Give us back our stolen Parthenon Marbles thieves...

by JustHuman14 0 Replies latest jw friends

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  JustHuman14

  You have stolen our history and heritage. Your filthy hands touched and destroyed the Master piece of Democracy Parthenon a universal heritage. Your so called "Lord Elgin" stolen, destroyed part of Parthenon Marbles in order to bring them in England.
  
  They are part of the Parthenon World Wide Heritage Monument, and they have to be reunited with the rest of the Marbles. The Acropolis Museum, a state of the Art Museum has opened the gates few days ago. The opening it was breath taking, but most of all everyone could see the stolen Marbles missing.
  
  We do not ask, we DEMAND to be returned since you have STOLEN them. The vast majority of the British people support the Hellenic demand for returning the Marbles. Unfortunately the British Museum and Government are not willing to do it so, following the footsteps of the thief Elgin.
  
  "The request for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles is not made by the Greek government in the name of the Greek nation or of Greek history. It is made in the name of the cultural heritage of the world and with the voice of the mutilated monument itself, that cries out for its marbles to be returned."
  
  Evangelos Venizelos, Greek Minister of Culture
  
  WHAT ARE THE PARTHENON MARBLES?
  
  When the Parthenon was built between 447BC and 432BC, three sets of sculptures, the metopes, the frieze and the pediments, were created to adorn it. Of these, the metopes and the frieze were part of the structure of the Parthenon itself. They were not carved first and then put in place, high up on the Parthenon, but were carved on the sides of the Parthenon itself after it had been constructed.
  
  The metopes were individual sculptures in high relief. There were 92 metopes, 32 on each side and 14 at each end and each metope was separated from its neighbours by a simple archtitectural decoration called a triglyph, The metopes were placed around the building, above the outside row of columns and showed various mythical battles. The north side showed scenes from the Trojan war; the south side showed a battle between the Greeks and the Centaurs -- part man, part horse; the east side showed the Olympian gods fighting giants and the west side showed a battle between Greeks and Amazons.
  
  The frieze , 160 metres long, was placed above the inner row of columns, so it was not so prominently displayed. It is one long, continuous sculpture in low relief, showing the procession to the temple at the Panathenaic festival.
  
  At either end of the temple, in the large triangular space, the pediment statues in the round were placed. These were designed to fill the space so that those at the highest point of the triangle are enormous. The pediment sculptures have been so badly damaged that we only know what they represent because of the writings of the Greek writer and traveller Pausanias, who was active around 150 AD. According to him, the sculptures in the east pediment represent the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus and the sculptures in the west pediment represent the struggle between Athena and Poseidon for the land of Attica.
  
  The real glory of the temple, however, was housed inside. The statue of the goddess Athena was about 40 feet (12 metres) high, and gold and ivory was used to decorate it. This statue was damaged by fire as early as 200BC and it is thought that a new statue replaced it in 165-160BC. Unlike the Parthenon Marbles, the statue did not survive antiquity.
  
  Not all of the Parthenon Marbles, however, survive down to the present day. There were originally 115 panels in the frieze. Of these, ninety-four still exist, either intact or broken. Thirty six are in Athens, fifty-six are in the British Museum and one is in the Louvre. Of the original ninety-two metopes, thirty-nine are in Athens and fifteen are in London. Seventeen pedimental statues, including a caryatid and a column from the Erechtheion are also in the British Museum. So the Parthenon Marbles are almost equally divided -- half in London and half in Athens.
  
  It is precisely because the surviving sculptures are to be found in two countries 1500 miles apart that the Greek government has requested the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum so that they can be reunited in one collection, in a museum to be built at the foot of the Acropolis Hill on which the remains of the Parthenon temple stand.