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Greece had been under Ottoman rule for about 400 years, when the marbles were taken you'd have to go back 13 generations before you get to greek owned Greece.

If you do make that 13 generation jump, the Greeks who owned it at that time period were themselves descendants of conquerors — none of the people in this story are the owners of the marbles, if we choose to tar everyone with this brush equally.

Additionally, the Ottoman empire made documentation legitimising Elgin's movements of the marbles, the fact that the original receipt is missing and they had a hearing for that is moot in light of the rest. The ottomans issued orders to the city to allow his movements and they issued notice to the docks that he'd be moving marbles out via boat.

"When they wish to take away some pieces of stone with old inscriptions and figures, no opposition be made."

> Many of the historic aquisitions by "collectors" were as sketchy AF in the context of the times.

This is the slippery slope that makes most of these cases hard to take seriously. Aside from obvious cases of wartime looting, a lot of the objections are just that the legal approval at the time doesn’t meet modern standards imposed anachronistically on history, or more frequently that the provenance just isn’t known to the degree expected by modern standards.

Some people, like the author of this article, want us to think that everything should be returned unless it’s perfectly documented without any possible objections. Scrap the Louvre and send all those pottery scraps and fragments back to the country they came from because we can’t be perfectly sure it’s all perfectly handled under modern standards that weren’t the historical norm.

It’s tiring. Aside from obvious cases of theft like the Benin Bronzes, the blanket argument that museums shouldn’t be allowed to hold artifacts from other locations and cultures without perfect documentation isn’t really practical.

There was no such country as "Greece" in 1801. Athens was a city in the Ottoman Empire and "Greece" referred to a country that hadn't existed for nearly 2000 years.

"Greece" stopped existing as a country in 146 BC, when the Romans defeated its last city state, Corinth. The former country was then merely a region of the Roman Empire, followed by the Byzantine Empire, followed by the Ottoman Empire.

If you want to give the marbles back, which is a popular sentiment these days, you should give them back to the legal successor of the Ottoman Empire, which is Turkey. The marbles have never belonged to the modern Greek state established in 1821. Once Turkey gets their marbles back, they could put them in the Acropolis museum if they think it appropriate.

And of course even in 146 BCE there wasn't a "country called greece", it was a collection of independent states with different names, rulers and even cultures, albeit ruled by a central power at that specific moment in history.

According to the Wikipedia article, he did get approval from state officials although it is hard to interpret if he went beyond the approval. However, the Committee you mentioned

> cleared Elgin of all allegations that he had acquired the marbles illegally or had misused his powers as ambassador

As I said, the legality was sketchy AF.

Dodgy enough that a pubic inquiry was held, and sketchy in that a British Lord and ambassador was cleared when anybody else would be facing punishment.

One of my ancestors was involved with the “acquisition” of the Elgin marbles, I believe he might have been a secretary to Elgin.

Amusingly, he was also involved in the restoration of artefacts looted by Napoleon during his conquests. So much so that the sculptor, Antonio Canova gifted him with one of 4 Ideal Heads as a thanks for returning works to the Vatican. The bust remained in our family until the mid 90’s and can now be seen in the Ashmolean in Oxford.

Coooool.

I'm about to dive into this rabbit hole, and if an Ideal Head doesn't say "Time is. Time was. Time is past." I'm going to be severely disappointed.

(Edit: Ok, seriously, what's the story behind the donation? If I had my grubby mitts on something that exquisite, I'd never give it up, doubly so if it was "by descent").

It's the usual stuff, family member dies, stuff has to be split up between siblings, taxes are due, auction house cheats family members, etc.

> The Benin Bronzes and other related artifacts were straight up targeted theft as a by product of war

"Looted". Make no bones about it, the word is looted. But they were created off the back of slavery, so... choose your poison.

This is an interesting link that pulls aside the curtain a little on trade, art and Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/benin-bronzes-...

Personally I think we should focus on the repatriation of human remains. Once we've got that sorted out, we can start worrying about mere stuff.

The Benin Bronzes are a bit different. Returning them to Benin means returning them to the heirs of an extremely nasty and oppressive state:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey#Slavery

One of the purposes of the expedition was the abolition of slavery in Benin, and objective it achieved.

>> Thief is a thief ... unless they are a Lord.

So he wasnt a thief. The laws of the time ebbed and flowed based on the social standing of the alleged perpetrators. That was the then accepted rule. It is less true today but not absolutely. Who are we to ignore the actions of a past select committee? Are we to revisit every not-guilty decisison on the basis that a modern investigation would have acted differently? By way of example, women were in the past treated very badly. Revisiting every historic legal determination that stripped a woman of her propery would render all modern property rights suspect.

There are contemporary first person reports from the people who collected/stole the artefacts in museums. Michael Leiris collected items - some of them ritual items made from coagulated blood - that are still on display in the Musée Quay Branly in Paris. His description from 1931 seems honest, hair-raising and hardly morally ambiguous… https://www.modernghana.com/amp/news/800468/who-is-afraid-of...

Tons of contemporaries of Lord Elgin called him a thief; Lord Byron being the most famous.

And the result of trails are not objective truth. There's been tons of them where the outcome was considered unjust by any standard; there's even terms for this: "kangaroo court", "mismarriage of justice", "show trial", etc.

And whether Elgin was or wasn't a "thief" is actually not very important; what is important is that in any modern reasonable context it would be considered theft and that it's actually not even a hard thing to correct this historical mistake.