Showing 8 results for the tag: Ottoman Empire.

March 6, 2013

Looters of landlords – inconsistent behaviour of countries faced with restitution claims

Posted at 4:20 pm in Similar cases

Turkey has had many recent successes in retrieving disputed artefacts from abroad. This has not been without controversy though – there are many who feel that Turkey is applying different rules, depending on how it suits them, and highlight the problems such as the misappropriation of Armenian art by Turkey as an example of this.

From:
Assyrian International News Agency

Looters or Landlords?
Posted GMT 10-4-2012 0:11:55

Since Fatih Sultan Mohammed occupied Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman rulers have been destroying and desecrating churches, castles, architectural monuments of Hittites, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks and other nationalities who had been the indigenous people of Asia Minor, occupied and ruled through blood and sword.

Now, all of a sudden, the destroyers of all these cultures presume to be landlords, claiming treasures originated in Asia Minor to be returned to the present government of Turkey. Those artifacts and treasures which have been preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Museum, the Louvre and Pergamon Museum have been saved from the Turks themselves, becoming part of the legacy of human civilization. Had they been left in the hands of the Turks, they would have been doomed to suffer the same fate as the 2,000 Armenian churches, monasteries and architectural monuments which were systematically destroyed and rendered into ashes. After 200,000 Armenians escaped from Van in 1915, the Turkish Army burned tens of thousands of illuminated manuscripts and Bibles on the island monastery of Leem in Lake Akhtamar.
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May 22, 2010

The controversy over the ownership of the Rosetta Stone & possible solutions

Posted at 2:33 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

Jonathan Downs, author of Discovery at Rosetta, now has a website / blog, which gives more information about the stone & the claims for its return.

Make sure you view the posts section of the site, which includes articles on whether Britain really has legal ownership of what is possibly one of the most significant (in terms of our understanding of ancient Egypt) artefacts in their collection.

March 24, 2010

Greece & Germany argue over the Aphrodite of Milos

Posted at 2:06 pm in Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

Much like the Elgin Marbles, the Aphrodite of Milos was removed from Greece whilst the country was under Ottoman occupation during the nineteenth century.

From:
Hurriyet

Greece and Germany fight over Aphrodite of Melos
Monday, March 1, 2010
Ariana Ferentinou

I am sure that no one these days has heard of the name Georgos Kentrotas or Botonis, least of all the German editors of the Magazine Focus who chose to act somewhat like modern archaeologists or restorers and added one of the two missing arms of Aphrodite of Melos to their cover page.

But if it was not for this poor Greek farmer, this whole uproar over the “fingers up” symbolism against the European Union would never have been created.
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June 22, 2009

The implications of Ottoman law live on

Posted at 1:48 pm in Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum, Similar cases

The Ottoman empire may have faded out many years ago. Throughout the countries that were once ruled over by the Ottomans though, the legacies of their laws continue to have an impact.

From:
Jew School

The Ottomans: Gone But Not Forgotten
by Shalom Rav Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Read an interesting article in the NY Times yesterday about the new $200 million museum opening in Athens. Apparently there is now hope in Greece that it will become the permanent home for the Parthenon Marbles – an ancient frieze from the Parthenon that was taken by the British in the early 19th century.

Toward the end of the article:

Greece retains only 36 of the 115 original panels from the Parthenon frieze, which depicts a procession in honor of the goddess Athena. Britain has long asserted that when (British Ambassador) Lord Elgin chiseled off the sculptures some 200 years ago, he was acting legally, since he had permission from Greece’s Ottoman rulers.
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June 7, 2009

Seeing the Marbles reunified

Posted at 9:31 pm in Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum

The New Acropolis Museum opens later this month, but opinion remains divided on whether the Elgin Marbles ought to eventually reside in it.

From:
Newsweek

Romancing the Stones
By Cathleen McGuigan | NEWSWEEK
Published Jun 6, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jun 15, 2009

It’s not polite to call the Elgin Marbles the Elgin Marbles anymore. Not even in the British Museum, where the ancient Greek sculptures and reliefs have resided since the early 19th century, after a British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire named Lord Elgin hacked them off the Parthenon. Even in that age of imperialism, many Brits saw Elgin’s acts as cultural vandalism. Lord Byron slammed the marbles’ removal in his bestselling epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The call for their return has grown since Greece won its independence from Ottoman rule in 1829, led by the Greek government in particular since the 1980s. In the noisy debate over the restitution of ancient artworks to their original locale, no case is more controversial or inflamed than the question of the Parthenon marbles: should the British finally send them back?
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October 12, 2008

The British Museum’s claims to the Rosetta Stone

Posted at 6:22 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

Jonathan Downs, the author of Discovery at Rosetta, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, has kindly sent me the text of the concluding chapter of this book. This chapter looks at the case for the return of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt – both its legality & the arguments surrounding it. The case for the restitution of the Rosetta Stone has a lot of parallels with the Parthenon Marbles – their acquisitions were roughly contemporaneous, they both came from outposts of what was at that time the Ottoman Empire, They both ended up in the British Museum.

The author has also offered to respond to any queries that people make in the comments on this message.

From:
Jonathan Downs (by email)

The following is an extract from Discovery at Rosetta (by Jonathan Downs, Constable, 2008, pp.210-215) outlining the current status of the Rosetta Stone, the facts governing its legal ownership and its possible repatriation to Egypt:

THE ROSETTA STONE: A PROUD TROPHY?

Despite the Rosetta Stone’s public profile, historically its status as an exhibit in the British Museum has not been nearly as contested as that of the ‘Elgin’ or Parthenon Marbles. To many it is immediately recognizable and more memorable than the sculptures that were formerly part of the Athenian Acropolis. This is understandable; until the end of the 1990s the Rosetta Stone rested on an angled frame close to the entrance of the museum – unavoidable, it was one of the first objects to be encountered, and crowds of visitors have gathered round it for the past two hundred years. Cleaned by conservators, it now occupies an equally prominent position in the centre of the Egypt collection by the Great Court entrance, upright within a protective case, still one of the most famous objects in the world. Before the arrival of the antiquities from Egypt in 1802, the British Museum contained little grand sculpture, its halls filled chiefly with smaller curiosities. The acquisition of the Rosetta Stone and the cargo from the Alexandria victory was an important step in the development of the institution.
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September 3, 2008

Was the removal of the Elgin Marbles legal?

Posted at 12:51 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

More coverage of Professor Vassilis Dimitriadis’s study on the validity of the Firman that supposedly allowed Lord Elgin to remove pieces of the Parthenon Sculptures from the Acropolis.

From:
Artinfo

Professor Questions Legality of Elgin Document
By ARTINFO
Published: August 29, 2008

LONDON—A professor from the University of Crete has called into question the sole document that the British Museum has found in recent years to support its legal ownership of the Elgin Marbles, reports the Times of London.
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August 29, 2008

How legal was Elgin’s Firman

Posted at 1:00 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum

The Firman was an Ottoman legal document issued to Lord Elgin. It only survives in translation, but is used as the basis of proving the supposed legality of Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon Sculptures from Athens. A historian who has researched this document & other similar documents is now casting doubt over whether the firman actually gave Elgin the permissions that were claimed.

From:
The Times

August 29, 2008
Legality of Earl of Elgin’s acquisition challenged by scholar
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

The new Acropolis Museum may prove to be the most lavishly appointed white elephant in history. Nothing will change the view of the British Government that the intended centrepiece, the magnificently sculpted Elgin Marbles, must remain permanently in the British Museum.

Not that the museum will be empty. There will be 4,000 exhibits including the remaining Parthenon sculptures. But the crown jewels, the 247ft of the original 524ft frieze, 15 of 92 metopes and 17 figures from the pediments, all dating to the 5th century BC, will remain 1,500 miles away in London.
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