Greece offers Britain deal: “prehistoric Mona Lisa” for Parthenon marbles

Greeks are willing to part with some of their greatest treasures to “fill the void” at the British Museum if the Parthenon marbles are returned to Athens, the country’s culture minister has said.

According to The Guardian, Lina Mendoni has promised that the London museum’s revered Greek galleries will never be empty.

“Our position is clear,” said the head of the Greek Ministry of Culture. “If the sculptures are reunited in Athens, Greece is prepared to organize rotating exhibitions of important antiquities to fill the void.”

Asked whether London had requested specific works, the minister – a classical archaeologist by training – insisted that ongoing discussions did not extend to “specific artefacts”.

But for the first time, she gave a glimpse of how far Athens was willing to go to compensate the British Museum for rejecting sculptures considered the pinnacle of classical-era art, saying that any antiquities sent to Britain would also attract crowds.

“They would fill the void, maintain and continually renew the interest of international visitors in the Greek galleries of the British Museum,” Mendoni said, although she cautioned that “any agreement and all its details must comply with Greek cultural heritage law.”

The idea of ​​cultural exchange began to be discussed soon after Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ center-right New Democracy party came to power in 2019. Rumors have since circulated that the treasures, including the Mask of Agamemnon – a golden funerary mask described by some historians as the “Mona Lisa of prehistoric times” – could be sent to Britain in exchange for the Parthenon statues.

In a marked shift away from the acrimony that has dominated Europe’s longest-running cultural dispute, both sides have begun talking about a “partnership” that could offer a “win-win” solution to resolving the dispute.

George Osborne, chairman of the British Museum, responding to Athens’ desire to reconnect with ancient marble, was more determined to tackle the issue head-on than any of his predecessors.

He is the first museum director to publicly acknowledge the controversy surrounding the presence of antiquities in the British Museum. The museum bought them in 1816 from the bankrupt Lord Elgin, a former ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, who himself ordered their removal from the Parthenon Temple and other sites on the Athens Acropolis using marble saws.

The former British chancellor has hinted more than once this year that a compromise settlement could be on the horizon. “We want to create the right partnership,” George Osborne told MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in October. “One exit would mean objects coming here from Greece, objects that have potentially never left Greece before and certainly have never been seen before, and objects from the Parthenon collection that are potentially traveling to Greece.”

Osborne promised that negotiations aimed at concluding a loan deal would continue, despite the diplomatic fallout following British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s refusal to meet Mitsotakis in November, The Guardian writes.

The British Museum’s collection includes almost half of the 160-metre long Parthenon frieze depicting the procession to the Panathenaic temple in honor of the warrior goddess Athena, as well as 15 sculpted panels and 17 pediment figures that were part of its unique decoration.

Culture Minister Mendoni, who has repeatedly said Greece cannot discuss borrowing treasures that were looted in the first place, added: “The Parthenon, a World Heritage Site, with its universal significance, demands its integrity in that place [где были вырезаны скульптуры] and for the reasons that created it.”

She denies that the idea of ​​creating a branch of the British Museum at the Acropolis Museum, purpose-built to display the statues, is again on the table. “There was no such discussion,” she said.

Although Mitsotakis said progress has been slower than he would have liked, many Greeks believe the moral argument for returning the marbles has at least been won. A YouGov poll published in July found that 64% of people in the UK now favor the repatriation of treasure stolen from Hellas.

Some commentators also interpreted King Charles III’s wearing of Greek colors when he spoke at the Cop28 climate summit this month as an official statement approving the return of marble to the country where his father, Prince Philip, was born.

Asked whether Greece has ruled out legal action against the British Museum at a time when more controversial objects are being returned to their countries of origin, Mendoni stresses that the Greek government will continue to “take full advantage of the opportunities offered by dialogue and cultural diplomacy.”

Asked whether she believed the British had not been told the truth about Elgin and the circumstances under which the marbles were acquired, she referred to Hugh Hammersley, a 19th-century MP who told the House of Commons in 1816 that the British government’s decision to acquire the sculptures the Scottish diplomat had “an act of plunder.”

But Mendoni also spoke of the positive spirit behind Greece’s great “national cause.” “Even people who for years opposed the return of the sculptures to Greece now support our demand,” she said. “If I were not an optimist, I would not work with zeal and faith for the national cause of reuniting the sculptures in the Acropolis Museum here in Athens.”