The Parthenon Marbles

The Case for Reunification

Christopher Hitchens

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781844672523
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786631817
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Art & Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

The Parthenon Marbles (formerly known as the Elgin Marbles), designed and executed by Pheidias to adorn the Parthenon, are perhaps the greatest of all classical sculptures. In 1801, Lord Elgin, then ambassador to the Turkish government, had chunks of the frieze sawn off and shipped to England, where they were subsequently seized by Parliament and sold to the British Museum to help pay off his debts.

This scandal, exacerbated by the inept handling of the sculptures by their self-appointed guardians, remains unresolved to this day. In his fierce, eloquent account of a shameful piece of British imperial history, Christopher Hitchens makes the moral, artistic, legal and political case for re-unifying the Parthenon frieze in Athens.

The opening of the New Acropolis Museum emphatically trumps the British Museum's long-standing (if always questionable) objection that there is nowhere in Athens to house the Parthenon Marbles. With contributions by Nadine Gordimer and Professor Charalambos Bouras, The Parthenon Marbles will surely end all arguments about where these great treasures belong, and help bring a two-centuries-old disgrace to a just conclusion.

Appendix 1

The Present Location of the Parthenon Marbles

The metopes, frieze and pediment sculptures are presently located as follows:

Metopes

Eastern side: The Battle of the Giants.

All fourteen panels are preserved in position.

Western side: The Battle of the Amazons.

All fourteen panels are preserved in position.

Northern side: The Trojan War.

Eleven of the thirty-two panels, and some fragments, are preserved, either in position or in the Acropolis Museum. The preserved panels (as numbered by A. Michaelis in Der Parthenon, 1871) are metopes I–III, XXIV–XXV, and XXVII–XXXII. Metopes IV–XXIII and XXVI are missing.

Southern side: The struggle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs.

	In detail:
I	In position
II	In British Museum
III	In British Museum
IV	In British Museum; the heads of the figures are in Copenhagen
V	In British Museum; part of the centaur’s head is in Würzburg
VI	In British Museum
VII	In British Museum; the Lapith’s head is in the Louvre, the head of the centaur is in the Acropolis Museum
VIII	In British Museum
IX	In British Museum; the centaur’s head is in the Acropolis Museum
X	In the Louvre
XI	Destroyed; some fragments are in the Acropolis Museum
XII	In Acropolis Museum
XIII	Missing
XIV	Missing
XV	Missing
XVI	In Acropolis Museum; one of the heads is in the Vatican Museum
XVII	Missing; a fragment of a figure is in the Acropolis Museum
XVIII	Missing
XIX	Missing; a fragment of a figure is in the Acropolis Museum
XX	Destroyed
XXI	Missing; a fragment is in the Acropolis Museum
XXII	Missing
XXIII	Missing
XXIV	Missing; a fragment of a figure is in the Acropolis Museum
XXV	Missing
XXVI	In British Museum
XXVII	In British Museum
XXVIII	In British Museum
XXIX	In British Museum
XXX	In British Museum
XXXI	In British Museum
XXXII	In British Museum

Frieze

The Great Panathenaic Procession.

The frieze originally consis...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface to the 2008 Edition
• Introduction to the 2008 Edition
• Foreword to the 1997 Edition
• Foreword to the 1987 Edition
• The Parthenon in History
• The Elgin Marbles
• The Restitution Works on the Acropolis Monuments
• Appendix 1: The Present Location of the Parthenon Marbles
• Appendix 2: The Commons Debate 1816
• Appendix 3: The Parthenon Gallery in the New Acropolis Museum
• Index