Two hundred odd years ago the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Greece took charge of (nicked?) a whole load of marble statuary that adorned a sacred place and brought them to London where he sold them off to the British Government who put them in the new fangled British Museum. The Ambassador was Lord Elgin, the sacred place was the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens and the statues are now called the Elgin Marbles. And the question is should they be in London or Athens. The Athenians have just built a brand new museum to house the relics that have survived from the Parthenon and the Acropolis in general, but of course they only have copies of the Parthenon Marbles, as we should refer to these sculptures, to display and they want the originals back.
What Elgin did was no different to what a lot of rich Christians did all across the world. At the time Great Britain was one of the most powerful countries in the world and its Empire was growing. The Ottoman Empire was powerful but it was Muslim and as such did not have the same attitude towards historic monuments that the Christians had so to them the pagan temples and statuary that littered the lands of their empire was just so much stone and very un-Islamic. This is also true of vast swaves of Africa half of which was Muslim and the other half regarded as simple savages with no appreciation of the fine things their culture produced. It was far better that these works of craftsmanship and high art be housed in the great museums of London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid and New York to name but a few so that civilised people could appreciate them.
And now savages, pagans and various non-western cultures want the stuff we pillaged back. And not only the artifacts that we took charge of, they want the bones of their ancestors back as well. Far to many museums have become the mausoleums for remains of people from all over the world, including their own country. Some of these remains have great importance to the cultures they were taken from. Worship of ancestors is very important and even in the cultures of the "Peoples of the Book" (Jews, Christians & Muslims) bodily remains are of great importance to the future of the soul of that person.
We have at our disposal a great range of modern technology that can make almost perfect copies of things and, to quote Terry Pratchett's Granny Wetherwax "Things that look like thing are often more like things than things!" As such we should be making exact copies of all the artifacts (things) we have taken charge off and then return the originals to their home place with an agreement that the original must be made available for examination by researchers. Those parts of the world that do not have suitable display spaces should be helped by an international body to get something built and properly staffed. And it is not only the United Kingdom that should be doing this. It seems to me that this could be something useful that the EU could be doing as most of the great Modern Empire s are represented within it - even Turkey and the Ottoman Empire will be in soon.
The human remains that we have are a different matter. They need to be returned to as close to the place they were found and re-interred using the rights of the culture from which they came as closely as possible. That means not giving pagan remains a christian burial right.
These Artifacts and human remains are to important to simply play a game of political marbles with. They matter to people and in many cases have done for a very long time.
