When King Charles III appeared at COP28 wearing a matching tie and pocket square emblazoned with the Greek flag, he sent a message — whether intentionally or not — in a decades-long dispute.
The debate over the permanent home of the Parthenon marbles, sometimes referred to as the Elgin marbles in the United Kingdom, has divided public opinion, historians, politicians and two countries.
The ancient Greek sculptures once sat atop the Parthenon in Athens before they were removed on the orders of a lord, transported across treacherous waters and sold to the British Museum, where they have remained since 1832.
Greece has proactively campaigned for their return from the UK since they freed themselves of their Turkish occupiers in 1821, but without reaching a resolution.
The simmering issue was reignited last week when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who had planned to raise the return of the marbles back to Greece.
It was widely seen as a diplomatic snub and followed an interview Mitsotakis gave to the BBC in which he stated the artefacts belonged to his home country and compared their divided state to an Italian masterpiece.
“If I told you that you would cut the Mona Lisa in half and you would have half of it at the Louvre and half of it at the British Museum, do you think your viewers would appreciate the beauty of the painting?” he said in an interview with the BBC.
The colourful comments apparently breached an agreement Mitsotakis made with Sunak to not use his visit as “a public platform to re-litigate long-settled matters“, but it was the cancelled meeting that attracted media headlines around the world.
“I think it’s almost like a rite of passage for anyone from the Greek government who is on an official business trip to London to at some point break out the marbles,” says Angelina Giovani, a Greek art historian and provenance researcher based in London.
“It’s like the equivalent of meeting someone and asking how their relatives are doing.”
Greek officials, who vowed to intensify their campaign for the return of the marbles last year, noted the global attention it received in the days following Sunak’s snub.
Then, King Charles’s sartorial choice at a widely-watched global event left spectators wondering if the issue had backfired for Sunak amid speculation the monarch was delivering a coded message of support for Greece.
A tale of two Elgins
The Parthenon marbles consist of a collection of Greek sculptures that originally formed part of the friezes that ran along the facade of the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens.
They were removed by order of the British ambassador to Constantinople, Thomas Bruce, the seventh earl of Elgin, who arrived in Greece in the early 19th century with a special request that he and his artists examine and sketch the ancient site.
At the time, Greece was an occupied province within the Ottoman Empire. The earl claimed he petitioned the Ottoman court to be able to draw, measure and remove figures from the Acropolis.
He was granted a permit, which was known as a firman, according to the British Museum, though the original document has never been found and at least one prominent international lawyer has expressed doubts over its legality.
Nevertheless, the earl removed about half of the remaining sculptures from the ruins of the Parthenon.
The panels, which were made between 447BC and 432BC, depict figures and scenes of Greek mythology, including a Panathenaic festival as well as a battle at a marriage-feast.
Earl Elgin was bankrolled by his wife, Mary Nisbet, a wealthy heiress who charmed sea captains into taking the crates of artefacts back to England.
“I should feel so proud to tell you how well I had succeeded during your absence — female eloquence as usual succeeded, the captain sent me a very polite answer and by peep of day I send down the three cases,” she wrote in a letter to her husband on May 19, 1802.
But just four years after Lady Elgin boasted of her success in Athens, the couple went through an acrimonious divorce that divided a mother from her children and left the earl drowning in debts, Susan Nagle explains in her book, the Mistress of the Elgin Marbles.
Cut off from his wife’s inheritance and unable to sustain the mounting costs of excavating and shipping, Earl Elgin sold his collection to the British Museum for reportedly half of what it cost him to remove and ship the artefacts.
Greece has since argued the Ottoman Empire had no right to give away items made in Greece before the Ottoman conquest.
Mitsotakis told the BBC that Greeks feel that the “sculptures belong to Greece and that they were essentially stolen”.
‘They do look better in the Acropolis Museum’
The Parthenon, with its imposing white marble facade and distinctive echoes of a distant past, is viewed as a remnant of the Greek golden age.
It is not only a monument, but a cultural touchstone.
“More people would arguably recognise the Parthenon Acropolis than the Greek flag,” archaeologist Evangelos Kyriakidis told the ABC.
“So for the Greek people to have something that looks like a national symbol to them in a museum called British, obviously it doesn’t sit very well.”
Greece has long called for the sculptures to be brought home but made a formal request for the permanent return of all of the artefacts in the British Museum’s collection in 1983.
There have been various meetings and discussions since then, the British Museum said on its website, but no agreement has been reached with Greece.
Part of Britain’s argument in maintaining possession of the marbles has included claims they have remained in pristine condition in London as Athens has battled rising air pollution.
Greece built a museum specifically to house artefacts from the Acropolis in 2009, and Mitsotakis said that is where the treasures would be held.
“They do look better in the Acropolis Museum, a state-of-the-art museum that was built for that purpose,” he said.
Sunak described Mitsotakis’s interview as “grandstanding”, but if the reports on King Charles’s choice of tie are anything to go by, the monarch may have a different view.
“I think it’s a cheeky way [for Charles] to make a nod toward something. Obviously, the king has ties to Greece and so I think it’s a subtle — or maybe not seeing how it’s become a very widely circulated image — nod to what he thinks,” Ms Giovani told the ABC.
The king is not the first royal accused of using fashion to make a point. His mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, was known for “brooch diplomacy”, with many of her sartorial choices interpreted as political statements, notably when she wore gifts from the Obamas and Trudeaus during Donald Trump’s state visit.
Buckingham Palace suggested it was just a random choice of ties, but to Greek reporters, the national flag adorning the neck of England’s king “could well be interpreted as a gesture of support for our country”.
“King Charles III appeared to take a stand by choosing an obvious message, perhaps much stronger than any statement,” staff wrote in the Greek City Times.
The monarch has been a frequent visitor to Greece over the years and has spoken before of it “holding a special place in my heart”.
“Greece is the land of my grandfather; and of my father’s birth … Later, it was in Athens that my dear grandmother, Princess Alice, during the dark years of Nazi occupation, sheltered a Jewish family,'” he said on the bicentenary of its independence.
The king’s sartorial choice, whether deliberate or not, certainly appears to reflect the attitudes of the broader British public.
More than half of Britain would support the return of the marbles to Greece, according to a poll run by British newspaper The Evening Standard in January.
However, Sunak has followed the position of his predecessor, Liz Truss, in not supporting the return of the marbles.
“The collection of the British Museum is protected by law, and we have no plans to change it,” he said in May.
Under the British Museum Act, trustees cannot permanently return parts of a collection unless they meet a specific set of criteria.
That includes not removing objects “that appear to have been made not earlier than the year 1850”, though it does not prevent the British Museum from loaning the artefacts to Greece.
The chair, George Osborne, confirmed last week that the museum and Greek officials had been exploring a possible loan deal to display the artefacts in London and Athens at different times.
In return, the British Museum would receive “Greek treasures”, he said on his podcast, Political Currency.
“Discussions with Greece about a Parthenon partnership are on-going and constructive,” a British Museum spokesperson said in a statement to the ABC.
“We believe that this kind of long-term partnership would strike the right balance between sharing our greatest objects with audiences around the world, and maintaining the integrity of the incredible collection we hold at the museum.”
The shifting conversation over returning cultural artefacts
The subject of a possible loan remains a contentious one in some corners of Greece.
“I don’t think [Greeks] like that idea … because it’s rubbing salt into the wound even deeper. If you are the rightful owner of something, you should be the one doing the loaning rather than being loaned something that is yours,” Ms Giovani said.
Greece is not the first country, nor is it the last, to request the return of disputed cultural artefacts to the country of their origin.
Nigerian officials have called for the return of the Benin Bronzes, which were plundered by British soldiers in 1897.
Museums in the United States and Germany have announced the return of some pieces but the process has been complicated by confusion over who is laying claim to the artefacts.
Restitution efforts are a major issue and a complex business, but the alternative, to do nothing, is increasingly seen as unacceptable.
“Every museum and every institution should have their own ethical collecting guidelines, and those guidelines should allow for works to be researched and assessed on a case by case basis, if there is a claim on them,” Ms Giovani says.
On the issue of the Parthenon Marbles, she thinks it’s unlikely for the debate to be resolved soon because “it has existed in this state of ambiguous ownership” for some time.
But she, along with Greeks and Britons, would like to see the matter of its return decided in her lifetime.
“The reunification of the sculptures would be a huge shot in the arm for a nation that in times of difficulty has always stood by Britain,” The Guardian’s Greece correspondent Helena Smith wrote in an opinion piece for the paper in 2014.
“Rarely do we have such opportunities to right a wrong.”
Source: ABC News
