Another week, another restitution case that gets compared to the Parthenon Marbles. While these cases may well have their own merits for return, any sort of comparison with other cases can be very misleading, particularly where the Parthenon Sculptures are concerned. setting aside any issues of how they were acquired, the Parthenon Marbles were part of a greater whole, both in terms of the remaining surviving sculptures & in terms of the building of which they formed an integral part. In other words, their context was fixed – they were not designed to be seen anywhere else other than in the context of the Acropolis. Many other artefacts however, were never designed for a specific location – their cases is purely one of ownership, meaning that it has far less weight to it than the Parthenon Sculptures do.

From:
Slugger O’Toole

From the Elgin Marbles to An Gal Gréine via William Wallace
Sat 29 January 2011, 9:42am

This week there have been renewed demands for the “repatriation” to Scotland of the 14th Century “William Wallace Passport”, presently held in the National Archives in Kew. As The Scotsman points out:

The case is set to inflame cross-border tensions in a manner befitting Wallace himself.
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