarrassing divorce when he returned from France. His wife
said that she had been so traumatized and injured by
the birth of their fifth child that she could not
risk becoming pregnant again, and she ended their physical relationship. However,
she was also having an affair, and when Elgin learned
(10:50):
about this, he filed a civil action against her in England,
and he filed for divorce in Scotland, where it was
easier to get a divorce on the grounds of adultery.
Elgin was worded ten thousand pounds in the civil suit,
but his divorce trial lad to just a lengthy and
scandalous public testimony about his wife's infidelity, including statements she
(11:11):
had made about how her attraction to him had started
to wane after the loss of his nose. There's also
been a lot of speculation about exactly what caused Elgin's
illnesses and his disfigurement, and various people have concluded that
it was syphilis, which of course would have carried even
more stigma than than it does today. Yeah, basically, he
had all of his personal business just spilled out into
(11:33):
the public. Elgin's divorce also meant that he would no
longer be coming into his wife's fortune, and that was
something that he had been counting on and had been
a factor in his financial decision making up to that point.
He also lost his seat in Parliament, and his health
made it impossible for him to return to active duty
with the military. Elgin's massive debts and lack of income
(11:55):
trickled down to people who had been working for him,
who then lost their incomes as well. To add insult
to injury, many of Elgin's peers didn't think that he
was actually broke. They assumed that he had gotten rich
off bribes while working in Constantinople and that he was
just being coy about it. At this point, all those
antiquities that Elgin had removed from sites in Athens and
(12:18):
elsewhere in Greece were scattered around various places, some of
it still in Greece waiting transport to England. In terms
of what was in England, a lot of it was
being stored in various friends homes, and many of them
were deeply annoyed that there were these giant cases of
marbles taking up space in their houses. So Elgin rented
a large home with a garden, and he had a
(12:40):
shed built to house all of this artwork. He collected
all the marbles that had arrived from Greece and arranged
them in a way that he thought was aesthetically pleasing
rather than one that had a historical or architectural meaning
to it. He did not wind up having the sculptures
restored in Italy because he just did not have the
money to do it. He finished us in eighteen o
(13:01):
seven and he opened his little shed for viewings by
artists and architects, and he immediately got a ton of
requests from artists that wanted to study and draw what
he had brought back to Britain. He had to appoint
a curator and ration access to the shed, and people
also praised the idea that he had saved all this
artwork from destruction. But he did also have some detractors,
(13:22):
especially after classical scholar pay Night went on a campaign
to tell people that the sculptures weren't from the Greek
Golden Age at all, but were in fact much later
and far inferior Roman works. That was not true, but
it fueled various controversies. The Anglo Turkish War started in
eighteen o seven and that started a huge scramble for
(13:44):
Elegant to try to get the last of those sculptures
that were waiting for him in Athens out of Athens.
That effort to remove the last sculptures to Britain lasted
beyond the end of the Anglo Turkish War in eighteen
o nine, the last shipments from Athens to England and
did not happen until eighteen twelve. Meanwhile, in eighteen ten,
Elgin remarried and it became clear to him that he
(14:06):
needed to do something to try to get himself out
of debt. His income from his family property wasn't anywhere
near enough to pay it off. He also had four
surviving children from his first marriage, and he expected to
have more kids with his second wife, and he needed
a way to support them all and ideally not leave
them all in debt after his death. So he decided
(14:28):
to sell the sculptures that he had brought back from Greece,
advocating for the Nation of Britain to buy them. To
that end, he anonymously published a memorandum on the subject
of the Earl of Elgin's pursuits in Greece. He published
several editions of that over the next few years. The
British government heard his proposition, they made him an offer
of thirty thousand pounds. This was significantly less money than
(14:52):
he had spent getting the marbles and salvaging them from
the wreck of the Mentor and so he turned it down. Then,
in eighteen eleven, George Gordon, Lord Byron, visited the Acropolis
in Athens. Lucieri, who was still working for Elgin, gave
Lord Byron a tour, and later when Byron sailed to Malta,
it was on Elgin's ship. Byron seems to have warned
(15:14):
Elgin that he wasn't happy with what he saw and
experienced regarding Elgin's work in Athens, but Elgan either did
not take him seriously or just didn't know what to
do about it. Byron also was not nearly as famous
at this point as he was about to be, so
Elgin may not have thought any of this was a
big deal. Simultaneously, Elgin was advocating for Britain to buy
(15:35):
the sculptures and other marbles. He was also looking for
somewhere else to house them, because with all of his
debts he could not afford to keep renting a separate
home for that purpose. With the shed to display all
the marbles in the Duke of Devonshire offered to store
them at his home, which was Burlington House. There wasn't
really enough room for all the sculptures indoors there, though,
(15:56):
so some of them were left out in the yard,
and that included the last shipments that arrived from Athens
in twelve. In March of that year, Byron published a
long poem called Child Harold's Pilgrimage, and with this poem
his career suddenly took off. The first printing of Child
Harold sold out in just a few days. Byron had
previously written several critiques of various antiquarians, including Elgin specifically,
(16:22):
and Child Harold included this passage along with prose notes
that specifically named Elgin. Here's what this passage said, among
others in the work, dull is the eye that will
not weep to see thy walls defaced, thy moldering shrines
removed by British hands, which it had best behooved to
guard those relics near to be restored. Cursed be the
(16:45):
hour when from their aisle they roved and once again
thy hapless bosom gourd and snatched thy shrinking gods to
northern climbs of hoard. Lord Byron is one of those
people that I would not have ever wanted to be
on his bad side and have him rite nasty verse
about me, because he could be vicious uh. In addition
(17:05):
to launching Byron to fame, this poem brought Elgin's actions
in Athens, as well as the plight of the Greek
people under Ottoman rule, into the public spotlight, and it
stoked a lot of debate. At one point, Edward Daniel
Clark told Byron about his experience seeing the marbles cut
down and people weeping, which Byron worked into the notes
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of future editions of this poem. Clark had also published
his own thoughts on this in his travels in various
countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This was a massive,
multi volume work that heavily criticized the removal of the
sculptures from the Parthenon, and it included some selections from
Child Harold in later additions. I should also be noted
(17:47):
that Clark came home with some antiquities from his travel
in Greece as well, just not nearly to the extent
of what Elgin had done. Of course, this controversy folded
into the question of whether Britain might buy the sculptures,
which Elgin was still trying to pursue after turning down
that initial offer of thirty thousand pounds, but on May
eleventh of eighteen twelve, John Bellingham assassinated British Prime Minister
(18:11):
Spencer Perceval over a personal grievance with the government. That
assassination took place in the lobby of the House of Commons,
and of course the question of what to do with
the Parthenon Marbles was tabled in the aftermath, along with
a whole lot of other issues. The War of eighteen
twelve also started in June of that year. Yeah, there
was there was a lot going on, and as all
(18:32):
of that was happening in Britain, attitudes were shifting in Greece.
A sense of Greek nationalism and Greek national identity was
starting to grow there, including a renewal of the Greek
language and a movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.
In eighteen fifteen, Napoleon returned from exile and the Duke
of Devonshire sold Burlington House. Its new owners plan to
(18:54):
totally rebuild the estate, which made Elgan's need to sell
the sculptures even more urgent. The Brite Museum arranged for
a committee to evaluate the issue, although that committee included
pay Night and other people who either did not care
for Elgin or thought the sculptures he'd acquired were overrated.
Elgin started to fear that he might be offered even
(19:15):
less than what he had turned down initially. On June
fifteenth of eighteen fifteen, Elgin presented a petition to the
House of Commons, which the House of Commons debated but
didn't take any action on. Then just days later, on
June eighteenth, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
At that point, many of the nations that France had
previously invaded demanded their artwork and artifacts and other national
(19:38):
treasures back from the Louver. Although Elgin's acquisitions from Athens
weren't part of this, they were part of this conversation,
especially as at least five thousand pieces of artwork were
returned from France to their nations of origin. And then
came yet another source of public allegations against Elgin, this
time from the Reverend R. Twiddel to a l published
(20:00):
a book about his late brother John, including an appendix
detailing all kinds of allegations against both Elgin and Philip Hunt.
It is kind of a convoluted story, but the Reverend
Twitter was apparently incensed over what he saw as Elgin's
mishandling of his late brother's papers, something that John Spencer Smith,
who we mentioned in Part one, was connected to and
(20:23):
egged him on about. So Elgin denied any wrongdoing in
all this, but it turned into kind of a scandal
like we would describe it today as a flame war.
There was a lot of back and forth publishing of letters,
and various people pointed out how Elgin's relationships with pretty
much everyone he had ever worked with, aside from Lucieri
he was still employing in Athens, those relationships had all
(20:44):
totally deteriorated. When some of John Twiddel's drawings were found
at the home of Elgin's ex father in law, people
took it as evidence that, on top of everything else,
Elgin had lied about this whole situation. In February of
eighteen sixteen, Elgin put forth another petition before the House
of Commons, once again proposing that the British government by
(21:06):
the marbles. It also requested that they investigate how he
had gotten them in the first place, to try to
put an end to all of the suspicion. This petition
was debated on February hearings before a select committee began
on February nine. When they were questioned, Elgin, Hunt and
a lot of the other people who were involved talked
(21:26):
about a lot of the points that we've already gone over.
We read from some of their stuff in part one.
They talked about how Elgin wanted to document the masterpieces
of ancient Greece for the edification of artists and architects
in Britain, and that he had asked for the government
to fund this but had ultimately paid for it himself,
and that when he saw the damaged the Acropolis that
had already happened, he wanted to save as much artwork
(21:48):
there as he could. He estimated his total expenses, including
expenses after the marbles had been removed to Britain, as
just shy of seventy five thousand pounds. There was also
a lot of discussion about the ferments that we talked
about earlier, and about the persuasion that had been part
of how Ottoman authorities interpreted them. Artists were also questioned
(22:11):
about the value of these marbles, both artistic value and
monetary value. As part of that pain Night suggested that
they were worth thousand pounds. These hearings went on for
two weeks. When the committee delivered its report, it suggested
that Elgin had done what he did legally, that he
did not abuse his power to do so, that he
(22:32):
hadn't damaged the monuments needlessly, and that he hadn't done
what he did for personal gain. The report also spoke
to the benefit that the marbles could bring to the
arts in Britain, and the words of the report quote,
no country can be better adapted than our own to
afford an honorable asylum to these monuments of the School
of Phidias and the Administration of Pericles. The recommended offer
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price for the sculptures was thirty five thousand pounds. This
was much less than Elgin had said that he spent
on this whole endeavor, but it was also five thousand
pounds more than the previous offer, so he kind of
felt like he had no other choice at this point
and he accepted. Then Parliament had to vote on all
this to make an official in which they did after
(23:16):
debating on June seventh of eighteen sixteen. They voted to
purchase the marbles from Elgin for thirty five thousand pounds,
with eight two votes four and eighty against. An Act
of Parliament then gave the nation ownership of the marbles,
which were formerly known as the Elgin Marbles, and it
also made Elgin and his heirs trustees of the British Museum.
(23:37):
That payment of thirty five thousand pounds immediately went to
Elgin's creditors, still leaving him in debt. In spite of that,
he kept employing Lucieri for as long as he could,
saying that he felt sorry for him. For his part,
Lucieri believed he could have become a really famous artist
if he hadn't started working for Elgin. He died in
(23:58):
eighteen one. All Elgin did eventually returned to Parliament as
a representative peer for Scotland. His career never really recovered
from all of this. He kept trying to get a
British peerage, hoping that it would help him get out
of debt, but that never happened and he died on
November fourteenth of eighteen forty one. But the story of
the marbles continues, and we'll get back to them and
(24:20):
how the controversy around them has also continued after we
have one more sponsor break. By January of eighteen seventeen,
the collection of sculptures, which were by then officially known
as the Elgin Marbles, was on public view in a
temporary space in the British Museum. They immediately became a
(24:44):
huge draw. Although there were people still in Britain, Greece
and elsewhere who vocally protested that they should not have
been removed from Greece in the first place, these sculptures
and architectural elements were credited with doing exactly what Elgin
had hoped they would, contributing to the edge of cation
of British artists and architects and bringing a renewed focus
on art and architecture in Britain. The marbles themselves became
(25:08):
part of the British national identity. They also inspired other
works of art, including poetry by John Keats, and contributed
to an ongoing trend of Greek Revival architecture, including the
main entrance of the British Museum. The British Museum also
started providing molds and casts of the marbles for other
museums and other facilities to use. Over time, a lot
(25:30):
of these casts were made, and eventually the museum made
a set of casts like a master set, specifically for
the purpose of making molds out of them, but they
were making so many molds that eventually those casts had
become too worn down to make good molds anymore. They
would need to make the cast over again. In eighteen
twenty one, the Greek War of Independence began. It's also
called the Greek Revolution, and this, combined with the rising
(25:53):
sense of Greek national identity that we mentioned earlier, led
to increasing calls for Britain to return the parson on Nobles.
These calls continued after Greece was formally declared an independent
nation under the protection of Britain, France, and Russia in
eighteen thirty three. Immediately this newly independent nation of Greece
(26:14):
started focusing on the return of its cultural, artistic, and
architectural heritage from other countries. To be clear, Greece at
this point was culturally and ethnically diverse. It's not really
clear how many people living there could have traced their
lineage all the way back to Greek antiquity. And there's
really a whole other discussion that could be had about
the rise of this Greek national identity and what that
(26:37):
meant for racial and ethnic minorities who were living there. Nevertheless,
this Nation of Greece, right from its founding, saw classical
Greece in general, and the Acropolis and the Parthenon specifically
as a really important part of its identity. In March
of eighteen thirty five, the Acropolis was declared a national
monument and the Nation of Greece put an end to
(27:00):
its use as a military facility for the first time
in probably centuries. Greece also banned the export of its antiquities,
although it's still had trouble stopping vandalism and looting, most
of which was done by foreign visitors. Dad there's there
was an article that came out um right before the
end of the year that was basically about how there
(27:22):
was more damage done to these monuments that were still
in Greece in the nineteenth century then there has been
in the centuries since then through things like air pollution.
There's is a lot of vandalism and looting and theft.
Also in eighteen thirty five, the British Museum offered Greece
a set of casts of the Parthenon marbles. Greece asked
(27:43):
for the originals and also embarked on a project to
restore the Parthenon that year, as well as repairing and
re erecting elements that had been knocked down in that
sixteen eighty seven explosion, along with other damage. In eighteen
thirty two, the Elgin Room, now called Room seventeen, opened
on the British Museum's west side as a home for
(28:03):
the Elgin Marbles. Another gallery, named for its financier art
dealers Shore Joseph Duvine, was built for that purpose in
the nineteen thirties, and while that gallery was being built,
Duvine employed people to clean the Parthenon marbles and make
them look whiter, under the incorrect idea that he was
restoring them to their proper appearance without the oversight of
(28:25):
museum staff and without following the museum's established cleaning procedures. Yeah,
we're kind of fast forwarding roughly a hundred years here,
but during that whole time, people in Greece were still
advocating for the return of the marbles. That didn't stop
in the interim. So the museum had used various cleaning
(28:46):
techniques over the years, and by the early twentieth century,
the basic process was to periodically dust the pieces off,
to occasionally wash them with distilled water and a neutral
soap very gently. But the people that Duvine and ployd
we're using metal tools and carborundum, which is an abrasive
to scrub and scrape away the exterior of these pieces,
(29:08):
which at that point was kind of a brownish or
a honey color. Of course, initially we know that these
sculptures were painted, like the paint is not visible to
the naked eye at this point, but like after there's there,
you know, two thousand years of existence, they had taken
on this this different coloring. And when this cleaning in
quotation marks was discovered, it happened because a member of
(29:30):
the museum staff walked into a room and saw that
in the works on three pieces. In the investigation that
followed this discovery, the museum learned that this whole incorrect
cleaning procedure had been going on for at least a
year and a half in nineteen thirty seven and ninety eight.
This was a massive oversight, and it is not entirely
(29:51):
clear still exactly how it happened, but at least some
of the people that Duvine had hired had been given
keys to the museum. That was not a good security procedure.
So the museum's investigation was finished in December of night,
and this new exhibit was supposed to open the following May.
And the words of Frederick Price, who was then the
(30:13):
keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the museum, from
this report quote the surface of the sculptures, showing the
evidences of two thousand years of exposure to the climate
of Greece, was a document of the utmost importance. There
being no possible doubt about the history of the Parthenon sculptures,
they came to the museum as authentic masterpieces of Greek
work of the fifth century BC, and for purposes of
(30:34):
study in comparison, they are of inestimable value. The damage
which has been caused is obvious and cannot be exaggerated.
The exact steps that the museum took next were not recorded,
but the Standing Committee's minutes record some kind of remedial solution.
Apparently coding the marbles was something that was meant to
replicate their earlier color in terms of the ramifications. For
(30:58):
the museum staff, multiple people who were involved with all
of this oversight were given early retirement. One man, assistant keeper,
Roger Hanks, became something of a scapegoat over it. He
was essentially to be demoted, but he was also told
that it quote would not be to his disadvantage if
he resigned, so he did. Although the museum tried to
(31:19):
handle all of this quietly, rumors quickly spread that something
had happened to the marbles, and this bloomed into a
massive media scandal. The museum's public statements from the nineteen
thirties generally tried to downplay things, explaining what the authorized
cleaning methods were without really acknowledging the widespread damaging and
(31:39):
unauthorized cleaning that had also gone on. But not long
after the Divine Gallery opened, World War Two started in
Europe and people became more focused on making sure the
sculptures weren't damaged in air raids. The gallery itself was
badly damaged by bombs during the war, but the sculptures
were not affected. There is a lot more about all
(32:01):
of the story in Lord Elgin and the Marbles, which
is a book by WILLIAMS. St Clair published by Oxford
University Press, specifically the third edition, which came up in
St Clair was the first person to go through and
document in print what happened in nineteen seven and ninety eight,
and how the museum presented it to the public. St
Clair is extremely critical of the museum's actions, interpreting their
(32:24):
response as an ongoing cover up. The British Museum has
framed it more as a mistake, acknowledging that the work
was an overcleaning and characterizing the response to the public
at the time as a serious misstep, but denying that
there was any sort of long term cover up involved
since then. In recent years, when Greece has renewed its
(32:45):
calls for the return of the Marble's, Brittain has refused,
but in other points in history Britain has made overtures
that they might actually give them back. During World War Two,
Britain started drafting a plan to return the Marbles to Greece,
hoping it would inspire Greek resistance against an invasion by
Germany or Italy. In the nineteen fifties, during the Cyprus Emergency,
(33:06):
Britain suggested that it might return the Marbles if Greece
would end its support of a guerrilla campaign against Cyprus's
British colonial government. In more recent years, Neil Kennock, who
was then the leader of Britain's Labor Party promised that
the Marbles would be returned to Greece in nineteen ninety six,
but when the Labor government actually took power the following year,
(33:27):
they were not. At various points, legislation has been introduced
in Parliament to return the Marbles to Greece, but it
has never really gone anywhere. As Britain was nodding to
the idea of returning the Marbles in the nineteen forties
and nineteen fifties, some of the reinforcement work that had
gone on at the Parthenon in the years after Greek
independence started to deteriorate. Iron had been used in some
(33:50):
of the supports, which had shifted and rested over time.
Greece also industrialized very quickly into the nineteen sixties, leading
to issues with air pollution and acid rain. A major
earthquake also struck Athens in n one, and all of
this became arguments in part for why Britain should not
return the Marbles. But at the same time there were
(34:12):
ongoing calls that Britain should return them, especially after the
passage of UNESCO's Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and
Preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of
cultural property that was past in ninety Those calls have
cited all the questions about Elgin's actions and the scope
(34:33):
and the legitimacy of the firm in that we have
talked about throughout this episode, along with whether that nineteen
thirties overcleaning incident undermines the idea that the British Museum
has been protecting the sculptures. One of the things that's
been cited is the reason why the marbles shouldn't be
returned to Greece is the idea that Greece didn't have
a facility like the British Museum where those marbles could
(34:55):
be housed, conserved, and displayed. In part because of that criticism,
Greece built the new Acropolis Museum of Athens, which opened
in two thousand eight. All the statues and other artworks
that can be removed from the Parthenon are now indoors
there so that they can be protected from the elements
and from intentional theft or vandalism. So the gallery that's
(35:17):
dedicated to the Parthenon at this new museum has large
glass windows that overlook the Parthenon itself and then the
size and the shape of the room replicates the perimeter
of that inner cello where the freezes are, and the
friezes are displayed there as they were on the original building.
The pieces of the freeze that are in the British
Museum or in other museums, because there are some pieces
(35:39):
in other museums as well, those have been replaced with molds,
and in some cases molds and casts replace individual pieces
that were broken off and are in the British Museum collection,
not so much in like the old style of restoring pieces,
but more to show like we have this piece of
the freeze, but the foot that should be on here
(36:01):
is in the British Museum. In the Andonis Samaras administration
in Greece called on UNESCO to mediate between Britain and
Greece over the issue of the marbles. That August, UNESCO's
Assistant Director General for Culture wrote a letter to the
director of the British Museum, the UK Foreign Secretary, and
the Minister for Culture, Media and Support. UNESCO offered to
(36:25):
act as the mediator that Greece had requested. In the
UK government and the trustees of the British Museum each
responded with a decline. The museum's response read, in part quote,
the British Museum is not a government body and the
collections do not belong to the British Government. The trustees
of the British Museum hold them not only for the
(36:45):
British people, but for the benefit of the world public,
present and future. The trustees have a legal and moral
responsibility to preserve and maintain all the collections in their care,
to treat them as inalienable, and to make them accessible
to world audiences. The passage of brexit in also raised
questions about whether Britain should return the Marbles after leaving
(37:07):
the EU. There are several arguments at work with that idea.
One is that returning artwork to other nations might help
Britain rebuild relationships with other countries once it is not
part of the EU anymore. And another is that if
citizens of the European Union can no longer freely visit
England to visit the British Museum, then Britain isn't really
holding those works for the good of humanity only for
(37:30):
the British. Obviously, citizens of the European Union are just
a fraction of the totality of humanity. But that is
the argument that's being made in this case. As of
when we are recording this, the bregsit deadline is January.
It's a few weeks down the road from today, so
this all remains to be seen. Yeah, I think it's
like a week after this episode will probably come out. However,
(37:54):
throughout this controversy, Britain has said fastly maintained that it
will not return the marbles in January are British Museum
director Heartwig Fisher again reiterated that the marbles would not
be returned, calling their initial removal a creative act. He
said this in an interview with Greek daily newspaper Tanya Today.
(38:16):
Britain's argument for keeping the parthen On Marbles is basically
that they were acquired legally and that they are freely
available for anyone to see because the museum does not
charge admission. They have also stressed the museum's placement of
the marbles in the context of world history and art,
alongside other masterpieces from other parts of the world. Britain
has also cited concerns relating to things like economic issues
(38:39):
in Greece, including a debt crisis and austerity measures. Previous
points about Greek air quality in the lack of an
appropriate museum are no longer really relevant thanks to the
construction of the new Acropolis Museum. Greece's argument for having
the Marble's return includes that Britain's acquisition was not legal,
that the firm and was not that broad to allow
(39:01):
such a huge removal of material, or that it may
not have existed or may not have been an actual
firm in at all. Additionally, Britain's negotiations were not with
Greek authorities. They were with the Ottoman Empire, which modern
Greece views as an occupying nation. It's also been noted
that Elgin's initial plan with all of this was not
at all to safeguard the pieces in a museum for
(39:24):
the benefit of all of humanity. It was to keep
them on his personal property for access by people he
chose to allow to see it. From the Greek perspective,
these sculptures are a critical part of Greek national identity,
Greek history, and Greek culture, and they should be returned
to Greece and reunited with the rest of the sculptures
that are still there. But it's also been noted that
(39:45):
At this point, Britain's argument for keeping the Marbles isn't
really motivated by all of the points that we have
just outlined. There's more of a slippery slope argument in play,
and a fear across the world of museums as a
whole that if Britain returns the parthon on Marble's, every
museum everywhere will be forced to return artwork, artifacts, or
(40:05):
other pieces of historical or cultural heritage that they obtained
in some way that would be considered questionable today. Yeah,
and ways that we're probably considered questionable at best by
the people they were removed from at the time. So
some other commonly cited examples of this are the Rosetta Stone,
which Britain obtained in a treaty with Egypt, the Benin Bronzes,
(40:28):
which British soldiers took from what's now Nigeria in the
late nineteenth century, and the bust of Nefertiti, which has
been in Germany since a German team founded in nineteen
twelve and is now in the Noius Museum in Berlin.
We've talked about calls to return the Rosetta Stone in
a past Unearthed episode and Britain has announced that at
least some of the Benien Bronzes will be returned to
(40:49):
Nigeria and overall, in the last few years there has
been a growing trend of returning and repatriating items from
museum collections, especially human remains, as part of an overall
trend towards decolonizing museums. But people are still fearful of
what a greater move toward repatriation might mean. And it
is something that would affect the world's most prominent art museums,
(41:11):
including the met, the Louver and many others, lots and
lots of them. And so it's a huge, huge issue
and like a massive conversation that's going on throughout the
world of art and art history and museums and all
of that. Uh. Well, probably talk some more about those
ideas in our behind the Scenes many so uh which
(41:35):
will be out on Friday. It's a safe bet. Yeah. Um.
I have a listener mail, so who takes out before
we get to that sweet This is from Stephanie. Stephanie says, Hello,
Tracy and Holly. I'm a longtime listener and absolutely love
your show. I was particularly excited to hear your show
about Alfred Wegner, because although I don't know much about
his working continental drift, I am familiar with his final expedition.
(41:59):
You mentioned in the know that the researchers who made
it out to ice Mended were able to do some
work before Vegnar arrived, but I wanted to note just
how important that work was. While waiting out the winter,
Earnst Sworge Hand dug a sixteen meter deep pit into
the ice and developed a new method for measuring the
seasonal accumulation of ice on the glacier using its density
(42:20):
that could be used even if the layers were not visible. Later,
this technique would be critical in the discovery of man
made climate change. What I love about the story is
that it further proves how important scientific research is, even
if the importance isn't clear for years and years. Thank
you so much for all the work you do. Happy podcasting, Stephanie.
Thank you Stephanie for this email. UM. I had read
(42:42):
a little about the ice cores that they took during
that expedition, but I did not know that detail about them,
so thank you so much for sending that. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast where History podcast at my heart radio dot com.
And then we're all over social media at miss in History.
That's where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram.
You can also subscribe to our show on Apple podcast,
(43:04):
the I heart radio app, and anywhere else you get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts,
for my heart radio visits, i heeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, the production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
This is part two of our two part podcast on
Lord Elgin and the Parthenon Marbles. I really recommend listening
(00:23):
to part one. That's the whole story of of how
he got these marbles in the first place. Very briefly,
in that episode, we talked about how he became the
British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, how he decided to
document classical Greek ark and architecture while he was there,
and how that project morphed to include removing the artwork
(00:43):
rather than just drawing it and making casts and molds
of it. These are often called the Parthenon Marbles, although
the pieces that are involved were not just from the Parthenon,
they were also from other parts of the Acropolis and
Athens and elsewhere in Greece. So today we're going to
talk about how all of that played out, and how
these sculptures became part of the collection of the British Museum,
(01:05):
and why there's still controversy about this that has continued
until today. Just a quick recap on sort of the
cast of characters people involved. At this point we have
Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and eleven of Kincarten.
He was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and
was stationed in Constantinople. Giovanni Batista Lucieri was a landscape
(01:26):
painter from Naples who was recruited to oversee a team
of architects, artists, mold makers and others in a project
that was originally meant to document classical Greek art and architecture.
The Reverend Philip Hunt was an Anglican priest and the
chaplain to the British embassy in Constantinople. He was appointed
as Lord Elgin's temporary secretary to act on his behalf
(01:48):
in Athens. And then in Athens, the team mostly interacted
with people who occupied two different government positions. The exact
people in those positions varied over time. They included the Voivode,
who was the governor of Athens, and the Dizdar, who
was the military governor with authority over the acropolis itself.
Elgin asked for permission to return to England in late
(02:09):
eighteen o two. He had taken this position in part
because he thought that the climate and warm sea bathing
available in Constantinople would be good for his health, and
instead I had the opposite effect. In addition to not
bringing about any improvement in the chronic illnesses that had
motivated him to go, he had developed some kind of
wasting condition that eventually caused him to lose the lower
(02:30):
half of his nose. He was also just tired of
a Constantinople and he wanted to go home, and he
was given permission to depart in January of eighteen oh three.
He seems to have understood that future Ottoman administrations might
not look kindly on the removal of so much material
from the Parthenon and elsewhere at the Acropolis, and he
(02:51):
also worried about what that might mean for the Ottoman
officials he had worked with while he was an Athens.
So before he left, Elgin got ds from Ottoman officials
saying that they had approved of the actions made by
the Voivode and the dISTAR, and he left those letters
with those two men as protection in case politics shifted.
Later on, as Elian was preparing to leave Constantinople, France
(03:15):
was also withdrawing from Egypt, and it seemed likely that
peace would soon be negotiated between France and the Ottoman Empire.
This meant that the Ottoman Empire had way less need
of the British as allies, which gave Ottoman authorities less
incentive to cooperate with Britain's plans. It also meant that
the British Navy ships that Elgin had counted on to
take all of this marble back to England were now
(03:38):
occupied with the withdrawal of British troops from Egypt. Even
though Elgin's project wasn't an official government effort, everyone had
taken for granted that the British Navy would help get
all of this material back to England. Yeah. This this
shift in relationships among Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire
went so far as the fact that, like the British
(03:58):
Embassy was being shut down and in Stantinople, when it
was established in Constantinople, it was in a former French embassy.
Like there was a lot of of international back and
forth with this, on top of the lack of availability
of British Navy ships moving a whole bunch of marble statues, reliefs,
architectural elements, and other work by sea is just an
(04:18):
inherently difficult task. I mean it would be difficult overland also,
But most of the captains that Elgin and his team
talked to trying to get all this stuff to England
were not at all eager to weigh their ships down
with such heavy cargo, which would make the ship a
lot more likely to wreck in bad weather. So Elgin
used his own ship, the Mentor, for a lot of
this transport. The Mentor successfully made a round trip from
(04:41):
Athens in late eighteen o one. Then in September of
eighteen o two, two days after setting sail from Athens,
it sank in a storm off the coast of Cithera.
And when it sank, the Mentor was carrying seventeen cases
of classical Greek sculpture, including fourteen pieces of the parts
non freeze and four pieces of the freeze from the
(05:02):
Temple of Athena Nike. Various other pieces were on board
as well, although the largest heaviest pieces were still in Athens.
With the help of passing ships and sponge divers who
had been recruited from islands in the agency. Four of
the seventeen cases were salvaged from the shipwreck pretty quickly. Then,
in November of eighteen o two, plans were made to
(05:24):
try to raise the Mentor from the sea floor. Two
ships were supposed to work together to do this, but
due to a miscommunication, one of them didn't arrive, so
the HMS Lave Victorious tried to do it alone. The
cable that they were using to do this snapped, The
mentor sank back down to the sea floor, and soon
afterwards salvage operations had to be suspended for the winter.
(05:45):
It turned out that the crew of the other ship
had incorrectly heard that the Mentor was in pieces and
was impossible to raise, so they thought that they weren't
needed after all. Although that wasn't true in November of
eighteen o two, it was true by this ring of
eighteen o three, after it had sat there underwater in
months of winter storms. By that point, Elgin was on
(06:06):
his way home, having left Constantinople on January sixteenth of
eighteen o three. When he left, England and France were
not at war, peace had been established. He decided to
make part of the journey home over land through Italy
and France. Part of his motivation here was to try
to avoid the seasickness that had really just plagued his
(06:28):
wife on their first journey to get to Constantinople in
the first place. But he also wanted to talk to
artisans in Rome about restoring the statues that he was
removing from Athens. At the time, it was really common
for restorers to replace broken and missing parts of things
like classical statues, so like if the arm had broken off,
they would make a new arm for it, right. And
(06:50):
you will still see in some museums some pieces where
they will point out, yeah, hey, that's not the same stone,
that's a repaired piece. Right. We wouldn't do that if
we had recovered this piece today. Um. But then England
declared war on France again on eighteen o three, which
is often marked as the start of the Napoleonic Wars.
(07:13):
Elgin and his wife were in French territory and they
became prisoners of war. Their children were allowed to continue
home to Britain and they had some degree of freedom,
but Elgin and his wife were not permitted to leave France. Meanwhile,
the salvage operations at the wreck of the mentor were ongoing,
with five cases brought up in eighteen o three. These
(07:33):
cases were partially buried on the beach and covered with
things like seaweed and stones to try to protect them
from the wind and the water until a ship could
be dispatched to pick them up. Divers brought up the
remaining cases in eighteen o four, and finally Admiral Nelson
ordered a ship to the area to retrieve them all.
Elgin later estimated that the salvage effort cost him about
(07:53):
five thousand pounds, but it didn't recover everything from the ship.
He was really focused on those seven team cases of sculptures.
Divers have continued to bring up other items in the
century since then, with dives in and Steen bringing up
things like ancient amphora, coins, jewelry, and statues. In August
(08:16):
and September of archaeologists from Greece's effort for underwater antiquities
brought up other items, including jewelry, cookware, and even a
prosthetic leg. Also still ongoing was lucy Aries work around
the Parthenon. He continued to work for years after this,
Long after Elgin had gone back home, he kept collecting
(08:36):
and documenting various antiquities. In eighteen o four, France convinced
the Ottoman Empire to rescind their earlier firmans, and in
October of eighteen o five, the Empire implemented a total
ban on removing antiquities from Greece, and from that point
Lucy Area had to confine his work to Elgin too,
drawing and painting and guarding the statues that Elgin had
(08:58):
already collected that had not been taken to Britain yet.
While Elgin was being detained in France, the British captured
a French ship that had been carrying Greek sculptures and
other pieces that had been collected by Schwizoi Guffier, who
we mentioned in Part one. British authorities didn't think the
cargo was important enough to worry about, so it remained
in a British customs house until Elgin eventually found it
(09:21):
there years later. At various points between eighteen o three
and eighteen o six, elgin situation went beyond just not
being able to leave France. He was actually imprisoned. His
wife was allowed to leave in eighteen o five after
the death of one of their sons. Basically let her
go home for humanitarian reasons. Elgin finally arrived home in
(09:41):
June of eighteen o six, after signing a par role
that promised the French government that he would go back
to France at any time they demanded. That parole was
in place until Napoleon abdicated in eighteen fourteen. We will
get to what happened after Elgin finally got home after
we first paused for a little sponsor break. Elgin's life
(10:07):
changed dramatically after his return to England. As we noted
in part one earlier in his career, he was thought
of as a pretty promising young man, but after being
detained in France, he could not get any kind of
appointment that would be typical for a man of his station.
The idea that he might be called back to France
at any moment and would have no choice other than
to go was just too big of a risk for
(10:29):
anyone to take on him. He also went through a
really embarrassing divorce when he returned from France. His wife
said that she had been so traumatized and injured by
the birth of their fifth child that she could not
risk becoming pregnant again, and she ended their physical relationship. However,
she was also having an affair, and when Elgin learned
(10:50):
about this, he filed a civil action against her in England,
and he filed for divorce in Scotland, where it was
easier to get a divorce on the grounds of adultery.
Elgin was worded ten thousand pounds in the civil suit,
but his divorce trial lad to just a lengthy and
scandalous public testimony about his wife's infidelity, including statements she
(11:11):
had made about how her attraction to him had started
to wane after the loss of his nose. There's also
been a lot of speculation about exactly what caused Elgin's
illnesses and his disfigurement, and various people have concluded that
it was syphilis, which of course would have carried even
more stigma than than it does today. Yeah, basically, he
had all of his personal business just spilled out into
(11:33):
the public. Elgin's divorce also meant that he would no
longer be coming into his wife's fortune, and that was
something that he had been counting on and had been
a factor in his financial decision making up to that point.
He also lost his seat in Parliament, and his health
made it impossible for him to return to active duty
with the military. Elgin's massive debts and lack of income
(11:55):
trickled down to people who had been working for him,
who then lost their incomes as well. To add insult
to injury, many of Elgin's peers didn't think that he
was actually broke. They assumed that he had gotten rich
off bribes while working in Constantinople and that he was
just being coy about it. At this point, all those
antiquities that Elgin had removed from sites in Athens and
(12:18):
elsewhere in Greece were scattered around various places, some of
it still in Greece waiting transport to England. In terms
of what was in England, a lot of it was
being stored in various friends homes, and many of them
were deeply annoyed that there were these giant cases of
marbles taking up space in their houses. So Elgin rented
a large home with a garden, and he had a
(12:40):
shed built to house all of this artwork. He collected
all the marbles that had arrived from Greece and arranged
them in a way that he thought was aesthetically pleasing
rather than one that had a historical or architectural meaning
to it. He did not wind up having the sculptures
restored in Italy because he just did not have the
money to do it. He finished us in eighteen o
(13:01):
seven and he opened his little shed for viewings by
artists and architects, and he immediately got a ton of
requests from artists that wanted to study and draw what
he had brought back to Britain. He had to appoint
a curator and ration access to the shed, and people
also praised the idea that he had saved all this
artwork from destruction. But he did also have some detractors,
(13:22):
especially after classical scholar pay Night went on a campaign
to tell people that the sculptures weren't from the Greek
Golden Age at all, but were in fact much later
and far inferior Roman works. That was not true, but
it fueled various controversies. The Anglo Turkish War started in
eighteen o seven and that started a huge scramble for
(13:44):
Elegant to try to get the last of those sculptures
that were waiting for him in Athens out of Athens.
That effort to remove the last sculptures to Britain lasted
beyond the end of the Anglo Turkish War in eighteen
o nine, the last shipments from Athens to England and
did not happen until eighteen twelve. Meanwhile, in eighteen ten,
Elgin remarried and it became clear to him that he
(14:06):
needed to do something to try to get himself out
of debt. His income from his family property wasn't anywhere
near enough to pay it off. He also had four
surviving children from his first marriage, and he expected to
have more kids with his second wife, and he needed
a way to support them all and ideally not leave
them all in debt after his death. So he decided
(14:28):
to sell the sculptures that he had brought back from Greece,
advocating for the Nation of Britain to buy them. To
that end, he anonymously published a memorandum on the subject
of the Earl of Elgin's pursuits in Greece. He published
several editions of that over the next few years. The
British government heard his proposition, they made him an offer
of thirty thousand pounds. This was significantly less money than
(14:52):
he had spent getting the marbles and salvaging them from
the wreck of the Mentor and so he turned it down. Then,
in eighteen eleven, George Gordon, Lord Byron, visited the Acropolis
in Athens. Lucieri, who was still working for Elgin, gave
Lord Byron a tour, and later when Byron sailed to Malta,
it was on Elgin's ship. Byron seems to have warned
(15:14):
Elgin that he wasn't happy with what he saw and
experienced regarding Elgin's work in Athens, but Elgan either did
not take him seriously or just didn't know what to
do about it. Byron also was not nearly as famous
at this point as he was about to be, so
Elgin may not have thought any of this was a
big deal. Simultaneously, Elgin was advocating for Britain to buy
(15:35):
the sculptures and other marbles. He was also looking for
somewhere else to house them, because with all of his
debts he could not afford to keep renting a separate
home for that purpose. With the shed to display all
the marbles in the Duke of Devonshire offered to store
them at his home, which was Burlington House. There wasn't
really enough room for all the sculptures indoors there, though,
(15:56):
so some of them were left out in the yard,
and that included the last shipments that arrived from Athens
in twelve. In March of that year, Byron published a
long poem called Child Harold's Pilgrimage, and with this poem
his career suddenly took off. The first printing of Child
Harold sold out in just a few days. Byron had
previously written several critiques of various antiquarians, including Elgin specifically,
(16:22):
and Child Harold included this passage along with prose notes
that specifically named Elgin. Here's what this passage said, among
others in the work, dull is the eye that will
not weep to see thy walls defaced, thy moldering shrines
removed by British hands, which it had best behooved to
guard those relics near to be restored. Cursed be the
(16:45):
hour when from their aisle they roved and once again
thy hapless bosom gourd and snatched thy shrinking gods to
northern climbs of hoard. Lord Byron is one of those
people that I would not have ever wanted to be
on his bad side and have him rite nasty verse
about me, because he could be vicious uh. In addition
(17:05):
to launching Byron to fame, this poem brought Elgin's actions
in Athens, as well as the plight of the Greek
people under Ottoman rule, into the public spotlight, and it
stoked a lot of debate. At one point, Edward Daniel
Clark told Byron about his experience seeing the marbles cut
down and people weeping, which Byron worked into the notes
(17:26):
of future editions of this poem. Clark had also published
his own thoughts on this in his travels in various
countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This was a massive,
multi volume work that heavily criticized the removal of the
sculptures from the Parthenon, and it included some selections from
Child Harold in later additions. I should also be noted
(17:47):
that Clark came home with some antiquities from his travel
in Greece as well, just not nearly to the extent
of what Elgin had done. Of course, this controversy folded
into the question of whether Britain might buy the sculptures,
which Elgin was still trying to pursue after turning down
that initial offer of thirty thousand pounds, but on May
eleventh of eighteen twelve, John Bellingham assassinated British Prime Minister
(18:11):
Spencer Perceval over a personal grievance with the government. That
assassination took place in the lobby of the House of Commons,
and of course the question of what to do with
the Parthenon Marbles was tabled in the aftermath, along with
a whole lot of other issues. The War of eighteen
twelve also started in June of that year. Yeah, there
was there was a lot going on, and as all
(18:32):
of that was happening in Britain, attitudes were shifting in Greece.
A sense of Greek nationalism and Greek national identity was
starting to grow there, including a renewal of the Greek
language and a movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire.
In eighteen fifteen, Napoleon returned from exile and the Duke
of Devonshire sold Burlington House. Its new owners plan to
(18:54):
totally rebuild the estate, which made Elgan's need to sell
the sculptures even more urgent. The Brite Museum arranged for
a committee to evaluate the issue, although that committee included
pay Night and other people who either did not care
for Elgin or thought the sculptures he'd acquired were overrated.
Elgin started to fear that he might be offered even
(19:15):
less than what he had turned down initially. On June
fifteenth of eighteen fifteen, Elgin presented a petition to the
House of Commons, which the House of Commons debated but
didn't take any action on. Then just days later, on
June eighteenth, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
At that point, many of the nations that France had
previously invaded demanded their artwork and artifacts and other national
(19:38):
treasures back from the Louver. Although Elgin's acquisitions from Athens
weren't part of this, they were part of this conversation,
especially as at least five thousand pieces of artwork were
returned from France to their nations of origin. And then
came yet another source of public allegations against Elgin, this
time from the Reverend R. Twiddel to a l published
(20:00):
a book about his late brother John, including an appendix
detailing all kinds of allegations against both Elgin and Philip Hunt.
It is kind of a convoluted story, but the Reverend
Twitter was apparently incensed over what he saw as Elgin's
mishandling of his late brother's papers, something that John Spencer Smith,
who we mentioned in Part one, was connected to and
(20:23):
egged him on about. So Elgin denied any wrongdoing in
all this, but it turned into kind of a scandal
like we would describe it today as a flame war.
There was a lot of back and forth publishing of letters,
and various people pointed out how Elgin's relationships with pretty
much everyone he had ever worked with, aside from Lucieri
he was still employing in Athens, those relationships had all
(20:44):
totally deteriorated. When some of John Twiddel's drawings were found
at the home of Elgin's ex father in law, people
took it as evidence that, on top of everything else,
Elgin had lied about this whole situation. In February of
eighteen sixteen, Elgin put forth another petition before the House
of Commons, once again proposing that the British government by
(21:06):
the marbles. It also requested that they investigate how he
had gotten them in the first place, to try to
put an end to all of the suspicion. This petition
was debated on February hearings before a select committee began
on February nine. When they were questioned, Elgin, Hunt and
a lot of the other people who were involved talked
(21:26):
about a lot of the points that we've already gone over.
We read from some of their stuff in part one.
They talked about how Elgin wanted to document the masterpieces
of ancient Greece for the edification of artists and architects
in Britain, and that he had asked for the government
to fund this but had ultimately paid for it himself,
and that when he saw the damaged the Acropolis that
had already happened, he wanted to save as much artwork
(21:48):
there as he could. He estimated his total expenses, including
expenses after the marbles had been removed to Britain, as
just shy of seventy five thousand pounds. There was also
a lot of discussion about the ferments that we talked
about earlier, and about the persuasion that had been part
of how Ottoman authorities interpreted them. Artists were also questioned
(22:11):
about the value of these marbles, both artistic value and
monetary value. As part of that pain Night suggested that
they were worth thousand pounds. These hearings went on for
two weeks. When the committee delivered its report, it suggested
that Elgin had done what he did legally, that he
did not abuse his power to do so, that he
(22:32):
hadn't damaged the monuments needlessly, and that he hadn't done
what he did for personal gain. The report also spoke
to the benefit that the marbles could bring to the
arts in Britain, and the words of the report quote,
no country can be better adapted than our own to
afford an honorable asylum to these monuments of the School
of Phidias and the Administration of Pericles. The recommended offer
(22:56):
price for the sculptures was thirty five thousand pounds. This
was much less than Elgin had said that he spent
on this whole endeavor, but it was also five thousand
pounds more than the previous offer, so he kind of
felt like he had no other choice at this point
and he accepted. Then Parliament had to vote on all
this to make an official in which they did after
(23:16):
debating on June seventh of eighteen sixteen. They voted to
purchase the marbles from Elgin for thirty five thousand pounds,
with eight two votes four and eighty against. An Act
of Parliament then gave the nation ownership of the marbles,
which were formerly known as the Elgin Marbles, and it
also made Elgin and his heirs trustees of the British Museum.
(23:37):
That payment of thirty five thousand pounds immediately went to
Elgin's creditors, still leaving him in debt. In spite of that,
he kept employing Lucieri for as long as he could,
saying that he felt sorry for him. For his part,
Lucieri believed he could have become a really famous artist
if he hadn't started working for Elgin. He died in
(23:58):
eighteen one. All Elgin did eventually returned to Parliament as
a representative peer for Scotland. His career never really recovered
from all of this. He kept trying to get a
British peerage, hoping that it would help him get out
of debt, but that never happened and he died on
November fourteenth of eighteen forty one. But the story of
the marbles continues, and we'll get back to them and
(24:20):
how the controversy around them has also continued after we
have one more sponsor break. By January of eighteen seventeen,
the collection of sculptures, which were by then officially known
as the Elgin Marbles, was on public view in a
temporary space in the British Museum. They immediately became a
(24:44):
huge draw. Although there were people still in Britain, Greece
and elsewhere who vocally protested that they should not have
been removed from Greece in the first place, these sculptures
and architectural elements were credited with doing exactly what Elgin
had hoped they would, contributing to the edge of cation
of British artists and architects and bringing a renewed focus
on art and architecture in Britain. The marbles themselves became
(25:08):
part of the British national identity. They also inspired other
works of art, including poetry by John Keats, and contributed
to an ongoing trend of Greek Revival architecture, including the
main entrance of the British Museum. The British Museum also
started providing molds and casts of the marbles for other
museums and other facilities to use. Over time, a lot
(25:30):
of these casts were made, and eventually the museum made
a set of casts like a master set, specifically for
the purpose of making molds out of them, but they
were making so many molds that eventually those casts had
become too worn down to make good molds anymore. They
would need to make the cast over again. In eighteen
twenty one, the Greek War of Independence began. It's also
called the Greek Revolution, and this, combined with the rising
(25:53):
sense of Greek national identity that we mentioned earlier, led
to increasing calls for Britain to return the parson on Nobles.
These calls continued after Greece was formally declared an independent
nation under the protection of Britain, France, and Russia in
eighteen thirty three. Immediately this newly independent nation of Greece
(26:14):
started focusing on the return of its cultural, artistic, and
architectural heritage from other countries. To be clear, Greece at
this point was culturally and ethnically diverse. It's not really
clear how many people living there could have traced their
lineage all the way back to Greek antiquity. And there's
really a whole other discussion that could be had about
the rise of this Greek national identity and what that
(26:37):
meant for racial and ethnic minorities who were living there. Nevertheless,
this Nation of Greece, right from its founding, saw classical
Greece in general, and the Acropolis and the Parthenon specifically
as a really important part of its identity. In March
of eighteen thirty five, the Acropolis was declared a national
monument and the Nation of Greece put an end to
(27:00):
its use as a military facility for the first time
in probably centuries. Greece also banned the export of its antiquities,
although it's still had trouble stopping vandalism and looting, most
of which was done by foreign visitors. Dad there's there
was an article that came out um right before the
end of the year that was basically about how there
(27:22):
was more damage done to these monuments that were still
in Greece in the nineteenth century then there has been
in the centuries since then through things like air pollution.
There's is a lot of vandalism and looting and theft.
Also in eighteen thirty five, the British Museum offered Greece
a set of casts of the Parthenon marbles. Greece asked
(27:43):
for the originals and also embarked on a project to
restore the Parthenon that year, as well as repairing and
re erecting elements that had been knocked down in that
sixteen eighty seven explosion, along with other damage. In eighteen
thirty two, the Elgin Room, now called Room seventeen, opened
on the British Museum's west side as a home for
(28:03):
the Elgin Marbles. Another gallery, named for its financier art
dealers Shore Joseph Duvine, was built for that purpose in
the nineteen thirties, and while that gallery was being built,
Duvine employed people to clean the Parthenon marbles and make
them look whiter, under the incorrect idea that he was
restoring them to their proper appearance without the oversight of
(28:25):
museum staff and without following the museum's established cleaning procedures. Yeah,
we're kind of fast forwarding roughly a hundred years here,
but during that whole time, people in Greece were still
advocating for the return of the marbles. That didn't stop
in the interim. So the museum had used various cleaning
(28:46):
techniques over the years, and by the early twentieth century,
the basic process was to periodically dust the pieces off,
to occasionally wash them with distilled water and a neutral
soap very gently. But the people that Duvine and ployd
we're using metal tools and carborundum, which is an abrasive
to scrub and scrape away the exterior of these pieces,
(29:08):
which at that point was kind of a brownish or
a honey color. Of course, initially we know that these
sculptures were painted, like the paint is not visible to
the naked eye at this point, but like after there's there,
you know, two thousand years of existence, they had taken
on this this different coloring. And when this cleaning in
quotation marks was discovered, it happened because a member of
(29:30):
the museum staff walked into a room and saw that
in the works on three pieces. In the investigation that
followed this discovery, the museum learned that this whole incorrect
cleaning procedure had been going on for at least a
year and a half in nineteen thirty seven and ninety eight.
This was a massive oversight, and it is not entirely
(29:51):
clear still exactly how it happened, but at least some
of the people that Duvine had hired had been given
keys to the museum. That was not a good security procedure.
So the museum's investigation was finished in December of night,
and this new exhibit was supposed to open the following May.
And the words of Frederick Price, who was then the
(30:13):
keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the museum, from
this report quote the surface of the sculptures, showing the
evidences of two thousand years of exposure to the climate
of Greece, was a document of the utmost importance. There
being no possible doubt about the history of the Parthenon sculptures,
they came to the museum as authentic masterpieces of Greek
work of the fifth century BC, and for purposes of
(30:34):
study in comparison, they are of inestimable value. The damage
which has been caused is obvious and cannot be exaggerated.
The exact steps that the museum took next were not recorded,
but the Standing Committee's minutes record some kind of remedial solution.
Apparently coding the marbles was something that was meant to
replicate their earlier color in terms of the ramifications. For
(30:58):
the museum staff, multiple people who were involved with all
of this oversight were given early retirement. One man, assistant keeper,
Roger Hanks, became something of a scapegoat over it. He
was essentially to be demoted, but he was also told
that it quote would not be to his disadvantage if
he resigned, so he did. Although the museum tried to
(31:19):
handle all of this quietly, rumors quickly spread that something
had happened to the marbles, and this bloomed into a
massive media scandal. The museum's public statements from the nineteen
thirties generally tried to downplay things, explaining what the authorized
cleaning methods were without really acknowledging the widespread damaging and
(31:39):
unauthorized cleaning that had also gone on. But not long
after the Divine Gallery opened, World War Two started in
Europe and people became more focused on making sure the
sculptures weren't damaged in air raids. The gallery itself was
badly damaged by bombs during the war, but the sculptures
were not affected. There is a lot more about all
(32:01):
of the story in Lord Elgin and the Marbles, which
is a book by WILLIAMS. St Clair published by Oxford
University Press, specifically the third edition, which came up in
St Clair was the first person to go through and
document in print what happened in nineteen seven and ninety eight,
and how the museum presented it to the public. St
Clair is extremely critical of the museum's actions, interpreting their
(32:24):
response as an ongoing cover up. The British Museum has
framed it more as a mistake, acknowledging that the work
was an overcleaning and characterizing the response to the public
at the time as a serious misstep, but denying that
there was any sort of long term cover up involved
since then. In recent years, when Greece has renewed its
(32:45):
calls for the return of the Marble's, Brittain has refused,
but in other points in history Britain has made overtures
that they might actually give them back. During World War Two,
Britain started drafting a plan to return the Marbles to Greece,
hoping it would inspire Greek resistance against an invasion by
Germany or Italy. In the nineteen fifties, during the Cyprus Emergency,
(33:06):
Britain suggested that it might return the Marbles if Greece
would end its support of a guerrilla campaign against Cyprus's
British colonial government. In more recent years, Neil Kennock, who
was then the leader of Britain's Labor Party promised that
the Marbles would be returned to Greece in nineteen ninety six,
but when the Labor government actually took power the following year,
(33:27):
they were not. At various points, legislation has been introduced
in Parliament to return the Marbles to Greece, but it
has never really gone anywhere. As Britain was nodding to
the idea of returning the Marbles in the nineteen forties
and nineteen fifties, some of the reinforcement work that had
gone on at the Parthenon in the years after Greek
independence started to deteriorate. Iron had been used in some
(33:50):
of the supports, which had shifted and rested over time.
Greece also industrialized very quickly into the nineteen sixties, leading
to issues with air pollution and acid rain. A major
earthquake also struck Athens in n one, and all of
this became arguments in part for why Britain should not
return the Marbles. But at the same time there were
(34:12):
ongoing calls that Britain should return them, especially after the
passage of UNESCO's Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and
Preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of
cultural property that was past in ninety Those calls have
cited all the questions about Elgin's actions and the scope
(34:33):
and the legitimacy of the firm in that we have
talked about throughout this episode, along with whether that nineteen
thirties overcleaning incident undermines the idea that the British Museum
has been protecting the sculptures. One of the things that's
been cited is the reason why the marbles shouldn't be
returned to Greece is the idea that Greece didn't have
a facility like the British Museum where those marbles could
(34:55):
be housed, conserved, and displayed. In part because of that criticism,
Greece built the new Acropolis Museum of Athens, which opened
in two thousand eight. All the statues and other artworks
that can be removed from the Parthenon are now indoors
there so that they can be protected from the elements
and from intentional theft or vandalism. So the gallery that's
(35:17):
dedicated to the Parthenon at this new museum has large
glass windows that overlook the Parthenon itself and then the
size and the shape of the room replicates the perimeter
of that inner cello where the freezes are, and the
friezes are displayed there as they were on the original building.
The pieces of the freeze that are in the British
Museum or in other museums, because there are some pieces
(35:39):
in other museums as well, those have been replaced with molds,
and in some cases molds and casts replace individual pieces
that were broken off and are in the British Museum collection,
not so much in like the old style of restoring pieces,
but more to show like we have this piece of
the freeze, but the foot that should be on here
(36:01):
is in the British Museum. In the Andonis Samaras administration
in Greece called on UNESCO to mediate between Britain and
Greece over the issue of the marbles. That August, UNESCO's
Assistant Director General for Culture wrote a letter to the
director of the British Museum, the UK Foreign Secretary, and
the Minister for Culture, Media and Support. UNESCO offered to
(36:25):
act as the mediator that Greece had requested. In the
UK government and the trustees of the British Museum each
responded with a decline. The museum's response read, in part quote,
the British Museum is not a government body and the
collections do not belong to the British Government. The trustees
of the British Museum hold them not only for the
(36:45):
British people, but for the benefit of the world public,
present and future. The trustees have a legal and moral
responsibility to preserve and maintain all the collections in their care,
to treat them as inalienable, and to make them accessible
to world audiences. The passage of brexit in also raised
questions about whether Britain should return the Marbles after leaving
(37:07):
the EU. There are several arguments at work with that idea.
One is that returning artwork to other nations might help
Britain rebuild relationships with other countries once it is not
part of the EU anymore. And another is that if
citizens of the European Union can no longer freely visit
England to visit the British Museum, then Britain isn't really
holding those works for the good of humanity only for
(37:30):
the British. Obviously, citizens of the European Union are just
a fraction of the totality of humanity. But that is
the argument that's being made in this case. As of
when we are recording this, the bregsit deadline is January.
It's a few weeks down the road from today, so
this all remains to be seen. Yeah, I think it's
like a week after this episode will probably come out. However,
(37:54):
throughout this controversy, Britain has said fastly maintained that it
will not return the marbles in January are British Museum
director Heartwig Fisher again reiterated that the marbles would not
be returned, calling their initial removal a creative act. He
said this in an interview with Greek daily newspaper Tanya Today.
(38:16):
Britain's argument for keeping the parthen On Marbles is basically
that they were acquired legally and that they are freely
available for anyone to see because the museum does not
charge admission. They have also stressed the museum's placement of
the marbles in the context of world history and art,
alongside other masterpieces from other parts of the world. Britain
has also cited concerns relating to things like economic issues
(38:39):
in Greece, including a debt crisis and austerity measures. Previous
points about Greek air quality in the lack of an
appropriate museum are no longer really relevant thanks to the
construction of the new Acropolis Museum. Greece's argument for having
the Marble's return includes that Britain's acquisition was not legal,
that the firm and was not that broad to allow
(39:01):
such a huge removal of material, or that it may
not have existed or may not have been an actual
firm in at all. Additionally, Britain's negotiations were not with
Greek authorities. They were with the Ottoman Empire, which modern
Greece views as an occupying nation. It's also been noted
that Elgin's initial plan with all of this was not
at all to safeguard the pieces in a museum for
(39:24):
the benefit of all of humanity. It was to keep
them on his personal property for access by people he
chose to allow to see it. From the Greek perspective,
these sculptures are a critical part of Greek national identity,
Greek history, and Greek culture, and they should be returned
to Greece and reunited with the rest of the sculptures
that are still there. But it's also been noted that
(39:45):
At this point, Britain's argument for keeping the Marbles isn't
really motivated by all of the points that we have
just outlined. There's more of a slippery slope argument in play,
and a fear across the world of museums as a
whole that if Britain returns the parthon on Marble's, every
museum everywhere will be forced to return artwork, artifacts, or
(40:05):
other pieces of historical or cultural heritage that they obtained
in some way that would be considered questionable today. Yeah,
and ways that we're probably considered questionable at best by
the people they were removed from at the time. So
some other commonly cited examples of this are the Rosetta Stone,
which Britain obtained in a treaty with Egypt, the Benin Bronzes,
(40:28):
which British soldiers took from what's now Nigeria in the
late nineteenth century, and the bust of Nefertiti, which has
been in Germany since a German team founded in nineteen
twelve and is now in the Noius Museum in Berlin.
We've talked about calls to return the Rosetta Stone in
a past Unearthed episode and Britain has announced that at
least some of the Benien Bronzes will be returned to
(40:49):
Nigeria and overall, in the last few years there has
been a growing trend of returning and repatriating items from
museum collections, especially human remains, as part of an overall
trend towards decolonizing museums. But people are still fearful of
what a greater move toward repatriation might mean. And it
is something that would affect the world's most prominent art museums,
(41:11):
including the met, the Louver and many others, lots and
lots of them. And so it's a huge, huge issue
and like a massive conversation that's going on throughout the
world of art and art history and museums and all
of that. Uh. Well, probably talk some more about those
ideas in our behind the Scenes many so uh which
(41:35):
will be out on Friday. It's a safe bet. Yeah. Um.
I have a listener mail, so who takes out before
we get to that sweet This is from Stephanie. Stephanie says, Hello,
Tracy and Holly. I'm a longtime listener and absolutely love
your show. I was particularly excited to hear your show
about Alfred Wegner, because although I don't know much about
his working continental drift, I am familiar with his final expedition.
(41:59):
You mentioned in the know that the researchers who made
it out to ice Mended were able to do some
work before Vegnar arrived, but I wanted to note just
how important that work was. While waiting out the winter,
Earnst Sworge Hand dug a sixteen meter deep pit into
the ice and developed a new method for measuring the
seasonal accumulation of ice on the glacier using its density
(42:20):
that could be used even if the layers were not visible. Later,
this technique would be critical in the discovery of man
made climate change. What I love about the story is
that it further proves how important scientific research is, even
if the importance isn't clear for years and years. Thank
you so much for all the work you do. Happy podcasting, Stephanie.
Thank you Stephanie for this email. UM. I had read
(42:42):
a little about the ice cores that they took during
that expedition, but I did not know that detail about them,
so thank you so much for sending that. If you
would like to write to us about this or any
other podcast where History podcast at my heart radio dot com.
And then we're all over social media at miss in History.
That's where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram.
You can also subscribe to our show on Apple podcast,
(43:04):
the I heart radio app, and anywhere else you get
your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts,
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Hosts And Creators
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Tracy Wilson
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