Letters
Lost marbles
Sir: Gavin Stamp has lost sight of the cen- tral points in the Parthenon Marbles issue (`Keeping our Marbles, 10 December).
Please allow me to state them very briefly. First, the sculptures were removed (not, incidentally, bought) when Greece was under foreign occupation. The occupying power had no more legal right to dispose of the artistic treasures of Greece than had the German forces occupying France during the second world war to remove the artistic treasures of that country. These were, of course, subsequently returned.
Second, the sculptures were an integral part of a monument that is central to the Greek people's idea of their own cultural identity. It is up to the Greek people themselves to define that identity, not Mr Stamp, who attempts to resuscitate a long- discredited and most disreputable argu- ment, with racial undertones, when he remarks that the present inhabitants of Greece are not descended from the race of Pericles. To dispute the continuity of the Greek language is complete nonsense, as any of the many Greek scholars in Britain would tell him. The heirs of Shakespeare are those who think of themselves as the heirs of Shakespeare, and use the same tongue, and that is all there is to it.
Third, the return of the Marbles will allow them to be seen, as modern ar- chaeological science demands, in direct relation to the monument they were created for, and in relation to the other Acropolis sculptures, for which — as is well known - a special Acropolis Museum is to be built by the Greek government. This museum will allow for the most up-to-date methods of preservation, a field in which Greek scien- tists have won universal acclaim.
It would be pleasant to let the case rest there, and to ignore Mr Stamp's extraor- dinary historical views. But his inspired hostility to Greece — 'the wretched actuality of Greece in the present', and so on — leads him to describe it as a country which has often been conspicuously unfriendly to us. If this notion arises out of ignorance rather than malice, it is ignorance on a mind- boggling scale.
Nikos Kyriazides
Ambassador, Greek Embassy, London
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