Classical antiquities as national and global heritage

Abstract

The current campaign to return to Athens the Parthenon sculptures that have been in the British Museum since the early 19th century highlights the profoundly dual nature of Greek architectural and sculptural heritage, as emblems of both Greek and global attachment. Classical relics in particular have become symbols of Greek attachment to the homeland; underscoring links between past and present, they confirm and celebrate Greek national identity. Other elements of Greek heritage – language, literature, religion, folklore – likewise lend strength to this identity, but material remnants of past glories, notably temples and sculptures from the times of Phidias and Praxiteles, assume an increasingly important symbolic role (Cook 1984; Hitchens 1987).