Antiquities

[ewx]

I came back from the British Museum with a Rosetta Stone jigsaw. I've finished the Hieroglypics and Demotic and am working on the Greek at the moment.

Last night my eyes were picking out Greek letters in the texture on the ceiling.

I took a lot of photos.

The parthenon frieze - perhaps better known as the Elgin marbles - provide a good opportunity to reflect on the rights and wrongs of carrying this stuff off to Britain, the same question applying to much of the material on display. Putting it all on display in one place certainly has value for the people who can get to that place, and London is not exactly out of the way; but I still can't help but feel that the Greeks and Egyptians have a point in wanting things back.

(The fairly numerous Assyrian artefacts are surely better off in London than today's Iraq, mind.)

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

You propose that the Greeks should be employing a medium, then, rather than lobbying the people who actually have their bits of rock.

[gerald_duck]

I propose that they should just face the fact the Elgin Marbles aren't theirs any more.

Or perhaps the UK should ask for the USA back. After all, it's not really our fault George III was a bit of an idiot.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

By the same token we should have retained all our colonies in Africa and Asia?

[gerald_duck]

Indeed. Though we ought still to be part of the Roman Empire, really.

The problem with trying to undo history is how far back one ought to go, and how we go about second-guessing the winding forward again to the present.

In the case of the Elgin Marbles, we got them by what in those days passed for lawful authority; we don't even have to rely on right of conquest.

The dismantling of the British Empire was much more about the dissipated strength of the British military machine after WWII and the pragmatic infeasibility of retaining the Dominions Overseas than it was about any moral debate. Africa has most certainly not been reinstated anything like how it was before Britain came along: the current patchwork of nations bears little resemblance to the previous tribal structures. Although millions of Africans now have the holy grail of Democracy, I'm not sure in practical terms many of them are better off. A more gradual devolution, possibly over the course of a couple of generations, might have worked a whole bunch better.

I'd much rather be having the pragmatic discussion about how best to stabilise Africa than the moral discussion about whose greatⁿ-grandfather did what to whose. Of course things won't work if there's friction between some proposed solution and the perceived historical grievances of a people, but that's moved out of the realm of history and into sociology and politics — whether or not the grievance is genuine matters little when trying to find a solution.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

You are relying on right of conquest there. The Turks were not invited to rule Greece, they took it by force of arms.