The Elgin Marbles: questions of accuracy and reliability

Abstract

The Elgin Marbles continue to be one of the more controversial issues of the contemporary debate over cultural property and questions of its moral ownership. Unfortunately but perhaps inevitably, the pace of discussion is often driven by emotion. In this highly charged atmosphere, misunderstandings and misrepresentations are so often repeated that they gain a reality of their own and are very rarely challenged.Recently the corpus of disinformation was given sustenance from a new quarter. In two separate publications, one of them in this journal, William St. Clair launched an attack on the British Museum and its care of the Parthenon sculptures. As this work is now likely to enter the core bibliography of the Parthenon sculptures, I am grateful to the editors of IJCP for this opportunity to correct some of its many misrepresentations and errors of fact.