Episode #234 - Was The Parthenon Robbed? (Part I)

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There's a story that in 1822, during the Greek War of Independence, the Ottoman Turkish forces in Athens found themselves trapped on the historic Acropolis.

The ruins of the ancient temple complex had been converted by the Turks into a fortress, where they were now besieged by the advancing Greek revolutionary army.

The story goes that as the Greeks tightened the noose around the famous hilltop, the Turkish garrison ran out of ammunition.

The desperate Turks looked around for anything that might be quickly made into ammo, and it didn't take long for them to turn their eyes to what remained of the Parthenon.

The iconic temple of Athena had stood for over two millennia, having first been erected during the heyday of ancient Athenian democracy.

The ancient Greeks had used specially designed lead clamps to help fasten the structure's huge marble blocks.

But now, with the the revolutionaries closing in, that ancient lead looked like little more than potential bullets.

So the Turkish garrison set about dismantling the monument to salvage what they could for hastily cast ammunition.

Meanwhile, the Greeks noticed what was happening and became distressed.

Why were the Ottomans so violently attacking the Parthenon?

We're told that to get an answer, the revolutionary commander, Odysseus Andrussos, sent a pair of young messengers to parlay with the Turks on the Acropolis.

When they returned, the messengers explained to Andrusos that the enemy had told them that they had run out of ammunition and were using the Parthenon lead to cast bullets.

So, a fateful decision was made.

To preserve one of the most symbolically important monuments in Greece, the Greek revolutionaries chose to deliver ammunition to their sworn enemies.

We're told that Odysseus Andrussos ordered that a load of ammo be sent to the Turks with an accompanying Greek letter reading, quote, Here are your bullets.

Don't touch the pillars, end quote.

Yes, the Greeks literally armed their enemies in the hope that the gesture might save the Parthenon.

Or, as Melina Mekuri, the former Greek Minister of Culture, once put it, quote, the Greeks had responded in the only way possible.

They had virtually redeemed the pillars from the enemy with their blood, seeing that the delivered lead was meant for their own chests.

End quote.

It's an incredible story that carries a deeply resonant message about just how passionate the Greeks are when it comes to their ancient heritage.

But

so much of this tale seems,

well,

hard to believe.

The Greek War of Independence, which was fought between 1821 and 1829, was a brutal conflict, even by the standards of the early 19th century.

Historians of the era all emphasize the unique ferocity of the war and the uncompromising nature of both armies.

This was not a conflict characterized by acts of gallantry.

And yet, we're told that during the siege of the Acropolis, the Turks volunteered sensitive information about their ammunition stores to to a pair of inquisitive Greek messengers.

And when the Greek revolutionaries learned that their enemies were essentially sitting ducks, they chose not to storm the Acropolis and secure the beloved Parthenon, but instead gave the Turks the means to continue occupying the historic high ground.

If you keep poking at this story, very quickly other inconsistencies arise.

For instance, we know that the revolutionary leader, Odysseus Andrusos, did not arrive in Athens until two months after the Acropolis had been handed over to the Greeks.

So he could not have given the order to send ammunition to the Ottomans.

Another version of the story has it that the person behind this act of archaeologically minded chivalry was not Andrus, but instead a man named Kyriakos Pitakis, who had become the first general keeper of antiquities of Greece after the country gained its independence.

In this alternate version of the tale, Pitakis, an amateur archaeologist who was fighting with the Greek forces in Athens in 1822, was the person who figured out why the Ottomans were pulling apart the Parthenon.

No messengers in this version of the story.

He then personally implored his commanders to send the gift of the ammo in hopes of saving the historic monument.

This version also provides a heroic origin story for the man who would become Greece's foremost archaeologist.

His love for Greek antiquities trumped his hatred of the enemy.

But whichever version of the story you prefer, it's almost certainly a historical myth.

The first version of this tale first appeared in writing in 1859 in a letter written by a well-known Greek politician.

The better-known version, featuring the heroic young Pitakis, seems to have appeared four years later in 1863 in a eulogy written for the late Antiquities Keeper.

In both cases, the tale emerged roughly 40 years after the fact.

No contemporary accounts of the gift of ammunition seem to exist.

Pitakis himself, who wrote extensively about both his time in the war and the Parthenon, never once mentioned this anecdote in any of his writings.

But despite the fact that this tale does not stand up to any proper historical scrutiny, it has remained a remarkably sturdy little chestnut.

The story acts as a vivid illustration of just how deeply the people of Greece care about the surviving monuments of the classical era.

And believe it or not, over the last two centuries, there have been many times when the Greeks have felt compelled to prove this.

You see, this myth is often deployed during debates around the fate of a deeply controversial group of museum objects.

These are the Parthenon sculptures, also known as the Elgin marbles.

This series of statues, reliefs, and other marble works of art decorated the Parthenon and a handful of other buildings on the Acropolis for over 2,000 years.

before they were removed between 1801 and 1803 and then shipped to England by the Scottish aristocrat Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin.

In 1816, the collection was purchased by the British government and ever since the Parthenon sculptures have been in the care of the British Museum.

Almost immediately after the arrival of the sculptures in Britain, a roiling public debate was kicked off concerning both the legality and the morality of keeping this collection anywhere other than Greece.

But for the last two centuries, the position of the British government and the museum has remained stubbornly consistent.

For good or ill, the Parthenon sculptures are in London, and that is where they shall stay.

Needless to say, this has remained a sore spot for many Greeks who feel like they have been robbed of their cultural heritage.

This long-running controversy was given added urgency in 1982 when the Greek government formally requested the return of the sculptures.

This request was punctuated by a campaign by the Greek Minister of Culture, the previously quoted Melina Mekouri, who made a passionate case for the return of the marbles at the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies held that year in Mexico City.

Her widely publicized speech on the importance of the Parthenon and its attendant works of art to Greek culture and heritage played a key role in securing the support of UNESCO, that's the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, for the return of the sculptures to Greece.

And sure enough, in that memorable address to the conference, McCurry underscored her point about the Greek passion for antiquity by telling the tale of the gift of the ammunition during the siege of the Acropolis.

Now, it's remarkable that this kind of historical myth found its way into such a high-profile speech for an international audience.

But it's perhaps just as remarkable that the Greek minister of culture found herself in a position where she felt the need to prove that Greek people care about their ancient past.

You see, for going on two centuries, Britons who insist on keeping the Parthenon sculptures in London have often justified this position by claiming that Greek interest in the classical past is a new phenomenon, historically speaking.

It's been claimed that Greek people had little care for the ancient ruins in their territory before the birth of the the modern Greek state in the 1830s.

At certain points, it's even been proposed that modern Greek people are barely related to the ancient artists who first built the Parthenon.

In a debate characterized by these kinds of accusations, it's no wonder that Greek advocates feel the need to hammer home that yes, the Greeks are Greek, and yes, they care about their ancient history.

I can see how Melina Mikuri gravitated to a story that neatly and dramatically illustrated these facts, and perhaps unwisely breezed past thorny questions about the tale's historical accuracy.

But you see, the debate around the Parthenon sculptures is riddled with historical myths.

Starting in the early 19th century, Lord Elgin did his best to craft a version of events that helped him justify his seizure of the Parthenon sculptures, his team's rough treatment of the Acropolis, and the ultimate sale of the pieces to the British government.

From there, Elgin's defenders and other advocates for keeping the sculptures in Britain have used a number of historically questionable arguments to undercut Greek attempts to get the Parthenon sculptures returned to their place of origin on the Acropolis.

So, what should we believe about the Parthenon sculptures?

How did they come to be in England in the first place?

And which nation should be their modern caretaker?

Let's see if we can untangle this today on our fake history.

One, two, three, five.

Episode number 234.

Was the Parthenon Robbed?

Part 1.

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story.

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All right.

Now, when we are in Greece, we will certainly not be missing the Parthenon, Athens' most iconic monument.

Perched atop the city's historic Acropolis, the ancient temple dedicated to the city's patron deity, Athena, is easily one of the most recognizable ancient buildings on the planet.

Just Google the word Athens and you will immediately be shown images of the building's Doric columns.

The Parthenon has always been symbolically rich, but in modern times, its symbolism has only grown.

When the modern Greek state emerged in the 1830s, the Parthenon became a potent symbol of resurgent Greek identity.

But beyond that, it's been celebrated as a monument to democracy, liberty, artistic innovation, and human achievement.

When the United Nations organization UNESCO was established after World War II, it chose as its emblem the facade façade of the Parthenon.

In 2007, the European Union went so far as to officially designate the Parthenon as one of Europe's most important cultural heritage monuments.

Given these accolades and the great efforts that are currently underway to protect and preserve this ancient temple, it can be hard to believe that there was a time when foreign visitors could take saws to the building and remove whatever priceless works of art caught their eye.

But that is precisely what happened in the early 19th century.

Between 1801 and 1803, teams of workers employed by the British aristocrat Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, disassembled the great monument.

The team sawed through the ancient marble to remove some 21 marble figures from the east and west pediments, fifteen carved metope panels which had decorated the exterior of the building, as well as seventy-five meters of Parthenon frieze, the frieze being the carved bas relief that decorated the upper part of the Parthenon's interior.

These objects, along with a collection of other sculptures and marble objects taken from other temples on the Acropolis, were then shipped to England, where they remain to this day.

Both the legality and morality of Lord Elgin's denuding of the Parthenon has been in question since the first group of marbles arrived in Britain in 1807.

In the early 19th century, many Britons felt uneasy about Lord Elgin's wanton appropriation of these Greek artifacts.

But the British Parliament concluded that Lord Elgin's collection had been acquired legally with the appropriate consent from the Ottoman officials who controlled Athens at the time.

But this ruling did little to quiet the debate.

Not long after the modern Greek state emerged from a bitter war of independence with the Ottoman Empire, there were calls for the Parthenon sculptures to be returned to Athens.

But to no avail.

Over the course of the past two centuries, the debate around the marbles has gone through hot and cold periods, with one of the hottest being in the early 1980s, when Greece formally requested the sculpture's return, a request that was then echoed by UNESCO.

But at every juncture, the British government has either found justifications for why a return would be unwise at that particular moment, or they've simply denied that the Greeks have any right to the objects.

In Britain, the sculptures are better known as the Elgin marbles.

In fact, an act of parliament in 1816 made it so the collection must be officially designated as such by the British Museum.

Now, I would argue that name has a way of obfuscating the issue, subtly hiding what the objects actually are.

If you're unfamiliar with this case and you hear that there's a controversy over the Elgin marbles, the name doesn't make it immediately clear that these are priceless sculptures taken from one of the world's most famous buildings.

It doesn't help that the word marbles immediately conjures up images of the children's toy, you know, the glass balls your grandma used to play with.

The name Elgin Marbles both makes it sound like these things properly belong to Lord Elgin, while also making the whole issue seem kind of trifling.

Just a few marbles, after all.

But the Parthenon sculptures are anything but trifling.

They're arguably some of the most important works of art produced in ancient Athens.

The debate around where these sculptures should rightly reside has a way of bringing out passionate patriotic feelings in both the Greeks and in many Britons.

Understandably, the presence of these sculptures in Britain has been seen as an affront to Greek pride.

But removing the sculptures from the British Museum would be seen as a blow to British pride.

The unstoppable force meets the immovable object.

Now, since the early 19th century, there have been a myriad of arguments made, both for the sculpture's return to Athens and for their continued residence in the British Museum.

I'm looking forward to diving into all of these arguments and evaluating who has the best case for the ultimate custodianship of these sculptures.

But to really understand these arguments, I think we need to properly understand the history of both the Parthenon and Lord Elgin's removal of the sculptures.

As we saw in the introduction, this debate has been clouded by a number of historical myths and misconceptions that need to be dispelled.

So, in the first part of this series, we are going to concentrate on the history, and then in part two, we will get deeper into the nitty-gritty of the debate.

My hope is that the history will help us see this issue with greater clarity.

But you know me, I'm an optimist.

So let's get into how the life of a Scottish lord became defined by one of the Mediterranean's great ancient buildings.

How did the Parthenon go from being the crowning jewel of Athenian civilization to a neglected ruin to one of the most hotly debated historical monuments in Europe.

Let's see what we can find out.

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In 1799, the Scottish aristocrat Thomas Bruce, better known as Lord Elgin, became ambassador extraordinary of his Britannic Majesty to the sublime port in Constantinople.

It was quite a title, and it made him the highest-ranking British official in the Ottoman Empire.

By this point, Elgin had already had a career of some distinction.

He had inherited his lofty title at the tender age of five, and then, like many young aristocrats, he embarked on a career in the officer corps of the British Army, where he quickly earned a series of promotions.

By the young age of 24, he had secured a seat in the House of Lords.

In the 1790s, he was personally tapped by King George III to serve as a diplomat in Berlin and then Vienna at a time when Europe was being roiled by the French Revolution.

In 1799, British-Ottoman relations were at an interesting inflection point.

The year before, Napoleon Bonaparte had made the fateful decision to make war against the Ottomans when he invaded Egypt.

But Lord Nelson and the British Navy were hot on Bonaparte's trail.

The British success against the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 brought the formerly distant Ottoman and British empires into a new alliance.

As the old adage goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

This meant that when Lord Elgin arrived in Constantinople, the Ottoman leadership was feeling enthusiastic about the British Empire, a feeling that only grew more intense after the French retreated from Egypt in 1801.

It was a good time to be the British ambassador in Constantinople, as politics had made the Ottoman authorities especially amenable to any special requests.

For his part, Lord Elgin had become particularly enamored with Greek antiquities, and Greece just so happened to be under the dominion of the Ottoman Sultan.

Specifically, Lord Elgin was interested in the Parthenon and the other ancient works of art still decorating the historic Acropolis in Athens.

In 1801, it was remarkable that the Parthenon was still standing, given just how tumultuous the intervening 2,000 years had been since it was first constructed.

The great temple had originally been erected during an era in ancient Greek history that has been remembered as a nearly mythical golden age.

In 448 BC, Athens' Democratic Assembly voted to use its accumulated surplus wealth to rebuild the Temple of Athena the Virgin, or Athena Parthenos, hence the name the Parthenon.

The temple had been destroyed a generation earlier when the city had been been sacked by the invading Persians.

The new temple was meant not only to honor the city's patron goddess, but was also likely meant to commemorate the Athenians who had died in the Persian wars.

Despite the fact that Athens had been burned, the city re-emerged after the Persian retreat from Greece as a political, military, and cultural powerhouse.

It was an era so impressive that later historians would dub it the Classical Period.

Athens in the mid-400s BC is one of those times and places that has been romanticized to the point where getting a clear picture of it can be difficult.

To give you a sense of just how effusive historians have been about the Greek city-state in this period, here's a taste of how historian Robert Browning, writing in 1987, described the city that built the Parthenon.

Quote,

Athens was more than a locus of power.

It was also the undisputed center of an astounding intellectual and artistic awakening which has marked the subsequent history of Europe and the world.

It was in fifth century Greece and above all in Athens that men first reflected in a rigorous and imaginative way on the nature of knowledge, on the principles that guide human conduct, on the significance of their own past, and on the way that the universe was composed and how it worked.

Athens was the first society which sought to solve the great problems of reconciling power with justice, social cohesion with individual freedom, and the pursuit of excellence with equality of opportunity.

⁇ End quote.

Of the Parthenon, he adds that, quote, it was to be an everlasting monument to this unique and dazzling society, end quote.

Ha ha, whoa.

Now, in many ways, Browning's glowing description reflects the idealized understanding of classical Athens that was popular among Western scholars for many generations.

This period of Athens' history became especially important during Europe's so-called Enlightenment era in the 18th century, when ideas about representative government, personal liberty, and intellectual freedom were gaining popularity among European intellectuals.

From that vantage point, Athens in the mid-400s BC, with its democratic government, flourishing theater scene, great sculptors, and burgeoning philosophical traditions, traditions seemed like a society worthy of emulation.

As such, I think it's fair to say that classical Athens has been placed on a bit of a pedestal.

There's a tradition of emphasizing Athenian and Greek contributions to art, culture, science, and philosophy while ignoring contributions from other parts of the planet.

Romantic descriptions of classical Athens also have a way of glossing over the many problems and contradictions that were endemic to that society.

Generally, I think we should be very skeptical of any historical era that's held up as a golden age.

As a rule, golden ages tend to be historical myths.

But with that said, we shouldn't over-correct.

Because classical Athens was legitimately very

As the Parthenon was being built, Sophocles and Euripides were writing their timeless plays.

Euripides' incredible work of drama Medea first hit the stage the year that the temple was completed.

Socrates watched the temple rise as a young man, and his philosophical acolytes, Plato and later Aristotle, created their great works in its shadow.

This was the heyday of Athenian democracy and one of the most successful democratic leaders, Pericles.

This era also represented the apex of Athenian imperialism when the city-state carved out an empire dominating many of its fellow Greek states by way of the Delian League.

This commercial and military expansion meant that Athens became very rich, and that wealth was reflected in the new Temple of Athena.

As Professor J.M.

Cook has pointed out about the Parthenon, quote, practically every block is unique so as to fit tilts and curvatures.

Such extravagance could never be afforded again, end quote.

The extravagance was in both the temple's design and its decoration.

The principal architect behind the Parthenon was an Athenian named Ictinos, although most scholars now think that there were likely many designers involved.

The final creation was built entirely of pentelic marble quarried in Attica and featured 58 towering Doric columns.

But just as spectacular as the temple's design were its sculptures.

These were designed by Phidias, the famous Athenian sculptor, who would also create the colossal ivory statue of Athena Parthenos that was placed in the temple's eastern chamber.

He is also remembered for designing the massive statue of Zeus at Olympia, noted as one of the wonders of the ancient world.

The Parthenon decorations included 92 metopes, or high-relief carved panels that ringed the entire temple at the tops of the columns, and one hundred and sixty meters of low relief carvings known as the frieze.

These were then topped by elaborate carved triangular pediments on either end of the temple.

These carvings were originally colorfully painted and depicted scenes from the life of the goddess Athena, as well as other Greek myths significant to the Athenians, including the exploits of Theseus.

One section may may have shown a depiction of a procession at the Pan-Athenaic Festival, the city's most important celebration of their patron goddess.

Now, what I think is particularly significant for this investigation is the fact that when this temple was completed in 438 BC, it was a significant moment not just for the city of Athens, but also for Greek or Pan-Hellenic identity writ writ large.

The temple was recognized as being so impressive that its architecture and artwork almost immediately became influential.

Again, I'll quote archaeologist J.

M.

Cook, who has written that, quote, the Parthenon style is the classical style par excellence.

In the outcome, for better or worse, local styles of sculpture in Greece vanished, with artists now drilled in a common tradition.

In other words, the Parthenon set a new standard for Greek aesthetics.

You could argue the idea of what it meant to be a Greek artist and a Greek person shifted after the completion of the Parthenon.

For the next 800 years, even as classical Athens faded into distant memory, the Parthenon remained one of the most important buildings in Athens and arguably the entire Mediterranean.

The Macedonians and later the Romans conquered Greece and the Parthenon remained an honored site.

At various points the temple fell into disrepair, at one point being badly damaged by a fire that collapsed the roof, only later to be restored.

Things changed dramatically during the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II in the early 5th century AD.

The Christian Emperor officially closed the last of the great pagan temples in the Empire, the Parthenon included.

At that point, the temple was renovated and transformed into a Christian church.

This 5th century reimagining represented the most significant change to the building since its construction.

This included a complete rebuild of the east end to accommodate a new apse.

Now, you may read that the Christianization of the Parthenon included the defacement of Phidias' pagan sculptures.

And there is some evidence that classical statues in the Parthenon were defaced by Christians of this era.

There were certainly overzealous priests who were trying to strike a blow against pagan idols.

But this destruction was not systematic.

While some priceless works of art were lost during this early Christian period, for the most part, Phidias' sculptures simply became part of the church.

Based on the descriptions that have come down to us, the Parthenon as a church remained an impressive and beautiful building for the next few centuries.

As late as 1390, the erstwhile ruler of Athens, King Pedro of Aragon, described the whole Acropolis as, quote, the richest jewel in the world of which every king in Christendom would be jealous, end quote.

Just under a century later, in 1458, the city was captured by the expanding Ottoman Empire.

At this point, the Parthenon went through another significant change.

The Turks transformed the Acropolis into a fortress that would be permanently occupied by their local garrison in Athens.

The Parthenon was transformed from a church into a mosque.

Now, once again, it's rumored that the Muslims used this opportunity to deface Phidias' sculptures, but that also seems to have been an exaggeration.

It's clear that the Ottomans whitewashed and plastered over mosaics and frescoes dating from both the Christian and pagan eras of the temple, but the relief carvings remained largely undamaged.

Now,

amazingly, through all these invasions, religious changes, and remodelings, the Parthenon remained remarkably resilient.

The greatest disaster to befall the historic building would arrive in 1687, 2,000 years after the Parthenon was first razed.

In that year, the Venetians, the perennial rivals of the Ottoman Turks, attacked Athens as part of a larger campaign to push the Turks out of Greece.

To this end, mercenary forces hired by the city of Venice besieged the Turkish fortress on the Acropolis.

To take the high ground, the Venetian mercenary army heavily bombarded the historic hilltop.

Eventually, one of the Venetian mortar bombs penetrated the roof of the Parthenon and exploded.

The result was devastating.

The middle portion of the building was almost completely destroyed, and all the columns on the east porch were brought down.

The interior colonnade had also been overthrown by the blast.

The Venetian occupation of Athens also saw one of the first concerted attempts to take away the remaining sculptures as a type of war booty.

The Venetian commander Francisco Morsini, inspired by the Venetians of the Fourth Crusade, who had looted Constantinople of many of its classical treasures, thought he might do the same in Athens.

Specifically, he tried to tear the surviving Phidias sculptures off the west pediment of the building.

But he botched the attempt and ended up smashing most of the heavy marble artwork on the ground.

Venetian control of Athens proved to be short-lived, and by 1690 the Ottomans had reclaimed the city and once again made the Acropolis into a fortress and military barracks.

By the time the Turks returned, the remarkably sturdy Parthenon had truly become a ruin.

And so it remained for the next century.

What was left of the building was largely neglected by the Ottomans.

Since the building could no longer function as a mosque, a smaller mosque was built inside the blown-out temple.

Despite the fact that the building was now severely damaged, a significant number of Phidias' sculptures survived.

And in 1799, Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, decided that he wanted those sculptures.

Well,

perhaps I'm being a little hasty here.

Let's give Lord Elgin his due.

You see, Lord Elgin did not originally plan to strip the Parthenon of its best preserved sculptures.

Elgin was a noted lover of art, and like many products of Britain's upper crust education system at the time, he had a special affinity for the classical Mediterranean past.

Further, before he left to take up his post in Constantinople, Elgin had hired an architect named Benjamin Harrison to renovate his vast estate in Scotland, known as Broom Hall.

The architect had argued that, contrary to popular opinion at the time, the best examples of classical sculpture were in Greece, not in Rome.

As an ambassador to the Ottomans, Elgin would have better access to Greece than any Briton had had in an age.

Harrison suggested that perhaps the Lord could bring plaster casts, sketches, and other examples of ancient Greek sculpture back to Britain.

The hope was that these examples might elevate the British arts and, as Elgin would later say, quote, bestow some benefit on the progress of taste, end quote.

Also, it seems clear that Elgin and Harrison believed that these Greek examples might be used in beautifying old Broom Hall.

Elgin could both educate Britain on the wonders of Greek art and give his personal architect a little classical inspiration.

Everyone wins.

So, while he was traveling to Constantinople, Lord Elgin stopped off in Italy, where he recruited the Italian artist Giovanni Lucieri, who would head up a team of artists who would head to Athens and begin making detailed drawings and plaster casts of the best existing examples of Greek sculpture.

Of special interest were the works of Phidias still on the Parthenon.

When Lucieri and the rest of Lord Elgin's team arrived in Greece, they discovered that despite claims that the Turks didn't care about Athens' ancient monuments, they were actually fairly protective of the Acropolis and the remains of the Parthenon.

The local military commander, known as the Distar, did not even want Elgin's team to enter the Acropolis and and sketch the buildings.

But, as it turned out, the Distar was not above a little bit of old-fashioned corruption.

Luceri's team daily greased his palm to the tune of around five British pounds.

This allowed them to gain access to the fortified hilltop, make their sketches, and do some plaster casting.

After some preliminary work, the team started setting up scaffolding around the Parthenon, ostensibly to make plaster casts of the relief sculptures.

But this seemed to be a little too bold for the Dis Dar, who believed that the bribes he had been paid did not cover the team taking these kinds of liberties with the ancient building.

So he ordered that work be stopped immediately.

If Lord Elgin's team wanted back on the Acropolis, they needed to get special permission from someone further up the chain of command in the Ottoman Empire.

And so it was that Lord Elgin sought out just that kind of permission.

As I already mentioned, in 1801, British victories against Napoleon in Egypt had made the Ottoman court particularly well-disposed towards Britain's ambassador extraordinary.

In this context, Elgin's request to make some sketches and casts of Athenian sculptures seemed completely reasonable.

So, without too much wrangling, Elgin was able to get a special document known as a Firmun, which amounted to an official order in the Ottoman Empire signed by the Sultan's Grand Vizier.

Now, importantly, this document did not say that Lord Elgin could start sawing sculptures off of the Parthenon.

Now, one difficulty is that we no longer have the original Turkish copy of this document.

Instead, we have to work from a contemporary Italian translation.

Now, I don't want to bore you with the details of this 19th century legal document, but this firmon is incredibly important to the Parthenon marbles debate.

So I'm going to quote from it a little bit here.

Hang with me.

The relevant section, when translated into English, reads, quote,

It is hereby signified to you that our sincere friend Lord Elgin, ambassador extraordinary from the Court of England to the Port of Happiness, has represented to us that he's anxious to read and investigate books, sculptures, and other works of ancient Greek science and philosophy, and has therefore engaged five painters now dwelling in Athens to examine, view, and copy the works remaining here.

Also to freely go in and out of the citadel that's the Acropolis and fix scaffolding around the Temple of Idols that's the Parthenon to model said ornaments of visible figures in plaster or gypsum to measure their remains and the remains of other ruined buildings to excavate where necessary in order to discover inscriptions among the rubbish, that they are not to be molested by the Distar nor any other person,

and that no one meddle with their scaffolding or implements, nor anyone hinder them from taking away any pieces of stone.

Now, it seems pretty clear that this firm did not grant permission for Elgin's Elgin's team to cut into the Parthenon.

But that last line about taking away pieces of stone would eventually provide some important

interpretive wiggle room.

Now, interestingly, letters from Lord Elgin written directly after this Firman was issued make it clear that he still had no plans to remove the sculptures from the historic building.

In a letter to Lucieri explaining that he had received this order from the Grand Vizier, Elgin told his Italian artist to start making plaster casts and collecting, quote, detached pieces, if any are found, that may be interesting for the arts, end quote.

Now, what I find fascinating is that it may not have been Lord Elgin who first got the idea to start removing sculptures from the Parthenon.

As researcher William St.

Clair has argued, quote, the removals only took place as the result of a series of accidents, all involving the Reverend Philip Hunt, end quote.

Okay, so who's the Reverend Philip Hunt?

Well, Reverend Hunt was technically Lord Elgin's chaplain in Constantinople, but through a series of circumstances, he started acting as the Lord's personal secretary.

Importantly, Hunt was given the job of meeting with the Ottoman governor or voivod in Athens and delivering the official order regarding Elgin's team on the Acropolis.

Reverend Hunt came into that meeting with a personal mission to get the firmen interpreted in the most liberal and permissive way possible.

Personally, he was annoyed that the Dizdar had fleeced Lucieri and his team for bribes and then still interfered with their work.

Hunt was also looking to impress Lord Elgin by getting the most possible latitude for his men in Greece.

It was Hunt who first made the request to the Ottoman governor to remove the best preserved Metope panel from the Parthenon.

Now, this was not covered by the official order or firmon, but Hunt had a lot of leverage in that particular moment, given the state of Anglo-Ottoman relations.

According to expert William St.

Clair, Hunt managed to convince the voivod that the firman could be interpreted as permission to dismantle the Parthenon, using, quote, a judicious mix of threats and bribes, end quote.

Objections were raised, particularly from the British consul Spiridon Logothetis, a Greek in the employ of the British.

As a Greek, he found this treatment of the Parthenon deeply distressing.

But his concerns were pish-poshed by Reverend Hunt, who reminded him that he was simply outranked by the ambassador extraordinary.

Reverend Hunt's choice to have a piece removed from the Parthenon seems to have completely changed Lord Elgin's thoughts about the project.

Once it became clear that the Turkish officials were going to allow sculptures to come off the historic building, that became the new focus of Elgin's efforts in Athens.

Now his team needed to work fast before anyone changed their minds.

So let's pause here.

And when we come back, we'll see how Lord Elgin came to justify his new smash and grab operation on the Acropolis.

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One of the most enduring justifications for Britain's possession of the Parthenon sculptures is the idea that Lord Elgin saved the marbles from destruction.

You see, after the arrival of the marbles in England, Lord Elgin was compelled to justify his acquisition before the House of Commons.

There, he claimed that he had been shocked by the destruction that had taken place on the Acropolis.

He testified that travelers were casually chipping souvenirs off ancient sculptures.

But most significantly, he claimed that, quote, the Turks have been continually defacing the heads of statues, and in some instances they've actually reported to me that they have pounded down the statues into mortar.

It was upon these suggestions and with these feelings that I proceeded to remove as much of the sculpture as I conveniently could.

It was not part of the original plan to bring away anything but models, end quote.

In a later memorandum to the House Committee investigating the affair, Elgin provided an even more colorful story.

In this instance, he claimed that he visited the house of a man identified only as the old Turk.

According to the memorandum, this old Turk proudly pointed to spots in his home, quote, where the cement employed had been formed from the very statues which Lord Elgin had hoped to find.

It was, in fact, afterwards ascertained on incontrovertible evidence that these statues had been reduced to powder and so used.

Then and only then did Lord Elgin employ means to rescue what still remained exposed to a similar fate.

End quote.

The accusation was that the Ottomans were actively destroying destroying the statues on the Acropolis and were reducing priceless works of art to dust to make mortar for cement.

So, we should ask, is this story true?

It certainly has been accepted as a fact in Britain.

In 1833, the chief librarian of the British Museum wrote,

If Lord Elgin had not removed these marbles, there is no doubt that many of them would long since have been totally destroyed.

End quote.

From that point onward, the fact that the Parthenon marbles were in clear and present danger of the quote ignorance and barbarism of their Turkish keepers has been consistently repeated by those defending the sculpture's continued presence in the British Museum.

As recently as 2014, the British pundit Dominic Selwood authored a newspaper piece headlined, Lord Elgin was a a hero who saved the marbles for the world,

in which he repeated the old claim that the statues on the Parthenon were about to be ground to dust by the rapacious Turkish occupiers.

Selwood even went so far as to claim that, quote, if Elgin had not intervened, the Parthenon sculptures would be a mere memory, like the Afghani Buddhas dynamited into oblivion by the Taliban in 2001.

End quote.

Dominic Selwood, that is quite a historical parallel you have there.

But the idea that Lord Elgin started removing the Parthenon sculptures in the benevolent spirit of preservation is a total historical myth.

It seems very clear that this was a justification that Lord Elgin came up with well after the first sculptures were sawed off the building.

First, we should recognize that at least part of what Lord Elgin reported was true.

Travelers who had properly greased the palms of Ottoman officials had been able to smuggle small pieces of marble off of the Acropolis as souvenirs.

Some of these were found broken on the ground, and others were likely chipped off surviving statues.

Turkish soldiers and others with access to the Acropolis also seem to have taken part in this black market trade in ancient souvenirs.

It was an open secret that men in the Athens garrison would collect small marble pieces and then sell them to affluent adventurers, mostly from Britain, France, and Scandinavia.

Now, this was obviously a bad thing, but it's wrong to compare the 19th-century Ottomans to the Taliban.

It's a huge exaggeration to say that the Ottoman Turks were systematically destroying Greek sculptures, especially those preserved atop the columns of the Parthenon.

The story that the Turks were grinding down statues to make mortar is especially suspect.

This practice is not noted by any other travelers to Athens in this period.

Access to the Acropolis was quite limited, and as we've already described, the Parthenon could not be interfered with unless one had the explicit permission of an Ottoman official.

In 1820, the English artist Hugh Grecian Williams, who had been granted permission to do some sketching on the Acropolis, published a book about the experience and devoted a section to countering the the idea that the Turks were wantonly destroying everything on the hilltop.

In a chapter titled Reflections Regarding the Breaking and Pounding of Sculptured Marbles by the Turks, he wrote that he never once saw the practice described by Lord Elgin.

In his experience, the Turks in Athens were not casually destroying ancient sculptures.

Now, Williams knew Lord Elgin personally, so he stopped short of calling the man a liar.

But he did say that if the incident with the old Turk who had destroyed a statue to make cement was true, it represented a, quote, odd and unnatural episode, end quote.

Further, he pointed out that there was plenty of unadorned broken marble lying around the summit of the Acropolis, if any was needed for making lime.

So even if there was a weird rare case where someone needed to grind down the ancient marble to make cement, no one needed to destroy a statue to do it.

Also, it should be noted that Lord Elgin's story about the old Turk that he later submitted to Parliament was said to have taken place in May of 1802.

The first panels of the Parthenon were removed by Elgin's team in July of 1801.

His team had been taking apart the Parthenon for nearly a year before he allegedly met his old Turk who had destroyed a statue to make cement.

So, at the very least, the timeline proves that Lord Elgin lied to Parliament when he wrote in his memorandum that after meeting the old Turk, quote, then and then only did Lord Elgin employ means to rescue what still remained exposed to a similar fate, end quote.

Lord Elgin did not act then and only then.

That timeline is demonstrably false.

The entire story of the old Turk is deeply suspicious, and even if it is true, which personally I doubt but cannot prove, it does not represent the typical treatment of the Acropolis in this period.

On top of that, Lord Elgin's letters to his man on the ground, Giovanni Lucieri, make it clear that he had hoped that at least some of the marble pieces collected from the Parthenon might decorate his sprawling estate in Scotland.

Around the time that the first sculptures came off the temple, Elgin sent Lucieri drawings and plans for his house in Scotland.

This was so that Lucieri might be able to choose objects that would look the nicest in his private home.

As Elgin put it in one of his letters, he looked forward to, quote, placing in a useful, distinguished, and agreeable way the various things that you may perhaps procure for me, end quote.

After describing his plans to have Broomhall's great hall, quote, adorned with columns, end quote, he later continued, quote, I should wish to collect as much marble as possible.

I have other places in my house which need it, end quote.

Whatever Lord Elgin's commitments may have been to the betterment of the arts in Britain, it also seems clear that this project was undertaken for the betterment of the art in his home.

All of this is to say that Lord Elgin did not save the Parthenon sculptures.

That is a historical myth.

It's very clear that the removal of the Parthenon marbles was not motivated by any spirit of preservation.

It got started due to the overzealous efforts of Reverend Hunt when he presented the official order, the Firmun, to the Ottoman governor.

Once the project was underway, Elgin saw an opportunity to beautify his estate, well, also returning a rich prize to Britain.

Elgin's stories about the destruction being done to the sculptures on the Acropolis were exaggerations that helped to provide an after-the-fact justification for his denuding of the Parthenon.

It could also be argued that the sculptures that were of particular interest to Lord Elgin, that is, the relief carvings affixed near the top of the Parthenon that could only be accessed by way of scaffolding, were the objects least likely to be damaged by souvenir collectors or alleged cement makers.

No one was climbing the Parthenon and detaching sculptures that were part of the very structure of the building to make some quick mortar.

No.

The most damage done to those sculptures was done by Lord Elgin's team of workmen.

One English traveler named Edward Dodel happened to be on the scene when the sculptures started coming off the Parthenon.

He was shocked by just how rough Elgin's team was being with the building and just how many ancient works of art were being destroyed in the process.

He would write, quote, During my first tour of Greece, I had the inexpressible mortification of being present when the Parthenon was despoiled of its finest sculpture and when some of its architectural members were thrown to the ground.

I saw several matope at the southeast extremity of the temple taken down.

In order to lift them up, it was necessary to throw to the ground the magnificent cornice by which they were covered.

The southeast angle of the pediment shared the same fate, and instead of the picturesque beauty and high preservation in which I first saw it, it is now comparatively reduced to a state of shattered desolation.

In September of 1802, another English travel writer, one Edward Daniel Clark, would describe a similar scene.

As Elgin's team attempted to remove one particularly well-preserved Matope, quote, part of the adjoining masonry was loosened by the machinery, and down came the fine masses of pentilican marble, scattering their white fragments with a thundering noise among the ruins.

The Disdar, witnessing this, could no longer restrain his emotions, but actually took the pipe from his mouth and letting fall a tear, said in the most empathetic tone of voice, Telos, end quote.

Telos has been translated as the end.

Stop, or it's done.

According to Clark, it was clear to all present that the Dizdar was, quote, positively declaring that he would not consent to any further dilapidations of the building, end quote.

So, if we trust Clark, the Turkish officials were literally crying over Lord Elgin's treatment of the Parthenon.

and the reckless destruction of its art.

Then, after all that, to go home to Britain and say that you had saved the Parthenon,

that takes some nerve.

But despite the Distars' exclamations, this was not the end of Lord Elgin's project.

The Parthenon sculptures were in the process of being transformed into the Elgin marbles, and their story was just beginning.

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us again in two weeks' time when we will conclude our look at the Parthenon sculpture controversy.

When this series is done, I am going to be doing another bonus episode where I'll be answering your questions at the end of September.

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