Archaeopaedia: Elgin, Earl of

Lord Elgin (Thomas Bruce)

Thomas Bruce (July 20, 1766-November 14, 1881), the third son of Charles Bruce, was the fifth earl of Elgin. Depending on the source, he is either famous or infamous for his acquisition in 1801 of the Parthenon Marbles from the Turkish Ottoman Empire, then in control of Greece.

Elgin fostered a zeal for the classics. He believed that the Turks did not fully appreciate the antiquities of ancient Greece. According to some accounts, he was also interested in obtaining artifacts to decorate his new mansion in Scotland, which he had recently built for his young wife.

Soon after he became ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1799, a position he held for four years, Elgin singled out four sites for preservation: the Parthenon, whence most of the Lord Elgin collection comes, the Erechthion, Propylaia, and Temple of Athena Nike. Of these locations, the Parthenon, an iconic symbol of Greece, has received the most attention. Elgin paid Turkish officials for permission to make casts of its famous sculptures. In 1801, he was encouraged by Dr. Philip Hunt, Chaplain to the British Embassy at Constantinople and himself a lover of antiquities, to leverage his influence as an ambassador to obtain a firman--a decree or mandate issued by the government--to free himself of local restrictions. The firman allowed him to gather those pieces of the structure that had fallen to the ground during the 1687 Venetian siege of Athens, during which the temple, used as an ammunitions store, suffered a direct hit. He then went about stripping the structure of parts of the frieze, metopes and pedimental figures that had not fallen away. Elgin eventually filled one-hundred chests full of the ancient sculptures.

In 1804, Elgin attempted to transport a number of these cases to Great Britain. Taking advantage of a temporary peace between England and its perennial enemy France, he unwisely decided to travel overland through the latter country. Fighting flared back up quickly, and Elgin found himself imprisoned in France for two years. After being released, he successfully transported eighty chests back to Great Britain with the assistance of the British navy. He spent 5000 pounds raising twelve cases that sank along with their freightor off the coast of the island of Cerigo.

By 1812, all one-hundred chests had been transported to Great Britain. Elgin's marriage had long since gone awry. To make matters worse, he had gained the dubious reputation of a plunderer of ancient civilization. Of the earl, the ever-incendiary Lord Byron wrote “His mind is as barren and his heart is as hard,/ Is he whose head conceiv’d, whose hand prepar’d/ Aught to displace Athena’s poor remains.”

After selling the marbles to the British government for half of what he had invested in their acquisition, he returned to Scotland, where he remarried and had seven children.

Present-day opinions of Elgin range widely. Some see him as a tragic, well-intentioned figure who saved some of the finest examples of high classical art from treasure-hunters. Others view him as a cultural vagabond. Greece has been critical of Elgin from the earliest days of the Parthenon's "stripping." As early as 1817, some British politicians began to express their own concerns over the marbles. Even so, others celebrated Elgin as a hero. No matter what one's opinion is, Elgin's lingering effect on political and cultural relations between Greece and Britain is readily evident. He is a central figure not only in the debate over the return the Parthenon marbles, but also in the ongoing cultural, anthropological and very human question of who can claim ownership to the past.

Links

Parthenon Marbles Controversy [link]

The British Museum [link]

Center for Studies of the Acropolis [link]

Commodification [link]

References

Chamberlin, Russell. Loot! : The Heritage of Plunder. New York, N.Y.: Facts on File (1983).

“Lord Elgin Was a Bastard.” Electroasylum.com. 8 Dec. 2005 <http://www.electroasylum.com/elgin/>.

Rothernbur, Jacob. “Lord Elgin’s Marbles: How Sculptures From the Parthenon Got to the British Museum.” Biblical Archaeological Society. 8 Dec. 2005 <http://www.bib-arch.org/olympicwatch>.

Zieglar, Mark. “All the Marbles.” San Diego Union-Tribune. Aug. 10 2004. Elginism.com. 8 Dec. 2005 < http://www.elginism.com/20040816/85/>.