How England stole the marble from ancient Greece

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How England stole the marble from ancient Greece
How England stole the marble from ancient Greece
Anonim

Lord Elgin, aka Earl Thomas the Bruce, went down in history as an English diplomat of the Napoleonic Wars era and a collector of antique values. However, the Greeks consider Elgin a thief who stole their national treasure. For almost two centuries Greece has been seeking the return of values from Britain, but the British are in no hurry to part with the collection of Lord Elgin.

Greece was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for almost four centuries. All this time, the Turks did not consider it necessary to take care of the ancient ancient monuments in the cradle of Western civilization. Moreover, the Ottomans considered the majestic statues of the Olympic celestials to be simply stone idols, not worthy of attention.

British Crown Ambassador

On February 3, 1830, a protocol was signed in London, according to which Greece gained independence from the Ottoman Empire. A few years after gaining independence, the Greeks made claims to the British about the values exported from their territory. It was about the "Elgin Marbles" - a collection of sculptures and panels from the Parthenon and Erechtheion temples and the Propylaea of the Acropolis of Athens. In response, the British threw up their hands, insisting that if it were not for the actions of Lord Elgin, then these values would not have survived at all. So who is he, Lord Elgin - a thief or a savior ?!

The offspring of an old Scottish family, Thomas Bruce was born in 1766. After the death of his father and brother, the title of Lord Elgin and Peerage of Scotland passed to him. In 1798, Thomas was appointed British Ambassador to the Sublime Port of Selim III. Before leaving, Elgin asked members of the British government if there was a need for Britain to study ancient art. The answer was no, but the lord decided to take up the case anyway.

In September 1799, Elgin traveled to Constantinople, but on the way visited Palermo, where he met with the British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, William Hamilton. The latter was also engaged in collecting antiquity objects. In particular, Greek vases. Hamilton was kind to the young colleague and gave him some valuable advice. For example, he advised Elgin to hire an artist in Naples who would copy everything that had artistic value in Greece. As such, the English diplomat invited the Italian landscape painter Giovanni Luzieri and his assistant, the Russian citizen Fyodor Kalmyk. Arriving in Constantinople, Elgin paid homage to the Sultan, and later sent Luzieri and Kalmyk to Athens to sketch interesting antiques.

At that time, Athens was a provincial town, where no more than 10 thousand people lived: Greeks, Jews, Turks. The town was ruled by two Turkish rulers - a civilian and a military one. The soldiers of the Turkish garrison lodged directly in the Acropolis, which was turned into a military fortress. Because of what the architectural monument was seriously damaged during the Turkish-Venetian wars. In 1687, a shell hit the Parthenon Temple, which the Turks used as a gunpowder store. As a result, the explosion severely destroyed the pediment of the temple. Not surprisingly, upon arriving at the site, the Elgin artists saw the Greek temple in a sad state.

Parthenon at Scottish Manor

The clandestine trade in antique values in Greece began in the 18th century and grew as the interest of the French and British in the objects of antique art increased. However, the Parthenon temple experienced new destruction not through the efforts of antique hunters, but because of the builders of the garrison. In order not to carry stones from afar, they simply dismantled the priceless masonry of the temple and used it for new household buildings. The marble sculptures that fell from the pediment were burned by the Turks to get lime. And they used the ancient sarcophagi as troughs for watering cattle. The slabs that once lined the walls of ancient Greek theaters and forums often served as tables of taverns or roofs of huts.

At first, the military administrator (disdar) did not allow artists to make drawings in the Acropolis, believing that they could sketch a plan of the fortress and sell it to the Greek rebels. But five guineas convinced the governor that his worries were in vain.

Meanwhile, the war between the Turks and the French was not going very well for the former. Napoleon occupied Egypt and threatened to move on. But the English Admiral Nelson defeated the French fleet near the mouth of the Nile and eased the position of the Sultan's army. After which the Ottomans again conquered Egypt, and London became the best friend of Constantinople. The Queen's Ambassador - Lord Elgin, along with Admiral Nelson, were awarded an award from Selim III - the Order of the Crescent.

In addition, according to the British, Elgin received a firman (permission) from the hands of the Sultan, which allowed him to visit freely. Acropolis, to build forests and stairs around the "ancient temple of idols" (Parthenon), sketch and excavate. But the most important thing is that according to the specified firman, the British could take away sculptures and slabs, provided that they did not cause damage to military installations.

Already in 2019, Turkish professor Orhan Sakin said that the Sultan had never given such permission. In the archives, where he rummaged through everything that was possible, only a copy (!) Of the letter of the alleged Sultan in Italian was found, where it is said that the British can take any marble they want. However, the original or even a copy of the letter in Turkish was never found. The Turks are convinced that such a firm never existed, and Elgin simply falsified the permit.

Be that as it may, but the Athenian Disdar for a few guineas did not go into details, but allowed the British to take useless stones. Elgin sent his compatriot Philip Hunt to take the marble from Athens, who, together with Luzieri, hired workers and began to dismantle sculptures and panels from the walls of the Parthenon. Bas-reliefs, friezes, panels were barbarously cut out of the walls, pulled out and often shattered when falling from a height. As already mentioned, having received the answer that Britain was not interested in ancient ruins, Lord Elgin planned to decorate his new home in Dunfermline, Scotland, with bas-reliefs and statues.

Curse of statues

The collection of marble that Elgin's people collected included 21 statues from the eastern and western pediments of the Parthenon, 15 metopes depicting battles between Lapiths and centaurs, and a 75-meter frieze of the Parthenon that adorned the wall above the main entrance. In addition, the lord's marauders profited from statues from other buildings of the Athenian Acropolis, took the caryatid from the Erechtheion, four slabs from the parapet frieze of the temple of Athena and a number of other architectural fragments.

The size of the collection was so large that the lord needed several ships to export it to Britain. One of them stumbled on a reef and sank near the island of Kythira, but Elgin paid for the swimmers and the boxes of marble were raised. However, the lord did not manage to enjoy the masterpieces of the ancient Greek sculptor Phidias. First, in 1803, on his return to England, he was arrested by the French and held captive for three years. In addition, a frequenter of eastern brothels, Elgin caught syphilis somewhere and his wife, for whose money he was working to confiscate valuables, demanded a divorce. All this led to the bankruptcy of the count.

In England itself, there were many supporters of the Greek revolution, one of whom was the poet George Byron. He directly accused Elgin of stealing cultural property from the Greeks and dedicated several hard-hitting poems to him. Another contemporary, John Newport, wrote: "The Honorable Lord has used the most unjustified means to carry out the most egregious robbery."Elgin tried to justify his actions by the fact that the Turks would have destroyed the monuments anyway, and he simply saved them. The count also insisted that his actions were sanctioned by the Sultan's firman.

In the end, to make ends meet, Elgin agreed to sell the collection to the British Museum. True, he still had to prove that his sculptures are not Roman copies, but the most ancient Greek originals. The museum bought the collection from Elgin for 35 thousand pounds, while he himself cost 75 thousand. The ransom did not cover all his debts, and, hiding from creditors, he fled to France. Syphilis disfigured his face and health a lot, and in 1841 the lord died in Paris. And his collection has become one of the gems of the British Museum.

But Greece did not abandon its attempts to recover the lost treasures. For two centuries, the Greeks asked and demanded that London return the exported values to the land of Hellas. The British were not going to do this, even though the Turks themselves admitted the absence of a firman. In 2009, a new Acropolis Museum opened in Athens, overturning London's argument about the harmful effects of Greek rainfall on statues. Hollywood actor George Clooney also spoke out in defense of the return of valuables, but his requests for a return were rejected by Boris Johnson, the current Prime Minister of Britain.

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