I’ve been thinking about the Parthenon marbles too much lately, having imaginary arguments in my head with museum curators and conservative Britons about how overdue their repatriation to Greece is.

That might make me sound a little nutty, but there has been, to be fair to me, a lot of media attention on the issue recently. I blame British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who started the latest kerfuffle by canceling a meeting with the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis after Mitsotakis dared mention the marbles in an interview with the BBC.

When Sunak snubbed Mitsotakis, a cavalcade of press followed, culminating in King Charles III’s decision to wear a tie with the Greek flag on it to the COP28 event.

Now, I can’t stop chewing it over.

But let me back up a bit — 200 years or so:

In the year 1800, a syphilitic British nobleman named Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, rolled into Athens as the new ambassador to Constantinople, ostensibly looking to make plaster casts and drawings of ancient Greek artifacts. While he was there, his employees clumsily hacked marble sculptures off the Parthenon (allegedly with the permission of the Turkish Ottoman Empire that ruled Greece at the time) and ferried them (as well as a great many other artifacts) back home to decorate his Scottish castle.

Shortly thereafter, to pay for a pricey divorce from a wife who was cheating on him with his best friend, he hocked the marbles to the British Museum. The permission slip from the Ottoman Empire that Elgin claimed let him take the marbles is fishy, at best, and even if it is legitimate, was given by an occupying force.

But even so, ever since, the British Museum has been hanging on to the Parthenon marbles like grim death, as if their return would mark the official end to the British Empire.

And because the right thing to do in this situation is so shockingly clear, there has been, over the years, a carousel of thin excuses for the museum’s refusal to repatriate the marbles — a decision that goes against the collective better judgment of UNESCO, a majority of the British public and the current King of England, just to name a few. We’ve been told Greeks can’t be trusted to care for the marbles, have nowhere to house the marbles and now are patronizingly informed that the marbles are part of the world’s — not Greece’s — “cultural heritage.”

But of course, those aren’t the real issue — and have nothing to do with the frustration that literally, I must admit, keeps me up at night. It’s all about power, and how difficult it is for those who have it to voluntarily cede it.

It’s an old, sad truth — older than the Parthenon. In fact, an ancient Greek philosopher, Anacharsis of Scythia, once said that laws are like spider’s webs; the rich and powerful can easily break them. They will only follow the legal and moral obligations they want to follow.

The British Museum has the power, the prestige and the marbles, and Greeks must negotiate as supplicants for their return — in a loan, perhaps, or a temporary exchange to be extended only after demonstrations of Greek good behavior.

But the tide may be turning. In 2022, the Italian government approved the permanent return to Greece of a square-foot-sized fragment of the marbles given by Elgin to a British consul named Robert Fagan. Then, earlier this year, Pope Francis “gifted” to Greek Orthodox Archbishop Ieronymos II three pieces of the Parthenon marbles from the Vatican’s museum. Those pieces joined their brethren in the Acropolis Museum.

Still, more than half of the Parthenon marbles remain in England. Though Keir Starmer, the U.K.’s Labour Party leader, has said that he won’t stand in the way of repatriation, a British law passed in 1963 says the museum can only return items that are “unfit” for its collection and if their return doesn’t harm students’ interests. The marbles’ return will require a change in British mindset or law, both of which powerful conservative Britons oppose.

Therefore, until public opinion makes a massive shift, until the shame of holding onto the marbles overpowers the fear of letting them go, they will stay where they are.

And the powerful will keep their hands clenched, as they have for centuries, unwilling and unable to loosen their hold on what was never rightly theirs to begin with.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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