Forget Brexit, Purloined Greek Art Works May Exit Britain

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 28 March 2019)

lord elgin click here for a BBC History discussion about
Elgin's motives and reputation.


                                           Homesick

In the early 1800s England's ambassador in Istanbul, Lord Elgin, had
a number of statues, reliefs, columns and other ancient Greek works of
art from the Parthenon in Athens packed up in 200 crates and sent to
England, where he sold them to Parliament (!).  Since Greece gained
independence from the Ottoman Empire, it has been trying to get the
art works back from England, where the treasures are on display at
the British Museum.

In the 1980s, Greece's culture minister, the famous actress Melina
Mecouri, launched a campaign to retrieve the art works but it was
unsuccessful.  Last June, British Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn
promised to return the treasures if he came to power but England
has continued to insist that the Ottoman Sultan at the time issued a
'ferman' (imperial edict) allowing Lord Elgin to take the art works.

However (!), Turkish archival experts Prof. Dr. Zeynep Aygen and
Orhan Sakin have discounted the story of the ferman given to
Lord Elgin.  Their research has found no trace of the ferman and
they noted that the British claim to ownership is based solely on
a paragraph in a letter that was translated into Italian.  On 23 February
the scholars presented a paper at the Athens Acropol Museum and
declared that neither the ferman nor the letter could be found in the
Turkish Ottoman archives, calling the British claim of ownership
into question. 


            Lord Elgin and friends ingesting civilization.