Well, the marbles were recued by Lord Elgin because they would otherwise have been broken up for hardcore. They were stolen legally so they are legally ours (British). I don’t know more than that. I’m sure one day they will be returned.
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Nice oxymoron 
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The British empire happened at a time when older empires were not doing well, so we stole borrowed them, made a quick buck, then made these previously independent countries independent again.
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Hey DooD, interesting way of putting it…
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Some folks still have a load of luggage where the British are concerned.
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Especially when that luggage is full of rocks from the Acropolis. Good job he didn’t go by plane.
Is that true? I don’t think it is. Most were in place around the Parthenon and were stripped from the top of the building by Lord Elgin who then shipped them back to England and eventually he sold them to the British Government. The Parthenon is still standing so the use of stones from the top as road fill sounds extremely unlikely but certainly some of the fallen structure (earthquake) was used as building materials (like the Colosseum or Hadrian’s Wall)
At the time there was significant dispute about the legality of the taking of the Pantheon marbles. Elgin claimed he had permission from the then rulers of Greece, the Ottoman empire, but this was denied by the Ottomans and no documentation of this approval has ever been found. Even in the UK there were some, like Lord Byron, who saw this removal of the marbles as vandalism and theft. It took debate in parliament to decide to exonerate Elgin - so plenty speaking against the taking of the marbles and not a cut & dried decision.
The kindest one can say is that the marbles were removed for their protection. And that itself is a dubious claim. But if correct then surely that period of protection is no longer required.
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I suppose handing everything back and resetting history is what cancel culture aims for … me I’m a bit more cosmopolitan and forgiving… it was our ancestors not us that did all this and the world is now as it is and we should learn to live together
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In what way do you mean ‘resetting’? I’m genuinely curious as I don’t know how history can be reset. I understand a telling of history from a different perspective (as in, different from the traditional school taught & presented history). But resetting?
The cancel culture is a mindset where if everything is returned or things that represent the hideous side of history is removed then it never happened and everyone can be happy in lalaland…
In reality history happened and the reminders that are there are beacons to what shouldn’t happen again rather than something to remove to hide it from recent memory.
It’s like putting cigs behind shutters in shops lol it doesn’t stop anyone smoking it just doesn’t offend the nonsmoking community
See, folks on the receiving end of stuff, tend to have longer memories than those dishing stuff out, so long that following generations are still raw.
There’s an interesting documentary on BBC 4 about the man who invented modern archaeological methods. Worth watching.
The Man Who Discovered Egypt: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01f13f4 via @bbciplayer
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I saw that on the box a couple of evenings ago, highly recommended 
Quite a while ago now I was fortunate enough to spend three weeks in Egypt, a week in Luxor, Egypt Air to Cairo for just under two weeks, back to Luxor and then back home to sunny Gatwick.
I avoided the organised coach tours etc and haggled for taxis, used the Cairo Metro and basically just wandered about drinking it all in. By the way, crossing the busy roads in Cairo is crazy, it’s almost as if you have to forget everything you were taught as a child about road safety…forget the green cross code, utterly useless 
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My mother told a tale about when she and my old man went to Egypt. It was when the country was reopening to tourism I can’t recall when but it was either after the 6 day war or the terrorist attack on tourists or the murder of the President (take your pick).
The Tourist Bureau decided to provide a a free fortnight in Egypt for a group of head teachers presumably to encourage school visits.
Anyway they were the only tourists in the country so they had a wonderful time visiting the Pyramids, travelling on the Nile etc The only disappointment was the Cairo museum because Tutankhamen and all his bits and pieces had been loaned to the British Museum (I think) and was in London so the museum was virtually empty.
That might have been 1972 Bruce?
The Tutankhamen exhibition at the British Museum, it was big, big news over here at the time. Tutankhamen posters, t shirts, books everywhere. The ques to get in went right around the block!
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I’m not sure that removing the hideous side of history is the goal. Surely, the goal is to make clear the good and bad side of history. So for example, making it clear that such & such historic building was built on the proceeds of, say, the slave trade is not hiding anything. Glorifying so & so historic figure but not mentioning, say, their role in using slaves to amass a fortune is hiding the hideous things.
In the case of handing things back - if they were taken without payment or permission (what would normally be called stealing) then what is the case for not handing them back? And in handing things back, how is that history going to be hidden? Is it not as likely that just simply retaining a stolen item, and not mentioning how it was obtained, amounts to hiding things from a complete historic view?
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Much of the gold in the world today was stolen from the Incas by the Spanish .
As for things like the Elgin marbles why don’t we just take a resin copy and let the Greeks have them back ?
Resin copies look just the same no one would know the difference .
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Or, give the Greeks the Resin one’s!
They would be too light to pit back on the acropolis or wherever they came from .
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