Posted on 02/12/2011 8:41:59 AM PST by eleni121
One hundred years after American explorer Hiram Bingham took tens of thousands of artefacts from the Incan city of Machu Picchu back to his alma mater, Yale University is sending them home.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
You have it mostly right about the historical context.
Elgin made deals with the local Sultan’s reps to start chopping the frieze off.
Melina says it better here:
http://www.greece.org/parthenon/marbles/speech.htm
If you had ever been to Peru, you would not make such a stoopid statement.
No street bazaars in Peru, huh?
We have street bazaars in D.C. and NYC. So? Obviously you have not been to Peru, NYC or D.C.
Never knew! Now I know.
You make an awful lot of soup from a single oyster.
Most ancient monuments disappear over time as they are recycled for building materials. It's also interesting that the austerely beautiful Greek sculptures we so admire were originally painted and gilded in strong vibrant colors, something like a Sacred Heart Santo in a Mexican Church.
Kinda funky!
I believe the way you present your case is simply
a straw man argument with the word “moral” added
to give it authority. Frankly, it sounds like
a liberal rationale from the UN committee on
“first peoples”.
Many whole countries were conquered by invading
armies and then settled. Now, who has “moral
ownership”? I suspect you are living on a piece
of land that was captured from another group at
one time or another. Have you attempted to find
the “moral owner” and return it yet?
The original creators and owners are DEAD. Gone.
Not coming back. The new owners can do what they
wish with their property. If they choose to give
it to a successor government, great. If not,
great.
I did have someone steal my lawnmower once and
then sell it...
ampu
Hiram and I covered this for the Daily News.
We were planning on sending the frieze back to New Haven when Lord Elgin stepped in.
As for the rest-— the horrific explosion was followed by Morosini the Venetian general causing additional damage to the building by unsuccessful attempts to remove the sculptures of the west pediment.
An interesting vignette by Byron:
“Heard some curious extracts from the life of Morosini, the blundering Venetian, who blew up the Acropolis of Athens with a bomb, and be damned to him!”
(Byron, A Self Portrait, in his Own Words, Peter Quennell, editor, Oxford Press, 1990, pg. 249).
Eleni mou, why the surprise? This is FR after all. What would kafirs and wogs like us...or most anyone else east of the Adriatic, if not the Channel or south of the Rio Grande, know about ownership of our own patrimony? We should be thankful to the Great WASP Fathers that we are even allowed to exist....
Well then straw is lots better than hot funky air.
The rest of what you post is anarchist nihilistic crap.
And what’s worse you don’t even know it.
Not as to personal property held by a thief. That's called conversion at best and theft at worst.
Do they have a street bazaar there?
But where there's life there's hope.
We Greek Christians try to be optimistic. After all we invented most everything ...which the “great wasp fathers” are still trying to figure out.
Good.
Maybe they would like to purchase some artifacts.
Otherwise they can piss off.
“I have a friend who has an intricate Mayan stone carving which stands about 18” high that he brought back from Honduras back in the early ‘70s.
His brother in Honduras was a sugar cane farmer and while plowing a new area on the plantation he unearthed a small mound which contained a number of these artifacts. Unfortunately they were all destroyed except for the one my friend brought back to the states.”
Surely you must have some comment, elenil21
Instead of name calling, please point out an error in what I posted - unless you’d rather just call names, which isn’t very convincing.
ampu
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