The British newspaper “The Telegraph” had revealed that the president of the British Museum, where the sculpted marbles are preserved, was in the process of concluding an agreement with Athens for their return to Greece.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
Greek hopes to recover friezes from the Parthenon held by the United Kingdom seem to move away. The British Minister of Culture, Michelle Donelan, said excluded, Wednesday, January 11, a return to Greece sculpted marbles from the Parthenon, exhibited at the British Museum in London, rejecting information according to which the museum and Athens finalized an agreement. p>
“I was very clear on this subject: I do not think they [friezes] should return to Greece,” said the minister on the BBC. The president of the British Museum, George Osborne, “would agree with me: we should not send them back, and in fact, they belong here to the United Kingdom, where we have taken care of them” -It added.
Since 1983 and an official request from the Minister of Greek Culture, actress Melina Mercouri, Greece demands the return of a 75 -meter frieze detached from the Parthenon as well as one of the famous caryatids from the ‘ Erechtheion, a small ancient temple also on the rock of the Acropolis, all two masterpieces of the British Museum. London said that the sculptures were “legally acquired” in 1802 by the British diplomat Lord Elgin, who sold them to the British Museum. But Greece argues that it is a “looting” committed when the country was under Ottoman occupation.
a “cultural exchange” mentioned
On January 4, the British newspaper The Telegraph had revealed that the museum president was concluding an agreement with Athens for the return to Greece of these treasures in The framework of a long-term loan, a “cultural exchange” which would bypass a British law of 1963 which prohibits the museum from yielding or selling objects from its Collection . The Greek media had already reported in December 2022 that secret negotiations have been underway for a year between Mr. Osborne and the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“I think that his point of view on this subject has been misinterpreted and portrayed in an erroneous way. He [George Osborne] will not send them back. It is not his intention. He has no desire to Do it, “swept the Minister of Culture. “The concept of a loan over a hundred years has also been mentioned, but that is certainly not what he forecasts either,” she added, saying that a return of these sculptures does not open “Pandora’s box”.
The pressure has been accentuated in recent years for Western museums to make works, especially obtained in colonial periods, to their country of origin.