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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-07-06 Daily Xml
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Parthenon Sculptures

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (17:35): I move:

That this council—

1. Acknowledges the Parthenon in Greece is an iconic monument of significant Greek cultural heritage and of outstanding universal value as a World Heritage site.

2. Recognises that the Parthenon sculptures—integral parts of the Parthenon—were illicitly removed in an act of archaeological destruction and theft by Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, from 1801-1804, transported to London and then sold to the British Government in 1816.

3. Does not recognise the British Museum trustees and the British government’s claims of legal title to the sections of the Panathenaic frieze, pedimental sculptures and the metopes originally belonging to the Parthenon and which were looted by the Earl of Elgin.

4. Recognises the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Greece in December 2021 for the return or restitution of cultural property to the countries of origin.

5. Supports the recommendation of United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP) in May 2022, calling on the United Kingdom to urgently enter bona fide dialogue with Greece to reach a satisfactory settlement to return the priceless sculptures.

6. Supports the Greek government, the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures and other groups and innumerable individuals from around the world, including Australia, demanding the British Museum returns and reunites its sections of the Parthenon sculptures with those parts on display in the Parthenon Gallery in the magnificent Acropolis Museum, in proximity to and within view of the Parthenon.

7. Calls on the President of the Legislative Council to write to:

(a) the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Rt Hon Boris Johnson;

(b) the Lord Mayor of London, the Rt Hon Vincent Keaveny; and

(c) the Board of Trustees of the British Museum;

to express the views of this council and request that the British Museum and the government of the United Kingdom, in an act of universal goodwill, forthwith take steps to permit the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures to their legitimate permanent historic home, Athens, Greece.

I rise to speak on the motion in my name. It is intended to convey to the British Museum and the British government that this council strongly supports the international call for the immediate restitution of the museum's collection of marble artefacts ransacked from the Parthenon at the turn of the 19th century by Lord Elgin.

If you were to ask people to name the most important cultural monument still standing to this day, three would immediately come to mind: the Great Pyramids and Sphinx of Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome and, arguably the greatest of all, the Parthenon atop the Acropolis in Athens. Can you imagine the uproar today if there was an attempt to remove priceless historical artefacts or interfere with them, as happened to the Parthenon, or outrage if someone came here and chopped off the head of Colonel William Light on Montefiore Hill and took it to a museum overseas?

The Parthenon, even in its breathtaking ruinous majesty, remains an enduring symbol of the legacy the ancient Greeks left us. The indelible image of its stone portico held aloft by imposing hand-carved columns represents the very heart and soul of our modern civilisation, of democracy, justice, learning and art. Its emblematic style has been copied into so many buildings of importance and governance in cities around the world—look around here.

The temple was built for the goddess Athena 2,500 years ago and encrusted with magnificent marble sculptures carved by the master sculptor Phidias. Today, it bears the scars of centuries of war, occupation by foreign powers and the many archaeological looters and vandals who plundered and did much to destroy its beauty, robbing the Greeks of their proud cultural identity. Central to all this is the fight for the return of the much-prized sculptures and frieze looted from the Parthenon by Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, a Scottish nobleman who was Great Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1801 to 1805.

Elgin is almost reminiscent of the character Rene Emile Belloq, a greedy and cunning French archaeologist-cum-treasure hunter who locks horns with rival, Indiana Jones, in the first instalment of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Elgin had cut a dodgy deal with the Turkish rulers who had invaded and occupied Greece centuries earlier to hack off sections of the Parthenon's stunning frieze, pedimental sculptures and metopes. Among them, the stunning head of a horse crudely chopped from a grand chariot figurine. All-up, Elgin took about 75 metres, around half, of the marbles to London during a colourful period in which he had to salvage some of the stripped items from a ship that had sunk, then spending three years in a French prison, followed by a costly divorce.

In 1816, financially desperate Elgin sold off the priceless sculptures for around £35,000 to the British government, which later passed them on through legislation to the British Museum. They are now displayed in a dreary, colourless room known as the Duveen Gallery, which is not befitting of their historic grandeur. As Yana Sistovari, artistic director of Thiasos Theatre Company, put it:

Ripped out of their context and set in the Bloomsbury gloom, they are a sad symbol of pillage, war and colonialism…

At the time when Elgin was flogging them off, the British parliament debated the merits and legalities of Elgin's actions, but caved in to Elgin's claims that the sculptures would be in safer hands in London and that he also had a legitimate bill of sale to support his claim of legal ownership, although nobody has ever sighted that document. Some might argue there may have been some merit in Elgin's argument that the sculptures had a better chance of surviving in London than Athens, considering the political turmoil that existed through that country's tortured history of occupation.

The Acropolis was a strategic stronghold and subjected to sieges and explosions, including one in 1687, a bombardment by the Venetians in 1827 that resulted in damage, and as recent as World War II when the Nazis—among the worst plunderers of treasures and antiquities—occupied Greece and flew the swastika on the Acropolis.

As it turned out, much of what Elgin did not chop off in the temple of Athena still survived, but why would the Turks allow Elgin to vandalise such a sacrilegious monument? Elgin is said to have offered bribes to local Ottoman authorities he knew and who would have had no affinity to ancient relics held so dear by the suppressed Greeks. Fundamentally, the Turkish invaders perhaps did not care less nor want for Greek heritage to survive during their 400 years of occupation.

My late father-in-law, Constantinos Economos, a scholarly font on the history of his birthplace, often gave me history lessons on how the Turks had unsuccessfully tried to wipe out the Greek language, culture and customs. Religious scholars, risking execution if caught, had kept the flames of learning alight in secret rooms in monasteries, some of which can still be seen today.

The Ottomans were eventually overthrown in the uprising of 1821. However, 200 years later the wounds of that brutal occupation have not completely healed, hence the frigid relationship that exists between the predominantly Christian Orthodox Greece and its provocative Muslim neighbour, which coincidentally last month officially changed its name from Turkey (with an 'e') to Turkiye (with an 'i').

From the first photographs ever taken of the Parthenon in August 1839 by Pierre-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, using an imaging technique known as daguerreotype, Elgin's crude desecration of the building's portico can clearly be seen. While the Parthenon can never be built to its former glory, there is hope that much of what was stolen and found its way into private collections and museums can be returned to its ancestral home.

Some countries, including Italy, are starting to do this by returning smaller pieces in their possession, but Britain—among the most notorious of colonial plunderers from nations in their once vast commonwealth, Australia among them—stubbornly refuses to budge, perhaps fearing it could open the floodgates with other museums around the world being pressured to return items whose acquisition may have been illicit.

Well, it is happening quietly. An upside to the worldwide campaign for the return of the Parthenon sculptures is that it has stoked the debate about the ethics surrounding the origins of colonial-era cultural treasures in national collections and whether claims for their return should be recognised.

Major museums are already reviewing their policies, with some returning pieces to their places of origin. Germany's Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees 27 museums and cultural organisations, is returning several looted objects to Cameroon, Nigeria and Namibia. In the largest restitution of cultural artefacts in Scotland's history, Glasgow Museum will return 17 Benin bronzes. The city will also return looted Indian antiquities and Lakota cultural objects from the battlefields at the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Under sweeping reforms, the Smithsonian, with 19 museums in the United States, says it will now consider ethical rather than legal concerns with restitution claims. Museum objects found to have been looted, taken under duress or otherwise unethically sourced are eligible for return to their country of origin. One of its curators, Lonnie G. Bunch III, said in a statement:

There is a growing understanding at the Smithsonian and in the world of museums generally that our possession of these collections carries with it certain ethical obligations to the places and people where the collections originated. Among these obligations is to consider using our contemporary moral norms, what should be in our collections and what should not. This new policy on ethical returns is an expression of our commitment to meet these obligations.

In recent years, we have seen the repatriation of the remains of First Nations people stored in British and overseas museums. So why should it stop there? The British museum also has on display, in its curiously titled 'Enlightenment Room', the Gweagal shield, seized from Indigenous warriors by Captain Cook's landing party in Botany Bay in 1770. Can I suggest here that the South Australian government, through the Premier and our Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, the Hon. Kyam Maher, write to the British Museum requesting loaning the shield to our state as a key exhibit when our Aboriginal museum at Lot Fourteen opens in 2025.

The international movement to have the Panathenaic sculptures returned to Athens was started in earnest in 1980 by the then Greek minister for art and culture, the famed actress Melina Mercouri, who said they represented 'the essence of our Greekness'. Since then, the movement has gathered enormous momentum with the United Nations, all the member states of the European parliament, many influential writers, thinkers, politicians, artists, lawyers, leaders of industry and celebrities joining the chorus of support for the reunification of the sculptures.

In September 2021, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) advocated for the return of the sculptures. In December 2021, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution introduced by Greece for the return or restitution of cultural property to countries of origin. In May this year, UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property (ICPRCP) called on the UK to urgently enter bona fide dialogue with Greece to reach a satisfactory settlement.

The Brits continue to resist in the face of overwhelming public judgement and overtures from Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (I understand the Greek Prime Minister is touring Australia later this year) and his culture minister, Lina Mendoni. The UK Ministry of Culture backed out of discussions after initially agreeing to them.

The British Museum director, Hartwig Fischer, insists that they will not be going back because Greece is not the legal owner and has ruled out an open-ended loan. A former British Museum director, Neil MacGregor, said that they will never be returned, that the issue was yesterday's question and that they were no longer part of the story of the Parthenon but part of another. Whatever that other story is, Mr MacGregor's contemptible assertion does not sit comfortably with the opinion of the world community.

Prominent international jurist, academic and author Geoffrey Robertson, in his most recent book Who Owns History? Elgin's Loot and the Case for Returning Plundered Treasure, describes the trustees of the British Museum as, and I quote, 'the world's largest receivers of stolen property', with much of their loot not even on public display. He accuses the museum of telling a string of carefully constructed lies and half-truths about how the sculptures were saved, salvaged or rescued by Lord Elgin.

The British Museum rejects that the collection was stolen, insisting it has legitimate title to the collection. I will read part of a statement, one of many the museum has made, about this sensitive issue, and I quote:

The British Museum collection is a unique resource to explore the richness, diversity and complexity of all human history and our shared humanity. The strength of the collection is its breadth and depth which allows millions of visitors an understanding of the cultures of the world and how they interconnect—whether through trade, migration, conquest, conflict, or peaceful exchange.

The Parthenon Sculptures are an integral part of that story and a vital element in this interconnected world collection, particularly in the way in which they convey the influences between Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman cultures. We share this collection with the widest possible public, lending objects all over the world and making images and information on over four million objects from the collection available on our website.

They go on to say how they have even lent items to Greek museums, not that that would have left them short. According to information researched by the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, the British Museum holds 108,184 Greek artefacts, of which only 6,493 are on display.

The British Museum has arrogantly argued that the sculptures should not be returned because there was no appropriate place in Greece to display them. However, since 2009, Greece has the perfect home, and it is ready for them. It is the magnificent Acropolis Museum, facing the Parthenon, which I visited twice. I hope to do so again later this year, when I intend expressing to its directors our parliament's support for the sculptures' return.

Millions of visitors each year marvel at the museum's incomplete collection of sculptures from the Parthenon, which fills a sundrenched gallery stoically facing the old building. This motion calls upon the President of this council to write to the Board of Trustees of the British Museum, the Lord Mayor of London and the British Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. Boris Johnson, requesting that, as an act of goodwill, they take immediate steps to permit the reunification.

Sadly, Mr Johnson has become somewhat of a turncoat on the issue, after saying in 2012, when he was Mayor of London, that Greece was the rightful owner. He refuses to put the matter on the agenda in any official talks between the British and Greek governments. So why should we care in Australia? Australia is one of the great bastions for the reunification. To start with, there are more than one million people of either Greek descent or heritage living in this country.

The Australian Parthenon Association, formerly Australians for the Return of the Parthenon Sculptures, headed by David Hill, a former head of the ABC, and supported by Sydney-based lawyer George Vardas, is spearheading the movement in conjunction with international counterparts. More importantly, there is a universal message here and one of enormous international goodwill. Giving back the sculptures will be symbolic of restoring and recognising the rights of nations who had their cultural heritage and property robbed by imperialistic invaders, occupiers and opportunists.

I commend the motion to the chamber. I will serve notice that I intend bringing this to a vote on Wednesday 7 September.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.K. Hunter.

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