I have been aware of this letter for quite some time, but due to the fact that most of the articles I post are from current news sources, it has not been mentioned on this site before.

Many claim that at time of the removal of the Marbles Elgin was merely doing the same as many others & that it was not called into question. There are various things that suggest this is not the case, but the argument is still pushed as fact by many supporters of retention of the sculptures.

A letter from Robert Adair (who was in charge of British affairs in Constantinople in 1809 – 1810) clearly in a response to a request from Lord Elgin. It appears that Elgin had asked Adair for a letter to help to bolster his claim for the Marbles, although as no copy of this request exists, it is hard to know exactly what the request was.

Adair’s reply to Elgin was clear – “that the Porte absolutely denied your having any property in those marbles. By this expression I understood the Porte to mean that the persons who had sold the marbles to your Lordship had no right so to dispose of them.”

From this wording, it seems fairly clear that to Adair at least (and he was a senior diplomat on the ground in the country that was supposed to have permitted Elgin to remove the sculptures), that Elgin had absolutely no legal entitlement to the sculptures whatsoever.

You can read a much more in-depth analysis of this letter, along with photos of the original on Theodore Theodorou’s website.

Below is the full text of the letter.

From:
AdairToElgin.com

July 31st 1811

My Lord

In answer to your Lordship’s enquiry respecting the marbles collected by your Lordship at Athens, and for leave to transmit which to this country I was directed by the Sec(retary) of State for foreign affairs to apply to the Turkish government, I have to inform your Lordship that Mr Pisani more than once assured me that the Porte absolutely denied your having any property in those marbles. By this expression I understood the Porte to mean that the persons who had sold the marbles to your Lordship had no right so to dispose of them.

At the same time I beg leave to add that this communication was not made to me in any formal conference with the Turkish ministers.

I have the honour to be,
my Lord,
your Lordship’s most obed(ien)t
and humble serv(an)t
R. Adair

The British Museum may want to hang onto the Rosetta Stone, but many people feel that now is the time to return it to Egypt.

From:
The Independent

Letters: The Rosetta Stone
It’s time to gracefully relinquish the Rosetta Stone
Saturday, 12 December 2009

The Rosetta Stone and Elgin Marbles are priceless, culturally significant antiquities brought to Britain under arrangements that were perfectly legal at the time, and so Egypt and Greece have no claim that could succeed in any court (The Big Question, 9 December).

In the past, that has been considered sufficient justification by the British Museum for it to reject any requests for their return. When you add the facts that Egyptian museums have been less secure, and that had the marbles remained in position on the Parthenon they would have decomposed in the atmospheric pollution so as no longer to be recognisable, then most rational people would have supported that position.
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Anthony Snodgrass – Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles responds to Simon Jenkins’s earlier article about the New Acropolis Museum.

From:
The Guardian

Letters
New home for the Parthenon marbles
The Guardian, Tuesday 27 October 2009

I know that Simon Jenkins is fundamentally on the same side as I am, and I’m sure it wasn’t he who chose to put that offensive phrase in his headline (A banana republic police HQ maybe, but not a home for the Elgin marbles, 23 October). But his piece did contain more than its fair share of anti-Greek prejudice. The Greeks were “foolish” to turn down the offer of a loan of the Elgin marbles this summer (a heavily conditional offer, confined to a few pieces, never officially proposed and withdrawn as soon as mooted). They have consigned the excavated ancient site under the new museum to a “surreal dungeon” (unfair: it is to be open to visitors). And Jenkins cannot have it both ways: if the Greeks previously “spoiled their case” for restitution of the marbles by shortcomings in conservation, then he should not be complaining now that the restoration works on the Acropolis are so painstaking.

Anyway, the Greeks have now “gone to the other extreme” with a building that “screams the supremacy of Big Modernism” and looks like “the police headquarters of a banana republic”: Bernard Tschumi’s New Acropolis museum in Athens, which is the real target here. Comment is free, and a whole series of other expert architectural critics have commended Tschumi’s building for exactly the opposite quality – “handsome”, “unassuming”, “minimalist”, “unpretentious” – to what Jenkins detects. Simon Jenkins prefers the interior to the exterior: fair enough, so do many of us. But there was no call to package his criticism in this offensive wrapping paper.

Anthony Snodgrass
Chair, British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles

Although some of the Lewis Chessmen are being loaned to Scotland, many people feel that they should be returned on a more long term arrangement.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Letters
Time to repatriate the Scottish chessmen
The Lewis Chessmen belong in Scotland, not England
Published: 12:01AM BST 16 Oct 2009

SIR – While it is fantastic to see 24 of the collection of 82 Lewis Chessmen go on tour in Scotland (report, October 2), it is now time for the return of all the 12th-century chessmen to the Western Isles.

The pieces, crafted from walrus ivory and whales’ teeth, were unearthed in 1831. Of the 93 chessmen, only 11 are in Edinburgh’s National Museum of Scotland, while 82 are in the British Museum in London. It is simply not good enough that they are occasionally lent back to the Western Isles. Ownership should pass to the people of these Isles, where they were found, and where they should be put on permanent display.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh

Some further coverage of the news that some of the Lewis Chessmen will be loaned to Scotland temporarily, but that they will definitely not be returning long term. As expected, many are not happy with this decision by the British Museum.

From:
Press and Journal

Letters Page
Published: 02/10/2009
Lewis Chessmen returning

SIR, – I refer to your story (October 1) about the Lewis Chessmen returning to Scotland.

Once again, the authorities have graced us with their kindness, and agreed to “lend” the nation of Scotland her own items of cultural significance. How thoroughly decent of them.

The Scottish Government should be applauded and criticised in equal measure. We have seen the Stone of Destiny, arguably Scotland’s most important historical and cultural item, return to its rightful place, but with steel shackles attached. And now, some more of the Lewis Chessmen return to their adopted homeland, but please do not get comfortable, as England wants them back.
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Vanity Fair has published a number of letters in response to Christopher Hitchens’s piece on the Parthenon Sculptures. Most are positive, but one tries to perpetuate the myth that Elgin saved the sculptures for the Greeks – referring to an article that has already been discredited by more than one commentator.

From:
Vanity Fair

September 2009
Letters

[snip]

Greek Love

THANK YOU for “The Lovely Stones” [July], Christopher Hitchens’s beautiful and insightful piece on the Parthenon, the most elegant edifice created by a free people. His argument for the return of the amputated pieces is stunningly simple and persuasive. And his relating Obama’s stimulus ethos to Pericles’s plan “to recover from a long and ill-fought war”—to “give employment (and a morale boost) to the talents of [Greece’s] citizens … over tremendous conservative opposition to his spending”—is a breathtaking historical reflection. —GEORGE LOIS, director, Good Karma Creative, New York, New York
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Another followup to John Huntley & Tom Minogue’s letters to the Scotsman on the Parthenon Marbles issue & how it could be handled.

From:
Scotsman

Marbles under Scots Law

I was rather bemused that Tom Minogue (Letters, 15 July) first of all disagrees with my suggestion that the SNP government is guilty of hypocrisy in relation to the Elgin or Parthenon Marbles, but then goes on to encapsulate my argument rather eloquently. If it was his intention merely to state that the SNP are not alone among politicians in displaying such duplicity, then I readily agree, but that in itself does not mean that the cynicism of Alex Salmond’s government should not be e
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