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> It would be good to see an Imperial theft redressed. It wasn't a theft, but a duly-authorised removal. What's more, had the Earl of Elgin not removed them,
by wtbob 11y ago
> It would be good to see an Imperial theft redressed.
It wasn't a theft, but a duly-authorised removal. What's more, had the Earl of Elgin not removed them, they might have bee destroyed along with so much else a few years later during the Greek Revolution.
- wavefunction 11y agoThey might have prevented the Greek Revolution. I think what actually happened is more important, which is that Elgin received a controversial OK to remove the marble from the Ottoman Turks who have a certain questionable history with the Greek people. But however you want to spin it I guess.
- eru 11y agoThe Ottoman's approved removal of artifacts from their Anatolia, too. (Eg for Schliemann in Troy.) They didn't just want to spite the Greek.
- mjn 11y agoWe have some pretty good differential evidence suggesting that they would not have been destroyed in the Greek Revolution, if that's the specific threat you're worried about. Elgin did not remove all the marbles, but only a portion, so we can easily see what happened to the ones left behind. He removed 1 of the 6 caryatids from the Erechtheion, for example; the 5 that remained in Greece are still extant. In addition, he removed about 80 meters of the Parthenon frieze; the 50 meters that were left are also still extant. These are all in the Acropolis Museum today. Oddly neither WW2 nor the Greek Civil War caused any significant damage either. The main damage that has taken place is post-WW2 due to the rise of car-driven air pollution, especially acid rain. To protect them, the remaining 5 caryatids were moved indoors in 1979 (replaced by replicas), and the last 20-meter segment of frieze remaining on the Parthenon was moved indoors in 1993. These would probably have been in better condition if they had been removed earlier.