‘Recorded Facts’ and ‘Different Stories’: A Response to Catharine Titi

This is an Accepted Manuscript (the author’s version after peer review). The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 16 September 2025 http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03086534.2025.2559395.

Abstract: The article challenges the assertion that the British Museum's acquisition of the Elgin Marbles was unlawful and unethical, arguing that this interpretation of the event is instead factually incorrect and misleading. Historical evidence, including contemporary accounts and archival documents, demonstrates that Elgin acted with official permission from the Ottoman authorities and disproves claims of bribery or self-interested motives. In particular, the article challenges the notion that Elgin intended the sculptures for his private Scottish mansion, emphasising his stated goal of benefiting the fine arts in Great Britain and preserving the antiquities from destruction. The timeline of Elgin's financial situation is also analysed, demonstrating that his offer to sell the Marbles to the British government predated his later financial difficulties and was not a consequence of a failed private museum enterprise. Finally, the article strongly refutes the characterisation of the acquisition as an "imperial act of removal," highlighting how Elgin acted in a personal capacity, without state sponsorship, and that the British government's acquisition was an opportunistic intervention rather than a structured imperial strategy. The article concludes by advocating for a resolution to the debate based on an objective and shared understanding of historical truth, rather than divisive anti-imperialist rhetoric.

Keywords: Elgin Marbles, Parthenon Sculptures, cultural repatriation, imperialism, British Museum

It is often said that Western Civilisation rests on two main pillars: the Bible and the Classical tradition. In both, we can find a strong connection between the concepts of truth and justice, with the former seen as an essential ingredient for the latter. It is so in the book of Proverbs, where he who speaks the truth “index iustitiae est” (12:17), and in Cicero, who saw truth, “the quality by which events in the past, present or future are referred to without alteration of material fact” (De Inventione, II), as a constituent part of the law of nature from which justice proceeds.

This fundamental link between truth and justice can be followed throughout all of Western legal thought and the philosophical speculation on it, from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to Ronald Dworkin, passing through Spinoza and Leibniz. In a recent article on the subject, Helen Gyr can assertively affirm that “there is no justice without truth”, highlighting how “in a democratic state governed by the rule of law, truth and justice are elementary components alongside liberty and equality”¹.

The reason I felt the need to recall this link between truth and justice in relation to the Elgin Marbles² debate is that their proposed, at times even demanded, restitution is often framed in terms of “cultural justice”, “restorative justice”, and “reparation” for what is routinely portrayed as “an egregious act of imperial plunder” and “an imperial act of removal”³. In the present article, I will endeavour to unveil the truth about some of the historical elements of the controversy over the Elgin Marbles, inasmuch as it is possible to establish the truth about facts that happened in the past, i.e. in terms of highest probability and likeliest and most economical explanation, in a way that takes into account all the surviving evidence. This caveat serves as both a necessary declaration of our shortcomings in understanding the past and an acknowledgement that international courts of law, such as those which could potentially get involved in passing judgement on transnational cultural repatriation cases, employ a similar method when establishing a universally accepted and univocal reconstruction of the facts is not otherwise possible⁴.

In a recent article in this Journal, Catharine Titi offers a concise recap of the facts that led to the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles by the British Museum in 1816, summarising the findings she previously presented in her 2023 book The Parthenon Marbles and International Law⁵. In both works, she claims to use “the recorded facts” to tell “a different story”, one that counters the museum’s narrative of the same events, which she sees as being rife with “misinformation”. In particular, she suggests that her own reconstruction of the facts results in a damning indictment for Lord Elgin, showing his actions to have been unlawful, unethical, and self-interested. I contend that such a reconstruction of the events, far from being based on “contemporary accounts, including Elgin’s own correspondence and the testimony offered by British ambassador Sir Robert Adair”, is not simply factually incorrect, but positively misleading, and that the evidence can only be read the way she does by allowing for carefully selected quotations, patent anachronisms, and a good deal of creative interpretation.

The ambiguities of consent

Let us tackle the most critical element first: was there an official authorisation empowering Lord Elgin and his men to act as they did? According to Titi, the answer should be “unambiguously” in the negative. The use of such an assertive tone would lead the unsuspecting reader to believe that nothing in the extant historical and archival record could ever allow for a different interpretation. It is with great difficulty, then, that our reader could make sense of the words of Edward Dodwell, one of the early critics of Elgin’s actions, which are just as unambiguous: “Mr Hunt (Elgin’s chaplain and agent) was empowered by his firman, to take away any antiquities He chose from the Acropolis of Athens”⁶. This firman, or official permission⁷, had been obtained by Elgin in June 1801 and came from the highest level of government, as confirmed again by Dodwell, who reported that some of the Turks and the Greeks in Athens “loudly and openly blamed their sovereign for the permission he had granted. I was on the spot at the time”⁸. Dodwell is not the only traveller to be aware of this imperial authorisation. Mary Nisbet, the countess of Elgin, mentioned it in a letter to her parents, informing them that the “Firman from the Porte… allows all our artists to go into the Citadel… and to bring away any marbles that may be deemed curious”, and Edward Daniel Clarke remembered how he “would gladly see an order enforced to preserve rather than to destroy such a glorious edifice”⁹. Even the most acrimonious of Elgin’s detractors, Lord Byron, could not but recognise that official orders were the authority under which the painter Lusieri, who was leading Lord Elgin’s artistic expedition, had acted: “two painters contest the privilege of plundering the Parthenon, and triumph in turn, according to the tenor of each succeeding firman”¹⁰. The document, written in Ottoman Turkish and carried to Athens by Hunt and an imperial messenger, was still in the city in 1810, where Scottish novelist John Galt saw it. Preserved in the archives of the Voivode, to whom it had been addressed, the original was likely lost with the building during the Greek Revolution¹¹. Luckily for us, Hunt had ordered an Italian translation to be made by the embassy’s translator, to allow the artists to know the extent of the permission accorded to them. This translation is preserved, and historians and legal experts on both sides of the debate do not doubt its authenticity¹². In a study published in 2011 (and cited by Titi), Edhem Eldem analyses the text of the Italian translation and finds it consistent with other examples of similar authorisations issued by the Ottoman government before and after Elgin’s¹³. He also publishes internal Ottoman documents which not only confirm the version of the facts provided by Elgin and Hunt (“it has been verified that figure-bearing stones of this kind have previously been given to the English”, i.e. Elgin), but provide more context to the otherwise puzzling denial contained in the testimony by Sir Rober Adair, which is invoked by Titi as the keystone of her condemnation and is instead revealed to be just a tactic used by the Ottoman officials so that “the matter gain in importance and that at the end it can be said that the imperial permission was obtained as a sign of deference to the ambassador”. It must also be noted here how both the denial of ownership and the delay, which are “not due to any expected inconvenience” but part of the diplomatic game, refer to a second collection of antiquities which Lusieri was trying to ship to England in 1811 and cannot possibly be referred to the bulk of the Elgin Marbles, which had by that time already reached London and had been available to the public during the previous five years¹⁴.

It should be clear by now that it is impossible to deny that Elgin’s men “acted with the full knowledge and permission of the legal authority of the day”, to quote the statement by the Trustees of the British Museum, unless we consciously choose to disregard essential pieces of historical evidence¹⁵. Still, Titi posits that whatever power Elgin received (whether or not we decide to believe in what she calls “Elgin’s tale of a firman”), it was all thanks to generous “bribes to the local Ottoman officials” which Elgin had allegedly admitted himself when asking “the British government to reimburse him for them”¹⁶. The smoking gun would be a letter Elgin sent to the House of Commons, where he listed his expenses including “£21,902” for “presents, found necessary for the local authorities, in Athens alone”, which Titi is quick to qualify for the reader: “in today’s money, this would be £2.52 million in bribes”¹⁷. The sum is as gargantuan as it is incorrect, but this would be nothing if it were not also totally irrelevant to our case. A careful observer will notice how this part of the catalogue of Lord Elgin’s expenses has the quantities not preceded by a pound symbol, but just by the abbreviation “p.”, which has been taken by Titi to indicate pounds. As the context suggests, however, this should be more correctly read as piastres, the main currency unit used in Athens at the time, and one that was exchanged at an average rate of 15 or 16 piastres against one pound sterling, as clarified by Elgin himself on the same document¹⁸. This more accurate reading would reduce the alleged bribe accordingly, equating it to no more than £160,000 in today’s terms¹⁹. But what is even more important is that the source of this amounts is a “journal from January 1803 to the end of 1814”, as declared by Elgin a few lines before in the letter, a detail that has two momentous consequences: first, that these presents cannot possibly be connected to the main portion of the Elgin Marbles, as they were extracted from the Acropolis between the end of July 1801 and June 1802; second, that an average amount of five piastres a day for a period of twelve years is entirely compatible with the modest amounts routinely erogated as tips, and decidedly too little to act as a real inducement for officials who had been able to extract 100 times as much per day from Elgin’s men to allow them into the Acropolis just before the arrival of the firman in July 1801. Unless we are seriously considering the hypothesis of a “bribe now, pay later” program, inclusive of a convenient 12-year instalment plan, I think we should firmly reject the interpretation proposed by Titi and exclude corruption as a motive for the granting of permission by the Porte.

Elgin and “publick utility”

When it comes to the reasons which prompted Lord Elgin to acquire the Mables, the most outlandish accusations become the norm. Titi makes no exception, initially stating that Elgin “detailed his interest in these historical pieces as decoration for his Scottish mansion” in a letter to Lusieri, and then pivoting to financial difficulties as the motive for the sale to the British government. The first assertion is a case of selective reading of the sources, while the second reveals an evident confusion about the events’ timeline.

The earliest mention of the idea that Lord Elgin wanted the sculptures to decorate his house in Fife is found in Clarke’s travelogues from October and December 1801, where the author displays his scepticism that the works were carried out “under pretence of rescuing the arts from the hands of the Turks”, preferring instead to believe they wanted “to adorn a miserable Scotch villa”²⁰. Byron, who relied heavily on Clarke’s accounts, refused this explanation, saying instead several years later that Elgin had acted “to instruct the English in sculpture”²¹. There is no reason to believe that Byron would have passed on such an excellent opportunity to attack Elgin had the rumour had any credibility, especially one coming from such a reliable ally as Clarke²².

The decorative intent is entirely unsupported by all we have from Lord Elgin himself. In his final despatch to Lord Hawkesbury at the end of his embassy, he summarised that all he did, at great personal expense, was “towards procuring a knowledge of the Arts of Greece, and rescuing some of their remains from ruin”²³. The first artistic aim had always been present in his mind, well before the start of his Levantine mission, and is variously described by him as making his embassy “beneficial to the progress of the Fine Arts in Great Britain”, or contributing “some benefit on the progress of taste in England”²⁴. Information on the state of dilapidation of Athens' antiquities, as provided by Hunt, Lusieri, and other English travellers, added the further aim of preserving as much as possible of the celebrated relics of such a glorious past, prompting Elgin “to ask for all that is left”, in the words of Rev. Hunt²⁵, for the only purpose of “rescuing them from imminent and unvoidable destruction”²⁶.

So, how do we need to interpret the often quoted letter Elgin sent to Lusieri in July 1801 with a list of “various things that you may perhaps be able to procure for me”, which would be possible to place “in a useful, distinguished and agreeable way” in his “house in Scotland”? The key to the interpretation of this passage is in the final remark, often left out of the quotes: “These reflections only apply to unworked marble”²⁷. Another letter to Lusieri from October 1802, when the first batch of marbles from Athens had already been sent to London, offers further clarification. In the text, discussed in 2009 by Luciana Gallo, Elgin mentions some designs of his house and expresses his dissatisfaction with a few internal details, particularly regarding the hall. The solution is easily found: could the senior moulder “revise the ornaments of the temple of Erechtheus, under your supervision, to the scale of my hall? Should we have them executed in stucco? or in marble at Rome?”²⁸. Had Elgin really thought of placing the original sculptures in the hall, he would surely have mentioned it at this point.

The final consideration that puts paid to the idea that the sculptures from the Parthenon were ever intended for Broomhall is that when talking about the unworked marble for the house, Elgin asks “to send them by sea to my house”, just as he had done with the rest of the coloured marble pieces he had collected in Constantinople and elsewhere for the purpose of decorating his house²⁹. By contrast, since 1802, the sculptures were all sent directly to London, which was always intended to be their final destination, and where Elgin did not have a house until he purchased one there at the end of 1806.

The mention of Lord Elgin’s house in London offers us the opportunity to further reflect on the chronology of the events and to dispel another myth often raised by proponents of repatriation, such as Titi. In her article, she says that “when [Elgin] ran into financial difficulties, he changed tack and attempted to create a private museum that would admit paying customers. As this plan proved uneconomical, he decided to sell the marbles to the government”³⁰. In her book, Titi further adds that Elgin’s divorce “added to his financial troubles”, and says that because of these difficulties Elgin “arranged for [the sculptures] to be displayed in his London residence at the corner of Piccadilly and Old Park Lane”, and that he did so “instead of transporting the marbles to Scotland”³¹. The logic, the dates, and even the details in this concatenation of events appear deeply flawed. According to Titi, the sale to the government is only the last in a series of unfortunate events, stemming from the failure of the private museum as a financial enterprise. Leaving aside the extravagance of thinking that an indebted nobleman in 1806 London could presume to resurrect his finances by opening a museum, there is the small matter that Lord Elgin’s museum had always been accessible “without fee or reward, or even the necessity of precious application” and that the idea of transforming it into a permanent museum charging for entrance, though considered, was never entirely on the table³². The reality is that Elgin had bought the house in Park Lane in October 1806 with the specific intention of hosting the marbles there just as long as it was necessary for the cultural and political world to realise the desirability of their government acquisition on behalf of the nation. The timing of the purchase of the house deals another blow to Titi’s logic: if the creation of a temporary museum was just a consequence of the financial hardships caused by the divorce, how come that both the purchase of the house and the start of the conversation for the acquisition of the collection predate the divorce by more than one year?³³

It is undoubtedly true that by the time Elgin accepted the final offer of £35,000 in 1816, he was in a much more precarious financial situation than when he first offered his collection to the government ten years before, and that his debt had a substantial role in his acceptance of an amount he had until that point judged almost offensive. However, it is equally true that when the first prospect of selling appeared in 1806, he could well afford to offer the collection solely for the costs of its acquisition and to refuse any offer he deemed inadequate at the time. Elgin’s financial position upon his arrival in London is a weak motive for the sale of the marbles, let alone for their collection in Athens five years before.

Not imperial at all

The discussion on the original intent of Elgin’s mission brings us to another important point: establishing the nature of the link between Elgin’s enterprise and the British Empire. Was the acquisition of the sculptures from Athens really “an imperial act of removal” as recently affirmed by Yannis Cartledge in this Journal³⁴? And is the lack of an official sanction, even retrospectively, from the British government (which Elgin sought but did not obtain) enough to absolve the Empire from any guilt by association?

This same question, in less lofty terms, was entertained by the members of the parliamentary Select Committee who investigated the facts before the UK Parliament could decide whether to buy the Marbles or not. One particular aspect of this question was rather important: had the Earl of Elgin acted on behalf of the British government in any way, that government could easily claim ownership of the sculptures, thus saving the cost of the purchase. In the end, after hearing all the witnesses, the committee unambiguously established that Elgin had indeed acted of his own accord and in a personal capacity, using his own resources, and therefore had full title to the Marbles³⁵.

State sponsorship for programs aimed at acquiring antiquities to enrich the national collections was not unheard of at the time, as was amply illustrated by Napoleon and his army of scientist-collectors. By contrast, the British government at the time was not inclined towards organic expenditure for the collection of antiquities, and the prestigious collections acquired by the British Museum in the early nineteenth century are primarily the result of opportunistic interventions rather than a structured approach. The foundational collection of what would later become the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities was comprised of collections acquired by individuals (Townley, Hamilton, Elgin, Cockerell) and purchased through ad hoc grants provided by the Exchequer³⁶.

It’s in this framework that we must understand Elgin’s actions, and agree with Lucia Patrizio Gunning when she affirms that “Lord Elgin’s acquisition of the Parthenon friezes had been the result of his own determination rather than the result of a state-managed enterprise”. The opportunistic attitude that motivated the British Museum's purchase is in line with the acquisition of the marbles itself, which was entirely unplanned and the result of observing the conditions in the field. Elements of centralised strategy are wholly absent here, from policy to funding, from preparation to enablement. The organised support enjoyed only a few decades later by H. Salt, A. Layard, or Ch. T. Newton is entirely absent in Elgin’s case³⁷. Even the transport of some parts of the collection on Royal Navy ships was occasional, secured each time by personal favours or reasons of practical convenience, and the shipped objects were treated as personal effects of the returning ambassador rather than state property.

This lack of support was felt at the time, to the point of driving criticism to the government, as exemplified by Charles Townley’s words: “our Government is universally blamed for not contributing their political influence, as well as pecuniary aid towards these operations, for the advancement of the Fine Arts in this country”³⁸. Another confirmation, if it was needed, of both Lord Elgin’s intent and independence.

Of course, one might still think that Elgin’s actions, personal as they might have been from a formal point of view, were “imperial” in spirit. However, for this to be the case, I would find it necessary to demonstrate his alignment with the imperial programme, intended as exerting an "effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society from an imperial society"³⁹. In the case of Elgin's intent, there was never an aim to use the Marbles to exert control over external entities; the artistic mission aimed solely at acquiring the reference material that would enable the achievement of a perceived state of artistic perfection in his own country. Nothing in the extant documentation authorises us to imagine that he thought of this as a means to exercise "effective control" over territories or societies subject to British imperial sovereignty or influence, or to extend this influence further.

Conclusion

Titi’s and Carledge’s views are not new and are to be understood in the broader context of a particular movement of scholars whose interpretations of the historical record seem finalised to uphold an ideological perspective. Staffan Lunden recently denounced this “distortion of history” while dissecting the representation of the Benin Expedition of 1897 in Dan Hicks' 2020 book, The Brutish Museum. In his study, Lunden defines this phenomenon as “emblematic of the post-truth era, where emotion, oversimplified messages, and personal opinion take precedence over evidence”⁴⁰.

But there is a reaction. Scholars such as Nigel Biggar, Justin Jacobs and Frank Furedi are starting to question the undue prominence given so far to decolonialist interpretations of facts that have little or nothing to do with colonialism, as well as the historiography of colonialism itself⁴¹. On the Elgin Marbles in particular, Alexander Herman's volume, published the same year as Titi’s, makes a far better use of the evidence at our disposal, allowing the author to support the possibility of a dialogue between the parties, not despite the evidence but in light of it. Even in the restitutionist camp there is some movement: Elizabeth Marlowe recently denounced the Parthenon Sculptures’ exceptionalism as fictitious, illustrating how this approach will not only fail to advance our understanding of restitution claims but will ultimately sabotage the restitutionist cause altogether⁴². Another significant shift is also introduced in the already mentioned studies by Eldem, integrated with the reflections of Michel Herzfeld and Yannis Hamilakis, which try to bring to light the Ottoman and Greek perspectives on the issue, returning agency to those parties and allowing us to understand their side of the story beyond the simplistic dichotomy forced upon us by the coloniser/colonised framework⁴³. For those parties, the antiquities did not have the same value we attribute to them today (which is not equal to saying they had none), and Western antiquarian interest presented opportunities to further their own political and ideological agendas. To discount their understanding as unsophisticated, to exclude the possibility of willing and free cooperation in this transaction, and to persist in explaining the removal of the Marbles uniquely in light of our present understanding would be a sign of that same orientalist and colonial mindset the proponents of these arguments purport to have abandoned.

In conclusion, it is reasonable to think that people have a right to protect and preserve their heritage as a means to substantiate their cultural identity and to justify their own self-image⁴⁴. However, the right to cultural heritage cannot be equated with an unlimited right to own, in the words of Elgin’s firman, "any pieces of stone with inscriptions or figures" from a country; it is merely a right to retain "some" of these items, in accordance with historical developments and under the rule of law⁴⁵. Conflicts of ownership, such as the bicentennial struggle for the Elgin Marbles, will always be there. But no advancement will be secured that doesn’t start from an objective and shared view of the history of the contested objects and of the people who, at any point, own them⁴⁶. Without a clear and sincere effort to base heritage claims on historical truth, there can be no justice or perception of justice, cultural or of any other kind. This approach, based on shared trust and the scientific method, seems more appropriate for resolving cultural disputes than using the divisive language of anti-imperialism and decolonisation, which, far from being a “display of reconciliation” as suggested by Cartledge, is often characterised by its very proponents as violent by design⁴⁷.

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1. Gyr, Transitional Justice Process, 18. ↩

2. I use the customary label of Elgin Marbles to specifically define the subset of Parthenon sculptures acquired by the British Museum in 1816. This choice of terminology seems the most logical to avoid any confusion with the sculptures from the Parthenon, which are now in Athens or elsewhere in Europe, and one that conforms to the legal definition of the objects, their more common scientific designation, and their more widely attested name. Incidentally, I also note how insisting on calling the Elgin Marbles by the generic name of Parthenon Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures, just to make a political point, is akin to insisting on using the name Chevrolet to refer to the car commonly known as a Corvette. ↩

3. Fincham, Parthenon Sculptures; Clark, Elgin Marbles in England; Cartledge, Parthenon Marbles. ↩

4. Herman, Parthenon Marbles Dispute, 43. For a survey of the use of this standard of proof in international courts and tribunals, see Renno, Preponderance of Evidence. ↩

5. Titi, Parthenon Marbles; Titi, Museums and Spoils. ↩

6. Camp, Plunder to Protection, 49. ↩

7. In Western sources, the term firman is applied in a non-specific way to any form of official document issued from any level of the Ottoman government, for any purpose: passports and travel permits, authorisations to enter specific locations, permits to excavate, export authorisations, and even death sentences. The more correct term for our document would be a buyuruldi, or official order. For a discussion of these nuances, see Williams, Lord Elgin’s Firman, 8-12; Herman, Parthenon Marbles Dispute, 38-39. ↩

8. Papazoi, Memorandum, Appendix 4, s.v. “Dodwell, E.”. The mention of the imperial permission in this passage, which is quoted in full in the documentation provided by the Greek government in support of their claim, is seldom mentioned in literature. ↩

9. For Mary Nisbet’s letter, see Williams, Lord Elgin’s Firman, 16. Clarke’s quote from Papazoi, Memorandum, Appendix 4 s.v. “Clarke E. D.”. ↩

10. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, note to Canto II, line 6 quoted in St Clair, Poets and Travellers, 46. ↩

11. Williams, Lord Elgin’s Firman, 22. ↩

12. St Clair, Elgin and the Marbles, 337; Williams, Publick Utility, 111; Eldem, Blissful Indifference, 285; Rudenstine, Trophies of Empire, 426-439; Herman, Parthenon Marbles Dispute, 39. ↩

13. Eldem, Blissful Indifference. ↩

14. These documents, considered again in Eldem, Historie Ottomane d’Athenes, are accepted and discussed in Herman, Parthenon Marbles Dispute, 45. On the so-called “second collection”, see St Clair, Elgin and the Marbles, 151-161. ↩

15. For the British Museum’s statement, see Titi, Parthenon Marbles, 309-311. ↩

16. Titi, Museums and Spoils, 1. ↩

17. Titi, Parthenon Marbles, 6-7. ↩

18. Report, Appendix, xv-xvi. ↩

19. Herman, Parthenon Marbles Dispute, 46-47 and fn. 50, has the sum as £150,000, coming from a different (but still somewhat incorrect) calculation. ↩

20. Clarke, Life and Remains, 502, 505. ↩

21. St Clair, Poets and Travellers, 62. ↩

22. Clarke and Byron were united in bitterness against the common enemy Elgin, as demonstrated in their correspondence: St Clair, Poets and Travellers, 50-51. ↩

23. Elgin’s despatch to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, 13 January 1803, see Smith, Elgin’s Collection, 337. ↩

24. St Clair, Elgin and the Marbles, 6. ↩

25. Hunt to Elgin 31 July 1801, quoted in Williams, Publick Utility, 117. ↩

26. Report, 66, Appendix 5. ↩

27. The final remark is omitted in Titi, Parthenon Marbles and Titi, Museums and Spoils, but also in official government documents in support of the claim, such as Papazoi, Memorandum, Appendix 4. The full text of the letter is in Smith, Elgin’s Collection, 191-192. ↩

28. Smith, Elgin’s Collection, 233-235, Gallo, Elgin Drawings, 20-22. Gallo is, in her commentary, very explicit in rejecting the hypothesis of the Marbles as decoration for Broomhall: “in a significant departure from past attitudes, there is no hint of a wish to re-use any original piece of sculpture for his unfinished Scottish mansion”. ↩

29. For more details on Elgin’s acquisitions of coloured marbles for his house, see Williams, Elgin’s Porphyry. ↩

30. Titi, Museums and Spoils, 2. ↩

31. Titi, Parthenon Marbles, 7. ↩

32. Smith, Elgin’s Collection, 302-305. ↩

33. The date of the deed is reported by Benjamin Haydon as October 8, 1806, quoted in Smith, Elgin’s Collection: 297. Elgin’s divorce consisted of two legal actions: a civil lawsuit for damages against his wife’s lover, Rober Ferguson, which was adjudicated in Elgin’s favour in December 1807 in London, with an award of £10,000, and then another trial in Edinburgh in March 1808. St Clair, Elgin and the Marbles, 141-142. ↩

34. Cartledge, Parthenon Marbles, 6. The author, while still viewing the removal as an “imperial act” and the debate about it as “a legacy of imperialism”, does not go as far as to suggest an institutional link between the British government and Lord Elgin’s actions. ↩

35. Report, 6. ↩

36. Patrizio Gunning, British Consular Service, 139-141. ↩

37. For an outline of the various degrees of state support afforded to Salt, Layard and Newton, including advance funding and logistical support by the Royal Navy and the Royal Engineers, see Patrizio Gunning - Vlami, Continuity and Change, 60-64. More in general, on the role of the diplomatic service vis-à-vis the search for antiquities and the national collections, Patrizio Gunning, British Consular Service. ↩

38. Charles Townley, Feb 8th, 1803, as quoted in Smith, Elgin’s Collection: 295. ↩

39. Doyle, Empires, 30. ↩

40. Lunden, Distorting History, 219. ↩

41. Biggar, Colonialism; Jacobs, Plunder?; Furedi, War Against the Past. ↩

42. Marlowe, Exceptionalism to Solidarity. Similar views are expressed by Lunden, Distorting History, 220-221. ↩

43. Herzfeld, Ours Once More; Hamilakis, Nation and its Ruins; Hamilakis, Indigenous Archaeologies. ↩

44. On the link between heritage and the definition of cultural identity, see Kynourgiopoulou, National Identity Interrupted, 162. ↩

45. Against a cultural nationalist vision of art, see Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, chapter 8, who argues that “what is often called the universal value of art does not speak in favour of confining it to its birthplace”. ↩

46. A similar approach towards resolution is recommended in Herman, Parthenon Marbles Dispute, 149. ↩

47. Franz Fanon explained already in 1961 how decolonisation “cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding”, and “is always a violent phenomenon” (Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 35-36). In the view of decolonial theorists, a new order must replace the old through “a programme of absolute disorder”, and this “complete, real, decolonisation of the museum cannot be a benign act” (Verges, Programme, 28-30). ↩

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