The Elgin Marbles belong to the Parthenon

The British Museum can return them with a measure of grace or face being shamed into their return

At some point during the next decade or so the British Museum will agree to return the Parthenon sculptures and friezes to Greece. The residual question is whether it will do so speedily and with a measure of grace or whether it will have to be shamed into accepting that the so-called Elgin Marbles belong in the Acropolis.

This month, London’s relatively small Horniman Museum announced the repatriation to Nigeria of 72 precious artefacts looted by British forces during the 1890s. Among them are 12 brass plaques known as Benin Bronzes seized by marauding troops from what was then the ancient Kingdom of Benin. Hundreds of these wondrous objects are scattered among galleries and museums across the world. The most important collection is in, yes, the British Museum.

The Horniman’s move, though, was important. Described by the museum’s director as a “moral” decision, it recognises the turning of the post-imperial tide. German authorities have recently joined French museums in beginning to send back some of the treasures seized from local rulers and tribes in Europe’s scramble for Africa. Cambridge University’s Jesus College has done likewise. So far the quantities are small. But the direction has been set.

The British Museum has a finger in the dyke. As the biggest benefactors from the age of empire, Britain’s celebrated cultural institutions, the British Museum most obviously,  are the most reluctant to admit either the moral or civilisational case for allowing former colonies to recover artefacts at the heart of their history and heritage. 

The Victoria and Albert Museum, for example, is resisting Ethiopian government efforts to recover exquisite items taken from the defeated Emperor Tewodros II in what was then Abyssinia. They include a stunning gold crown and chalice, royal jewellery and religious vestments, looted after the 1868 Battle of Maqdala. The best the V&A will offer is the possibility of lending them back.

The world, though, has changed. When large swathes of the map were coloured pink Britain took the view that since it ruled the world it could do more or less as it pleased. With the passing of empire new reasons were found to justify holding on to the loot. Over the decades the nation’s cultural establishment has engaged in a continuous process of self-serving justification.

There has never been intellectual substance to the arguments. And now they have been overtaken at once by the realities of global power and changing social mores. Abroad, power has shifted eastwards and southwards. The world no longer belongs to the west. At home, history has taken another look at the age of empire and decided that Kipling’s myth of a great civilising mission sits uncomfortably with the brutal truths of colonial power.

The former outposts of empire, it was said not so long ago, could not be trusted to safeguard their national heritage. They lacked the resources, the museums, and the expertise to look after the treasures now safely stored and displayed in British museums.

More recently, this patronising arrogance has given way to the theory of cultural universalism. The British Museum, this says, is among those unique places where humanity’s heritage is assembled and studied across time and space. In such institutions cultures are set side by side -  those of India and Persia alongside those of ancient Greece, that of Rome next to those of Africa and Latin America. The traditions and artistic genius of different ages and civilisations can be seen in the round, untrammelled by geographical boundaries. 

There is a case, of course, for such encyclopaedic collections, but it must be weighed against the higher claims of those peoples whose heritage was plundered.  In any event, no one is suggesting that western museums be stripped of their antiquities. The various demands for repatriation are specific and represent only a tiny fraction of such collections. The British Museum could fill a dozen new institutions with the treasures permanently locked out of sight in its vast stores. 

In their hearts, the custodians of such institutions know they are losing the argument. As a last throw some, including George Osborne, the chairman of the British Museum, have hinted they are amenable to “loan” agreements in which the rightful owners could secure temporary custodianship of their own treasures. This, it seems, is the V&A model. I struggle to imagine a more patronising approach. If what’s needed is a face-saving formula, the museums could instead seek arrangements under which they borrow-back items they have repatriated.

The Parthenon sculptures, the British Museum insists when it feels it has its back to the wall, must be treated separately from African loot. Lord Elgin, it says, secured the authority of the then Ottoman rulers of Greece to rip them out of the Parthenon temple before selling them to the British government  in 1816.

Anyone who has visited the Acropolis will understand the vacuity of such legalisms. It is blindingly obvious that the marbles belong in the Parthenon. Byron rightly denounced Elgin’s act of vandalism. Osborne and his fellow trustees have a chance to make at least partial amends before the waves break over them.