Seeing Greeks protest the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum,
I saw how much history mattered.
By
Fabiana Nobre, History Major
As an international flight attendant, I am lucky to be able to visit sites in Europe that I am studying in class. During the Summer 2022 term, there was a remarkable coincidence. As I was taking HIST 3110 Greek Civilization, I visited the British Museum in London, which houses the Elgin Marbles. They are statues taken by a British official in the early nineteenth century from the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens. As it turns out, my professor Dr. Bellitto had assigned for the final exam an article about this event and the questions raised about repatriating them back to Greece. The day I visited the British Museum, a group of Greek activists were protesting for the return of the statues. A class met real life met a final exam.
The history of ancient Greece matters because it is the root of our modern democracy, the birth of philosophy. It has influenced our educational system, politics, literature, architecture, art, theater, sports (the Olympics), astronomy and medicine. The Romans imitated the Greeks, and the rest of the Western world, Europeans in particular, imitated the Romans. Therefore, we are all imitating the ancient Greeks. There is no doubt that the ancient Greeks are one of the most fascinating and brilliant civilizations of the world.
I had never questioned where museums acquired their artifacts. In fact, it was something that had never crossed my mind. I had always assumed that they were acquired through donations or purchases. To me, the beauty of learning history is that I am constantly learning more about human behavior. To imagine that many artifacts have been stolen should not have been a surprise. One of Dr. Regal’s favorite lines is: “it’s all fun until an historian shows up.” Some disappointments for sure will come up; some preconceptions you had will be turned upside down and inside out. And you start questioning everything you thought you knew. For instance, the lighting of the torch at the Olympics is now a disappointment to me as now I know it was something Adolf Hitler adapted, and not something the ancient Greeks were doing in the original Olympics. After reading chapter 8 of Roger Atwood’s Stealing History, which is about the Elgin Marbles and was part of Dr. B’s final exam, I was even more disappointed with the power of colonization, and that the history of a culture can just be picked out and stolen. Knowing the history of colonization, this should not have been a shocker.
When I visited the British museum in June 2022, I noticed a group of people carrying the Greek flag; I instantly had the goosebumps. After entering the museum, and going straight to room 23, I realized that there was a protest going on. There was a group of Greeks (and non-Greek supporters) who were celebrating the 13th anniversary of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, and therefore, asking for the return of the Parthenon Marbles there. I approached a Greek woman and asked her about the protest to return the Elgin Marbles to Athens. She politely corrected me, and said “please, don’t ever call them that. He was a thief.”
Travelers have always visited the Acropolis, and many would take the liberty of taking away something ancient as a souvenir. What the British ambassador to Constantinople, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, did, was nothing new. However, the immensity of what he stole is quite disturbing. My jaw dropped, she wasn’t wrong, and in that moment, it clicked—the ding moment Dr. Bellitto talks about. These people were there fighting to reclaim an important part of their history—a history carved nearly 2,500 years ago. I was quite emotional, as the feeling in the room was a mixture of sadness, revolt and hope. I spoke to a man named Dimitris, who had a tattoo of Achilles in his forearm, and of Zeus in his upper arm. This is a culture who are passionate and proud of their history. In that moment, their history became a critical current event.
