Posted on 10/21/2014 4:44:56 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
In February 2014, while promoting his World War Two film, The Monuments Men, Hollywood A-List actor George Clooney declared that Britain should send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece. Despite claiming they came from the Pantheon in Rome rather than the Parthenon in Athens (and also that they had been taken by Lord "Eljin"), he felt that returning them was now appropriate.
This was fiercely controversial territory. However, once the furore had died down, most people wrote it off as a kooky PR stunt.
Until last week, when it emerged that George Clooney’s new wife, Amal Clooney, a lawyer specialising in human rights law (but not as far as we know the law of museums or antiquities), declared she was advising the Greek government on the return of the marbles to Greece.
Speaking publicly to the media about the matter, Amal Clooney said that Greece had “just cause” to demand the return of the marbles, which she said had been taken illegally by Lord Elgin early in the 19th century, a fact Britain should be embarrassed about.
However, her assertion that Elgin took the marbles illegally is plain wrong, and flatly contradicts all serious histories of the marbles, as well as the reasoned findings of legal experts, and a parliamentary select committee which examined the matter in minute detail.
Furthermore, any art lover who has read up the real story will know that the collection of marbles in the British Museum simply would not exist today without Elgin because they were being systematically destroyed in Athens. If Elgin had not intervened, they would be a mere memory, like the Afghani Buddhas at Bamiyan, dynamited into oblivion by the Taliban in 2001.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Elgin Marbles ping.
Thought for sure the headline said anal Clooney
Keep the Marbles in Britain.
Britain should send a message to Greece == “Marble Labe”
We’ll take their marbles AND their cool slogans.
I guess that “m” in the first name is maybe a double “n”?
So Greece lost their marbles; explains a lot.
Yep.
someone should give the Clooneys back their brains...
That didn't go over well with the guide.
Elgin always claimed he had written “permission” to strip the Parthenon — no one can produce a such a document. And even if it existed, is it okay for the Turkish sultan who was in charge after the Ottomans conquered Greece to give away the artistic treasure of the Greeks? I don’t think so.
Even if you accept the argument that Elgin saved them from neglect and decay, Britain should now return the sculptures. And they should be restored to the temple frieze.
Greece is not in the same position as Egypt
And some people say Americans don’t have maps.
Hooray for Elgin, I say.
Britain should keep them.
Well, indeed. And I am in agreement that Greece is far too unstable to guarantee the safety of the marbles.
Keep the Elgin Marbles in Britain!
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