The Parthenon Marbles Should Not be Returned to Greece
There are no good arguments for repatriation
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see
Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed
By British hands, which it had best behoved
To guard those relics ne'er to be restored.— Lord Byron, 1812.
Tell my man, shut up.
— Stormzy, 2017.
I. Introduction
This is the Parthenon:
This, below it, is one of the Parthenon Marbles—currently housed in the British Museum—which you can’t see because of my huge bicep. It shows Athena chilling with Hephaistos. The pair are watching the procession of the Panathenaic festival, a celebration in honour of Athena’s birthday.
According Greece, most Greeks, 53% of British people, Christopher Hitchens, Piers Morgan, the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, about a gazillion opinion columns, most intellectuals probably, and a range of eminent historians, classicists, and lawyers, Britain is morally obligated to return the marbles to Greece, where they’d be kept in the Acropolis Museum, near the Parthenon.
I think this take is cringe, and here, I’ll tell you why.
Before I reduce repatriationism to rubble, just kidding, a note on terminology: for some strange reason, most people on my side of the debate insist on calling the Parthenon Marbles the “Elgin Marbles”, because they were collected, shipped, and sold by Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin. This, too, is cringe: the most salient fact about the marbles is that they’re from the Parthenon, not that Lord Elgin collected, shipped, and sold them. Some people object—speciously—that since not all the Parthenon Marbles are held by the British Museum, we should call the ones that are the Elgin Marbles to avoid confusing people. Contra these people: which subset of the marbles we’re talking about is basically always clear from conversational context. I don’t think anyone has ever been confused by this.)
II. The Parthenon Marbles: a Potted History
Why are the Marbles controversial? To understand why, we need a brief run-down on the history; specifically, on how the Marbles wound up in the British Museum. In brief, what happened is:
Between 1801 and 1812, Lord Elgin—then the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire—removed a bunch of sculptures from the Parthenon and had them shipped to England.
According to Lord Elgin, these were removed with the permission of the presiding Ottoman authorities. (Some historians now dispute this. Nevertheless, according to Tiffany Jenkins, historian, classicist, and author of Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums... and Why they Should Stay There, “[n]o court of law would find in favour of Greek complainants who would make an argument that the Marbles were illegally taken”1. As far as I can tell, this is the majority view, even among those who think the British Museum has a moral duty to repatriate.)
In the removal process, some parts of the building were damaged. (As one of Elgin’s men wrote in a letter, “I have been obliged to be a little barbarous”2.)
Plausibly, Elgin exceeded the terms of his agreement with the Ottomans—assuming there was such an agreement—by hacking sculptures off the building itself, rather than merely picking up what had already fallen to the ground. (Naughty Elgin.)
On the flip side, it’s quite possible that had Elgin’s men not removed the sculptures they did, they would’ve suffered even greater damages. As Jenkins asks, rhetorically:
[W]ho knows what would have happened to those statues and friezes had they not been taken away by Elgin’s men? The Parthenon was already falling down; it had been abandoned and was in pieces. Travellers and locals were grabbing what they could carry away for multiple purposes. If Lord Elgin had not taken them it is likely that the French or Germans would have. Years later, the Acropolis would be battered again in the Greek Wars of Independence, when it was besieged twice. Elgin may, or may not, have rescued the sculptures. We will never know3.
The Marbles were bought by the British government in 1816, and in 1817, the British Museum put them on public display.
In the early 1980s, the Greek government respectfully requested that the marbles be returned. The British government respectfully said No.
The two nations have been peacefully beefing ever since.
In what follows, I’ll canvas what I take to be the best argument for repatriation, and submit that all of them fail.
III. “But They’re the Cultural Property of Greece!! 😡🤬”
According to some writers, the British Museum should return the marbles to Greece because they’re Greek cultural property, and were at the time Lord Elgin took them. ‘But’, the argument goes, ‘since Greece was under the heel of the Ottomans at the time the marbles were extracted, the Greeks never relinquished this cultural property right, either directly (by referendum) or indirectly (by the consent of a legitimate Greek government). Therefore, the British Museum is duty-bound to give Greece its cultural property back.’
‘Cultural property’ is a swampy concept; it’s not always clear what it means. For our purposes, we can do no better than the definition proposed by philosopher Janna Thompson, who writes:
Something is the cultural property of a collectivity if and only if a) it was legitimately acquired by the collective or its members — that is, not taken without consent or justification from others — or possession of it has been made legitimate by changes in circumstances; b) the item plays an important role in the religious, cultural or political life of people of the collectivity by functioning as a symbol of collective ideals, a source of identity for its members, as a ceremonial object, a focus of historical meaning, an expression of their achievements, or as a link with founders or ancestors.4
If it could be shown that the Parthenon Marbles played an important role in the religious, cultural, or political life of Greece at the time they were taken, functioning as a symbol of Greek collective ideals, a focus of historical meaning, a link with founders or ancestors, etc., in the early 19th Century, I think the case for returning the marbles would be more or less ironclad.
Sadly, this cannot be shown because the Marbles Elgin took did not play any of these roles in the collective Greek imagination at the time they were taken (even if they have in times before and since). As Thompson explains:
There is no convincing evidence that the Greeks, at the time when Lord Elgin’s employees were doing their work, regarded the Marbles, or the Parthenon itself, as their cultural property. [The late Christopher] Hitchens points out that members of the Greek liberation movement had in the past protested about the removal of antiquities, and that some Greeks did mourn the disappearance of the Marbles. But witnesses reported that there was no public outcry or protest during the period when the work of removal was done, and that many Greeks welcomed the presence of the foreigners and opportunities for employment. Hobsbawm says that the glories of ancient Greece were irrelevant to the Greeks who were fighting for their independence from Turkish rule. “They fought as Christians against Muslim unbelievers”. The evidence thus suggests that their adoption of the Parthenon and the Marbles as important national symbols was a later development.5
So, the Parthenon Marbles weren’t cultural property at the time they were taken, by any reasonable account of what cultural property is. Thus, framed the way I framed it, the cultural property argument fails.
Perhaps I framed the argument unfairly. Perhaps the thought isn’t that the Marbles were the cultural property of Greece at the time they were taken. Perhaps the thought is that the Marbles became the cultural property of Greece only once they became important national symbols again.
In reply, recall that for something to count as cultural property, it doesn’t only have to play a ceremonial, political, religious, historical, or other such role in a community’s collective consciousness; it also has to have been “legitimately acquired by the collective or its members”. The trouble is, since Elgin took the marbles, they’ve never been “acquired” by Greece in any meaningful sense, by title-transfer, acquisition, or any other means.
Suppose, by analogy, that some runaway K-drama thing made the stones at Stonehenge more important—culturally, politically, religiously, whatever—to the people of South Korea than they are to the people of England. Would Stonehenge become South Korean cultural property, such that the UK National Trust would be morally obligated to surrender it? ‘Cultural property’ is a fuzzy concept, I admit, but on any reasonable conception of it, Stonehenge would not ‘belong’ to South Korea in this scenario. Likewise, if the Parthenon Marbles weren’t Greek cultural property at the time they were taken, they can’t have become Greek cultural property in the time since, merely by assuming (or resuming) their status as national symbols.
III. “But It’s a Nice Thing to Do!! 🥺👉👈”
A different, more concessive argument for repatriation runs as follows: Greeks, on average, care more about the Marbles than British people. Thus, by giving the Marbles to Greece, the British Museum would generate more utility than if it kept the Marbles to itself. But if that’s the case, then the British Museum is doing something wrong, morally, by keeping the marbles to itself.
I have two bones to pick with this argument. First, it’s not clear that sending the Marbles back to Greece would generate more utility in the long run. Second, even if that were clear, it wouldn’t follow that the British Museum is doing something wrong by holding on to the Marbles—and, in fact, it’s plausible that they wouldn’t be.
First things first: what does ‘utility’ amount to in the context of museum exhibits? First, pretty obviously, there’s the raw pleasure of seeing an artifact up close. Museums are often fun; that’s why we sometimes go.
Second, also pretty obviously, there’s the educational benefit of seeing an artifact up close. If there were no educational benefit, it’s hard to see why people would spend time in museums instead of spending it on more straightforwardly cathartic activities.
At first blush, it’s puzzling what the educational benefit of seeing an artifact in person would be. After all, for almost any artifact, you can learn what it looks like from Google Images, and then get the relevant historical information from Wikipedia.
In a romp of an article, Clare Jarmy (an inspirational secondary school teacher of mine, who took me and my classmates on a memorable series of museum and gallery trips in Florence) attempts to solve this problem, drawing on nuggets of insight from Martin Heidegger and R. G. Collingwood. The rough picture is that History, qua discipline, is an attempt to mentally re-enact, or reimagine, the past, and that seeing an artifact up-close (as opposed to just reading about it, or looking at a stale, 2D image) gives the museum-goers the ‘stage props’ they need for an effective re-enactment6.
So, switching back to the Marbles, the utility of exhibiting them consists in the raw pleasure of encountering them, and the educational benefits of being able to more vividly reimagine a period of Greek (and world) history.
By my lights, it’s not at all clear that utility would be maximised by sending the marbles back to Greece. Suppose, tomorrow, the Marbles are shipped back to Greece. The news would irritate some British people and please most Greeks. Bad news is more distressing than good news is pleasing, however, and there are about 6.5x as many British people than Greeks, so it’s not clear whether the good would swamp the bad.
But supposing it did, which isn’t crazy to suppose, what matters most are the long term outcomes, since the short term outcomes are, well, short-lived. And, in the long term, it’s a best unclear that we’d eek the most utility out of repatriation, and at worst pretty clear we’d do the opposite.
For consider: while the aesthetic and educational benefits of the Marbles would be intensified for Museum-goers in Greece as a result of ‘reunification’ (i.e., ‘being able to display the Marbles in the same country as the Parthenon, alongside the Marbles that Greece still has’), the aesthetic and educational benefits would be lessened for Museum-goers in England (many of whom are international tourists) who would never bother to see the Marbles up-close if they were housed in Greece.
Since the Acropolis Museum only had about 1.4 million visitors in 2022 (compared to 4.1 million for the British Museum in that year), I think we can be reasonably sure that in the long-term, repatriation would decrease aesthetic and educational utility.
But suppose I’m wrong about this. Even if I am, I don’t think Britain would be morally obligated to return the Marbles even if it could be shown, conclusively, that the utility-scales tip decisively in favour of doing so.
Consider, again, the scenario in which—due to a K-drama thing—the stones of Stonehenge became more important to the people of South Korea than they are to the people of England. And suppose it were shown, by some reliable test, that utility would be maximised by allowing south Korea to take them away.
In this scenario, I wholeheartedly grant that the British government would have a moral reason to surrender the stones. Foreign utility matters just as much as domestic utility. But, intuitively, that reason wouldn’t amount to a moral obligation, such that Britain could be justly criticised—in the way it’s criticized by Greece right now—for holding on to the stones.
IV. “But Diplomatic Relations!!”
On November 28, 2023, Rishi Sunak cancelled a scheduled meeting with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the incumbent Prime Minister of Greece.
The reason? Mitsotakis told the BBC beforehand that he thought the Marbles should be returned, saying they were “essentially stolen” by Lord Elgin. (Note: he said this after being asked about it by an interviewer. The opinion wasn’t spontaneously volunteered.)
According to Downing Street, Mitsotakis had promised in advance not to raise the “Elgin Marbles” while in the UK. According to a source from inside the Greek government, this is bullshit, and no such assurances were made.
Whoever’s not lying, it’s pretty crazy that a scheduled meeting between two European heads of state, representing countries that enjoy spectacular diplomatic relations, was cancelled because of a tiff over some museum artefacts. (Topics on the meeting agenda had included Gaza, Ukraine, climate change, and immigration.)
Maybe the best argument for returning the marbles is this: the British Museum’s possession of the Marbles is causing friction between Britain and Greece. This is bad. If there’s even a small change that the Marbles prevent, or delay, important international agreements on matters of great importance, Britain should just cut its losses and return the Marbles, since, objectively, they aren’t very important.
I’m pretty sympathetic to this argument. It might be right. (The Marbles are, indeed, not very important.) My one concern is that it’s probably bad, from the standpoint of precedent, for governments to adopt a general approach on which they’ll give any artwork or museum artefact to any country that wants it, so long as there’s some small chance that diplomatic relations with that country might be harmed if they don’t.
After all, if governments did adopt that approach, and that approach became known, other governments would inevitably game it, signalling that they’ll make relations more fractious if they aren’t given whatever artefact or artwork they want.
Nevertheless, if things between Greece and the UK got really bad, the UK should obviously just give back the Marbles. It isn’t that deep. I don’t think we’re at that stage, though, and I doubt we’ll ever reach it. Sunak will be voted out soon, and cancelling on Mitsotakis won him brownie-points from basically nobody. Future Conservative leaders (emphasis on future), will probably learn from this episode, and won’t pull the same stunt again.
Jenkins, T. (2018). Keeping their marbles: how the treasures of the past ended up in museums... and why they should stay there. Oxford: Oxford University Press: p. 99.
Quoted in: Ibid. p. 96.
Ibid. p. 99.
Thompson, Janna. (2003). "Cultural property, restitution and value." Journal of Applied Philosophy, 20(3), p. 252.
Ibid. p. 256.
Jarmy, C. (2019). 'Neath the Moth-Eaten Rag: Do Artefacts Play a Special Role for Historical Knowledge?. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 53(2), pp. 425-439.
I knew that behind that disgusting accent there lurked a sneering imperialist.
Also, bold of you to assume that there will be any "future Conservative leaders" in the UK. Though seeing as Keir Starmer is the picture of a party leader which comes with the frame (and given the British electorate's evidently irrepressible addiction to voting against policies which they actually like), I wouldn't be surprised if it somehow happens sooner than one might expect.
Have you read Appiah on this and related topics?