15th November 2021
No sensible person can deny that the exhibition of the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum is awesome.
To walk into the relevant room at the museum is breathtaking.
But.
The splendid display by itself does not justify the British Museum holding on to them – there needs to be a more compelling reason for retention than how the artefacts are being presented.
For instance: were the marbles lawfully acquired by the museum?
The British Museum states that the acquisition of the marbles was sound:
“Lord Elgin’s activities were thoroughly investigated by a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 and found to be entirely legal.”
*
Beware of adverbs: and you will see the word ‘thoroughly’ is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
But putting that word aside, you would expect the British museum to realise that title in property is not (and cannot) be determined by a parliamentary select committee.
A report by a parliamentary select committee is irrelevant as to who owned the marbles and whether the acquisition was sound.
A parliamentary select committee cannot determine or approve ‘title’ – the legal right of ownership in a property.
One suspects the British Museum knows this, hence the deft insertion of the word ‘thoroughly’.
Perhaps the British Museum should have said is was a superly-duperly-thorough investigation, so as to clinch the point.
*
But.
That there was even a sound legal transaction to begin with is disputed by many, including the American academic lawyer David Rudenstine.
Rudenstine avers in this fascinating paper that the parliamentary committee did not see any original legal documentation – but instead accepted an English translation of an Italian translation of the Ottoman original:
If Rudenstine is correct then the assertion by the British Museum that there was a ‘thorough’ investigation by the parliamentary committee cannot be correct.
And this is apart from the legal fact that a parliamentary committee cannot determine or verify title anyway.
In essence: there was – and is – no original documentary proof that title in the marbles ever passed to Elgin to begin with.
(There is also no record of the transaction in the Ottoman archives.)
And Rudenstine shows that the (supposed) Italian translation of the Ottoman instrument (and thereby the English translation) is not credible and is flawed.
Rudenstine goes so far to say that the Italian translation could only have been a fraudulent instrument.
This is what can happen when there is translation, upon translation, upon translation.
There can be unreliable narratives.
*
‘On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth-century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German monk toward the end of the fourteenth century.’
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
*
A previous post on this blog set out the legal principle known in its Latin form nemo dat quod non habet.
In plain language: a person cannot have a greater property right – title – in a thing than the person who provides them with that thing.
Garbage in, garbage out – legally speaking.
And if you do not have title to a thing, it does not matter how well you subsequently treat that thing, you still do not own it.
It is not yours.
It never was.
If the Elgin Marbles never did belong to Elgin this means title could never have passed to the British Museum.
And if the British Museum never acquired title then a great deal of the sophisticated and elegant defence of the British Museum must fall away.
The facts that the marbles have been looked after and are on show for the benefit of the world are wonderful and welcome – but they are also legally irrelevant.
(If the position were different, and there was a reliable copy of the conveyance instrument for the marbles, then it would be this blogpost that would fall away instead – and I emphasise this post is not about the general merits of repatriation of the marbles but the legalistic argument being used to justify retention.)
*
It is reported that Greece is making another request for return of the marbles.
And it looks like the prime minister is resorting to the legalistic argument as a defence:
Greek govt says PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis will ask Boris Johnson to return the Elgin Marbles during talks in London tomorrow. In March, the PM said they would not be sent back as they had been 'legally acquired by Lord Elgin under the appropriate laws of the time'
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) November 15, 2021
Well.
Let’s see if the United Kingdom prime minister has an answer if the Greek prime minister asks for proof that the marbles were ‘legally acquired by Lord Elgin under the appropriate laws of the time’.
******
This daily law and policy blog needs your help to continue – for the benefit of you and other readers.
Each free-to-read post takes time and opportunity cost.
This law and policy blog provides a daily post commenting on and contextualising topical law and policy matters.
If you value this free-to-read and independent legal and policy commentary – both for the you and for the benefit of others – please do support through the Paypal box above, or become a Patreon subscriber.
*****
You can also have each post sent by email by filling in the subscription box above (on an internet browser) or on a pulldown list (on mobile).
******
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated.
Comments will not be published if irksome.
Personally, I would like to see them in the new museum in Athens, irrespective of the legal under-pinning. Anyway, absence of evidence (of an Ottoman document) diminishes the claim, given the other documents, but doesn’t kill it. Find another compromise that allows the marbles to have a holiday in the Sun.
It is not just the absence of evidence – the Italian translation may itself be incredible.
And since when did a Parliamentary Select Committee get bogged down in the minutiae of facts (to achieve a desired result)?
Absolutely fascinating.
An observation on Umberto Eco: a fourteenth century monk (scholar) would have written in Latin, the universal language of the West at the time. For any scholar Latin was a second first language, not a second language.
An Ottoman document – if one were to be found – would only be valid if the Ottomans actually had lawful possession of the Parthenon marbles. If a previous legitimate government had given title to the marbles – for instance as part of a peace treaty – then the Ottomans would have an arguable case for ownership and hence the ability to give or sell the marbles to Lord Elgin. But what if the Ottomans were only in control of the marbles by way of conquest? Is ius belli an adequate foundation for Ottoman ownership? Even if an Ottoman document transferring ownership were found it would not end the matter. On the one hand the French remain in possession of some great works seized by Napoleon (although others were returned); but I suspect that an argument from ius belli would be dismissed today.
As a matter of convenience, long established possession tends to establish title. Nobody today would seek to take off the Duke of Devonshire the abbey lands that his ancestor Andrew Cavendish obtained from the monstrous rapinage of Henry VIII and return them to the church. A gross and overt breach of the first article of Magna Carta does not suffice to set aside the voluminous documentation supporting the Cavendish ownership of their estates.
Long established and long lasting claims can be backed up by documents – some of which undoubtedly forgeries. An interesting example is the Donation of Constantine, which for centuries was held to be genuine and to give the Pope dominion over all islands. In 1155, John of Salisbury obtained for Henry II of England the status of Lord of Ireland from Pope Adrian IV, a grant which could not have been made but for the general (although misplaced) acceptance of the Donation.
I think the modern (post-2009) Acropolis museum knocks the spots off the BM Elgin room.
There is common saying, perhaps ill-founded, that possession is nine tenths of the law. Could you enlighten us on that? Is it that the burden of proof in a property dispute lies more on the person that wants it than the person that has it?
Now, if the Gibraltar that Philip V of Spain ceded was not Philip’s, nor Queen Anne’s, how could he cede it? King Charles III of Spain wants to know. For what it’s worth, I do not believe it is presently Austrian…
The new museum in Athens would be a worthy place to display the Parthenon marbles: arguably as good if not better than the British Museum. But at the moment the marbles are under the control of the British Museum, who at the vary least have some sort of claim to ownership based on possession.
So I look forward someone claiming better title than the British Museum – the Hellenic Republic, perhaps? – bringing a legal action to establish their ownership, once and for all. Until then – and absent the trustees of the British Museum changing their mind about the museum’s claim to ownership – the grumbling does not get us very far.
Perhaps the best suggestion I have heard – I think it was Mary Beard who mentioned it, but someone else may have thought of it first – is that an exact replica, as nearly indistinguishable as possible, should be made of each piece, and then either the original or the copy of each piece (selected at random) should be sent to Athens. So each museum would have a perfect version, roughly half of which is original and half of which is a replica, No casual observer would be able to tell the difference, and no one (or hardly anyone outside the two museums) would know which is which. Everyone would be equally happy and unhappy.
The room currently used to display the Elgin Marbles could be repurposed to display the Bayeux tapestry – which France will no doubt return asap to the land where it was made and of whose history it is a such a vital record.
Regardless of the (very dubious) legality of the sale of the Parthenon Marbles to Lord Elgin, they belong in Athens. The UK has taken good care of them but their return home is long overdue. The marbles will be just as accessible to the world in Athens as they are in London. The idea that London is a better location is hard to argue in this day and age.
Sadly I fear our current government may seek to characterise any Greek request for the return of the marbles as being part of the “woke” culture war and an attack on our own heritage.
I am reading Alice Procter’s The Whole Picture, previously commended by this blog, and in turn recommend it wholeheartedly. She makes a compelling case for museums returning the loot of empire that was seized by force or fraud (and which would be empire by proxy in the case of the Marbles, as Lord Elgin took advantage of the subjugation of the Greeks by the Turks).
I am hopeful that public opinion is beginning to shift, especially that of the educated public, who are the museums’ mainstay (and of course many of the visitors at the big national museums will be from overseas and are unlikely to be swayed by British nationalist sentiment). Perhaps there will come a time when the sight of works like the Elgin Marbles or the Benin Bronzes in a British museum will be as shameful to onlookers as that of an elephant or a dolphin performing tricks in captivity.
Will Amal Clooney come back on the scene? I recall she was dropped when the Greeks withdrew their claim in 2015. I wonder what has changed for them to reiterate their claim now.
The suggestion seems to be that if there existed a conveyance from the Ottoman Sultan then all would be legal and legitimate. But if title were held by him at the time then wouldn’t the rights pass to his successors, and surely they don’t include the modern Hellenic Republic? Or if the search is for the lineal descendants of the original owners, might their claim for possession not be undermined by those ancient Athenians presumably having used slave labour wholesale for the construction of the Parthenon and production of its various decorations, including the Marbles?
In general terms we have developed a degree of awareness and sensitivity for the conservation and fruition of works of art that was unknown in the nineteen century. So in all fairness, by today’s standards the abduction of the Partenon marbles was a disgrace. As much as it seems to me to be an aesthetic blaphemy the way in which the marbles are assembled at the BM, inside-out, as it were, inside an edifice and not outside it on the temple’s pediment, so that the sequence can only be read in reverse order.
However I do appreciate DAG’s position, i.e., a lawyer evaluating documents (whose consistency is at least dubious) who, speaking as a competent professional, will not enter into the controversy over whether the bone of contention should be returned to their original owners.
But leaving the legal aspects aside for a moment, I would like to add that at the time of their conquest of Greece, some two centuries before Christ, the Romans were little more than a crowd of peasants and warriors. So much so that a century later Horace in one of his Epistulae wrote that «Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agrestis Latio» (A conquered Greece conquered her savage victor and brought the arts to rural Latium) – From an artistic and aesthetic point of view, Rome would never have been such a success without the essential contribution of the superior Hellinistic civilization.
Hence I sincerely feel that England, too, should recognize that and return the marbles to Athens.
In 1816, the British Government committed fraud and since then successive British have also committed fraud by repeating the same position.
There is no legal basis for their argument.
David thank you for a fascinating article which has provoked great thought.
We do know that Lord Elgin paid someone a considerbale amount of money for the marbles and we do know he acquired them.
So a contract of some sort appears to have occurred. Title can pass under a contract provided the seller to Lord Elgin held good title.
The question then is did the person selling them have good title under Ottoman Turkish law? We will likely never know the answer to that question.
A more interesting question is:- if, and to the extent, English law applies was Lord Elgin an honest (or bona fida) purchaser for valuable consideration without notice?
If yes, my understanding was he would then acquire good title in equity and could pass that title to the Mueseum.
While Lord Elgin did spend a considerable sum on the acquisition of the Marbles, he didn’t actually buy them. The money was spent on paying his team in Athens, (including no doubt some “sweeteners” for locals), and on the transportation of 200 tons of Pentelic marble from Athens to the UK – this needed several shipments, including one where the boat & cargo sank and had to be recovered several months later. In fact at one stage he declared a shipment as being “stones of no value”.
The disputed document simply gave his team permission to take what they wanted.
Interesting though the legal arguments are, are they the most important part of the matter?
If we assume for the moment that the BM has legal title, the contract would have been between the Ottoman government and Lord Elgin (either on behalf of the British government or on his own account). The Ottoman regime was in Athens as a colonial power. We can’t know whether they were there with the consent of the Greek people, but it must be probable that they weren’t. In this situation why would a Greek government ever agree that an agreement made by the Ottomans was binding on them?
I would like to think that the future of the marbles should depend on what is best for them. Personally I rather like the Mary Beard proposal.
“Interesting though the legal arguments are, are they the most important part of the matter?”, etcetera, etcetera.
I am under the impression that yours is a futile argument: taking it to the extreme, would you conclude that it is worth debating over the nazi sack of works of art in occupied Italy and France?
No, I wouldn’t. Both the moral and, I suspect, the legal arguments are different. That’s the trouble with taking arguments to extremes.
The supposed ownership of the marbles by the Ottoman occupiers is exactly like the ownership of French and Italian works of art by Nazi occupiers. The Nazis didn’t own the art and any such art removed is certainly theft. Similarly the Ottomans did not own the Parthenon and it was not theirs to dispose of.
The situation of Athens in the early 1800s, under Ottoman control since 1458, is very different to the Nazi looting of works from France or Italy in the 1940s.
Parallels between historical circumstances in different countries, hundreds of years apart, are rarely exact, but closer to the former might be the Cyrus cylinder (excavated in 1879 in what is now Iran with permission from the governing Ottoman authorities). Closer to the latter might be the Benin bronzes (looted from what is now Nigeria in 1897). Or indeed Veronese’s Wedding at Cana, still in the Louvre after being looted from Venice in the French Revolutionary Wars. Or works from German collections still in Russia after the Second World War.
Undoubtedly there is a moral argument for return in each case, and perhaps policy here should be governed more by morality than legality. But if there is a convincing legal argument for return, let us hear it.
The situation is different in terms of the length of occupation, but morally it’s the same. The Parthenon is Greek heritage and what a Turkish Sultan decided over 200 years ago does not affect the Greek case for the return of the marbles. It might set a precedent for the other instances of course but that should not affect the decision.
The legal claim of British ownership has already been heard and appears weak. The moral claim of the Greeks is in contrast unanswerable and should be accepted promptly and with good grace in my opinion.
Whether there is legal title or not, Mary Beard’s suggestion is a good one, although it stops short of being right, I think. As it is now possible to create an identical – at least to visual inspection – facsimile of the original, and it is therefore perfectly possible for the BM to maintain its beautiful display without the originals, it’s difficult to understand why these should not all be returned to Athens, which also has a stunning display of the depleted Parthenon marbles, but within sight of their original setting.
After all, such a thing has a good precedent: Dippy the diplodocus that dominated the grand entrance of the Natural History Museum from 1905 to 2017 & was an instantly recognisable symbol of the NHM is no original fossil but a cast made of one that was & remains on display in a museum in Pittsburgh.
You could reverse that argument, as a display of replicas in Athens would for most purposes be just as good as the originals, and indeed better than the gaps that are left at present.
Incidentally, while it was there for as long as many people can remember, Dippy was only moved to the main hall of the NHM in 1979. Before then it was displayed in the reptile hall.
Well you could, but sending replicas to Athens would never be seen as an acceptable alternative. I suspect it would be rightly taken as an insult.
With respect to Mary Beard, I don’t think replicas should be put on display in London either after the marbles are returned. Researchers could use scans of the originals and I doubt replicas would be of much interest to the general public. I’d rather see the newly empty gallery occupied by some of the many artefacts currently kept in storage for lack of space to display them.
I’ve been trying to track down where I first heard that proposal some years ago. I think it was on her blog, but much of that is now hidden behind the TLS paywall. I may be misremembering: perhaps it was someone else, it may have been made more in jest, like the baby that Solomon proposed to divide between two women claiming to be the mother.
On checking, the gaps at the Acropolis Museum are less than I thought, as they already have plaster casts of the BM’s pieces, displayed alongside their own original pieces. For example – https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/parthenon-east-pediment-pair-horses Between the two museums, they have most of the surviving sculptures from the Acropolis, with a few in other museums, but about half are lost.
The stunning Acropolis Museum does have good quality replicas of all the pieces of the Parthenon currently in the BM; they are on display in order to show the sculpture as a whole ensemble. They are lighter coloured than the original pieces that they are alongside so that there is no confusion.
The five Caryatids that are still in Athens are displayed with a gap emphasising the absence of their sister who is in London.
I read in the Telegraph 16-November that Johnson said the issue of the return of the Elgin Marbles was not a matter for the government and that the Greek government would have to take up the issue with the British Museum. Now I’m not a lawyer, but doesn’t the 1963 British Museum Act, which forbids the museum of disposing of its holdings except in very limited circumstances, bolstered by the high court ruling of 2005 to disallow a British Museum decision to allow the return of certain Nazi looted art to their rightful owners mean that the British Museum is prevented by an act of parliament to return the Elgin marbles? And thus is it not clearly a government issue?
Reading the Prof. Rudenstine paper that is quoted and referenced, it would seem that at the time of writing, Rudenstine had not seen the actual document that he is discussing.
His conclusion that it is a document “that defined the activities that Elgin wanted his workers on the Acropolis to conduct and that Pisani presented to the Porte for consideration.” is simply untenable, given that the first paragraph reads:
“Traduzione d’una lettera di S.E. il Kaimecam Pascia, diretta al Guidice, ed anche al voivoda d’Athen.”
which is usually translated as:
“Translation of a letter from H.E. the Kaimakam Pasha, addressed to the Justice and also to the Voivode of Athens.”.
and so his further assertion that “the Italian document is not a translation of the 1801 Ottoman document” is not a valid conclusion.
I’m sure that the debate on the appropriate disposition of the Parthenon Marbles will continue, probably until they do return to Athens, but I don’t think the paper is a significant contribution to that debate.
On further re-reading, the author of the paper had seen a photocopy of the Italian document, which would certainly be enough for proper textual analysis. However, the only use he makes of this photocopy is to highlight the fact that the document is not signed by the Kaimacam; he has completely ignored the beginning of the document, which I quote above, and which clearly invalidates his conclusions.
‘clearly’
Oh dear – at a stroke you weaken your position. If you have to describe a proposition as ‘clear’, it is not.
Criticised then ignored – the sad fate of the commenter in the wild-west world of internet blogs.
Still, your blog, your rules.
I take a little amusement from the likelihood that I, in some small way, provided inspiration for your blog today.
The headline is a question, but cunningly worded so Betteridge’s law does not apply. The answer is that it does not matter. After sufficient time has passed, practical considerations mean that the law no longer matters. In the specific case of the marbles, if the acquisition was not legal at the time, the Ottoman Empire (or whoever was alleged to be the owner at the time) had plenty of time to object. It is now far too late to challenge the transfer on legal grounds.
Since there is no suggestion that the marbles will be reassembled into the original position, why should one museum have them rather than another? They were made over 2000 years ago. Modern Greece may be in the same location, but the cultural inheritance has spread far and wide. Even if you try to trace the descendants of the original creators, commissioners, owners etc, you’ll find virtually all Europeans are descended from them.
Why does seizing by force the land that a building stands upon grant you ownership of parts of that building which were previously removed?
And it seems much more sensible, if the artifacts are really as important as claimed, for them to be split across multiple sites to avoid possible destruction – which has happened to pther parts of the Parthenon.
The Ottoman Empire didn’t object to Elgin removing the marbles. Presumably they weren’t bothered about Athenian heritage.
Because one museum is in Athens, where the Parthenon is. The influence of Greek Culture may well be global but that doesn’t mean the Greek Culture belongs to the world. We have no ownership of it, so why should we be better custodians of part of it than the Greeks? Apart from anything else returning the marbles to Athens would reunite them with the carvings Elgin didn’t remove for whatever reason.
You seem to be assuming that in the time between the marbles being made and the Ottoman Empire invading, the land had been held by the same people. This is clearly wrong.
We are all descended from the Greeks (the ones who have any descendants at all). In fact, we’re all descended from everyone who was alive only 1000 years ago (the usual example being Charlemagne) – see https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/were-all-descended-from-charlemagne-and-related-to-each-other/
No. It’s not a good idea to let every country have a bit of the Parthenon for safekeeping. Coutries should have no such rights. If such artificial dispersion were to be done it would be to institutions – not the countries they are in. The UK has no rights to the marbles – it’s the British Museum that does. If the museum were to be destroyed, anyone should have equal rights to save its ancient treasures.
That isn’t what I assumed at all. Who was occupying the Parthenon between the Athenians who built is and the Turks is irrelevant to my argument.
The fact that every European has a common ancestor in Charlemagne does not mean we are all descended from Greeks, or even Charlemagne. Charlemagne is just one of everyone’s ancestors. We are also all descended from the French, the Germans, the Spanish etc. As an argument we all have a right to Greek cultural heritage it is I credibly weak.
You are misrepresenting what I said then arguing against it. I did not say the UK had a claim on the marbles. I was extending your idea that it was better that the marbles are not not all in the same place to every country having a piece of it to argue that it isn’t a good idea. I think it is Athenian heritage and if they want it back we should facilitate that, regardless of the British Museum’s shaky claim of ownership.
Typos:
*the Athenians who built it
*is incredibly weak.
I’m afraid that in that case I don’t follow your argument for the return at all. If it’s not on the basis of culture or ancestry, what is it based on? What is “Athenian”? If it means whoever happens to live in the vicinity of Athens today, it’s pretty wierd as a basis for ownership.
And “The fact that every European has a common ancestor in Charlemagne does not mean we are all descended from … Charlemagne” – yes, that is very much what it means. Your great-great…grandfather was Charlemagne. Many times over through different paths and with different numbers of “great”. As was mine and everyone else European, and a fair share of others too who now live in America, Australia, South Africa etc.
I said Athenian since Greece didn’t exist at the time. If you can’t understand the correlation between the ownership of the city-state of Athens then with that of the nation-state of Greece now (which includes Athens) then that’s your problem not mine. Do you seriously believe the Parthenon and its contents do not belong to Greece?
Re Charlemagne, I didn’t dispute the concept, just that it means we are all of Greek descent as you claim. It has been calculated that the most recent common ancestor of all Europeans occurs about 40 generations ago, in the time of Charlemagne’s rule. That does not mean we all have common ancestry, far from it. Charlemagne, or some other individual of his time, is just one the two trillion antecedents (2 to the power 40) each of us have going back 40 generations. There weren’t that many people back then of course which is where the shared ancestor idea arises. This is however just a calculation, not real genealogy. Even if you take this literally as everyone being related to Charlemagne it doesn’t imply we are also all descended from Greeks. We might all have some ancestors from Greece, but logically people from Greece will have vastly more Greek ancestors than people from the UK. Thus they have a greater claim on Greek heritage.
Anybody who has visited the original site and the world class museums in Athens (and Greece itself must have been the focus of more archaeological and curative expertise than anywhere else in the world) feels any arguments about the legality of this imperialistic vandalism by Elgin and his successors are irrelevant. It was clearly theft legitimised between a commercialistic occupying power (the Ottoman Turks) and a patronising Western imperialist power (Britain) I personally can’t visit the British Museum or go near it without a deep sense of shame and revulsion. The acquisitive mercenary impulses that created the Museum from the dilettante collection of Hans Sloane (whose marriage into the aristocratic Cadogan family created the large real estate empire in London hich is currently second in wealth to the Duke of Westminster) tends to underline the basic economic principle at work here: the acquisition of property to create rentier value. The Parthenon marbles represent cultural property from which the British Museum and the British nation is receiving a cultural rent. A complete boycott of this insidious institution by the public needs to be organised. It belongs at the bottom of the sea along with the Bristol Calton statue and the Oxford Cecil Rhodes statue.
I have had an interest in the Elgin marbles since my first lectures – on ancient stature in the BM – as a student at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the mid 1980s under Prof Robin Cormack, also known as Mary Beard’s husband. It was common belief then (and thence subsequently pushed) that Lord Elgin saved the statues from further plunder, deterioration and degradation, not least under the polluted Athenian air. This was based on examination and comparison of the pediment sculptures as they were in 1674, as seen in the drawings by French artist Jacques Carrey. 13 years later, the Parthenon suffered the devastating damage when a bullet during the Venetian siege of 1687 ignited a gunpowder storage magazine on the Acropolis, we know the Venetian general responsible for this also unsuccessfully tried to loot some of the major statues of the western pediment, which crashed down and were abandoned, broken. However it would appear that Lord Elgin did not gain any decree or firman from the Ottoman Sultan to remove the statues, as no original exists of this solemn document in Constantinople, where all copies are kept, just this vague multiple translated document mentioned by DAG here.
It is therefore difficult if not impossible for Britain to justify the continual ownership of these statues, even if they are the jewel of the British Museum.
From an art historian perspective, of course London has more visitors than Athens, and is easier to get to from across the world, thereby opening up these most wonderful examples of world cultural achievement statues to visitors the world over. But this cannot be used as an excuse to keep them in the UK.
British law will of course countenance the fact that they were, in fact looted, and their presence in London is an abuse of power over a country under foreign control.
Now that the Athenians have a purpose built museum, these statues must now be returned to their rightful home. I have read that copies should be made and the statues shared between London and Athens; no Greek person, who rightly considers these statues and the monument the greatest symbol of their culture and artistic achievement, would and should ever accept this. Give them back. Otherwise they will become instead a symbol of British Empire intransigence, thuggery and looting.