ATHENS (Reuters) – Britain is the legal owner of the Parthenon marbles, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told a Greek newspaper, rejecting Greece’s permanent request to return the 2,500-year-old statues.
Since independence in 1832, Greece has repeatedly called for the repatriation of the treasures – known in Britain as the Elgin Marbles – which the British diplomat Lord Elgin received from the Ottoman rule in the early 19th century. Parthenon Temple in Athens removed.
But the British Museum in London refused to return the statues, about half of a 160-meter frieze that adorned the 5th-century BC monument, saying it had been acquired by Elgin under a legal contract with the Ottoman Empire and that part of everyone’s “shared heritage”.
In an interview with the newspaper Ta Nea issued on Friday, Johnson, a former student of the Classics who pays close attention to the quote from Latin and Greek, reiterates that the British Museum was the legal owner of the marbles.
He said he understood the feelings of many Greeks on the issue, but said Britain had a “firm and long-standing” position on the images. “They were legally obtained by Lord Elgin, in accordance with the laws in force at the time,” he said.
Greece’s Conservative government has intensified pressure for the return of the marbles since the rule in 2019, a campaign that he said would be intensified by Britain’s departure from the European Union.
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, who previously referred to Elgin as a ‘serial thief’, said Johnson appeared to be unaware of recent historical evidence showing that the former envoy did not legally acquire the marbles.
“For Greece, the British Museum has no legal possession or possession of the sculptures,” she said in a statement.
In 2019, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he would be willing to lend important artifacts to London in exchange for exhibiting the marbles in Athens in 2021, when Greece is the 200th anniversary of its independence.
(Reported by Angeliki Koutantou; edited by Paul Simao and Hugh Lawson)