Major Elgin Marbles update as Andy Burnham becomes PM | World | News
Greece’s decades-long campaign to secure the return of the iconic Elgin Marbles may face a dramatic new political reality following the arrival of Andy Burnham in Downing Street. Athens has waged a relentless campaign to reunite 2,500-year-old artifacts in the Acropolis Museum.
Now, with a Prime Minister in No 10 who has spent years publicly backing the handovers, one of Europe’s longest-running and most high-profile archaeological controversies could face a major reckoning. The Labor leader’s history with 2,500-year-old treasures sets him apart from a succession of British prime ministers who have insisted the dispute is solely a matter for the British Museum. Mr Burnham’s fight goes back more than two decades, to his early years as an MP, when he supported parliamentary measures calling for the repatriation of the marbles.
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he further emphasized his stance, arguing that the statues formed an integral part of the structure of the Parthenon and should be viewed as a single, unified piece of history.
While campaigners in Athens have begun celebrating the new prime minister’s historic stance, No 10 has yet to announce any official policy changes.
Moreover, the British Museum operates independently of the UK Government and strict legal restrictions under the British Museum Act 1963 expressly prohibit trustees from permanently disposing of items in the national collection. A permanent capitulation would require a vote in Parliament to change the law.
Talks between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and British Museum officials have repeatedly hit a wall on basic principles; Mr Mitsotakis stressed that Greece would not settle for anything less than a full return and ruled out any temporary loans.
The Elgin Marbles, also known as the Parthenon Statues, are a collection of ancient Classical Greek marble statues and architectural elements carved between 447 and 432 BC to decorate the Parthenon and other structures on the Acropolis. About half of the surviving statues today are in the London museum, and the rest are in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
Between 1801 and 1812, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which then ruled Greece, arranged for the statues to be removed. He claimed to have protected the decaying artwork from wars, weather and vandalism, citing an Ottoman imperial edict that allowed his team to remove pieces of stone.
He sent 247 feet of the frieze, 15 metopes and 17 pediment figures to Britain. After falling into personal financial difficulty in 1816, Elgin sold the collection to the British Government for £35,000, and Parliament transferred the collection to the British Museum.
