Robot replicas give hope of end to Elgin Marbles dispute

REPLICAS of the Elgin Marbles made by a robot could be offered to the British Museum to end the long-running repatriation row over the sculptures.

Greek donors are believed to be backing plans to swap replicas of the disputed marbles for the real thing after the Institute of Digital Archeology (IDA) has used a robotic sculptor to make a perfect marble copy of one of them.

Roger Michel, IDA director, has said the robot-crafted copies, made from the same marble as the originals at a cost of £200,000 a piece, could be donated free to “the cause” in order to see the marbles returned to Athens.

A full set of replicas would cost at least £6million to produce – too much for the IDA to self-finance – but international backers sympathetic to the Greek claim to the sculptures are understood to be lining up to support the project.

Mr Michel said: “We will claim no ownership of the statues. They will be placed totally at the disposal of the cause, whether that means they are given directly to the British Museum or to Greece.

“The hope is that the originals would return to Athens, and the British Museum would receive these perfect replicas as part of that deal, so they would be able to continue their educational work and not be left empty-handed.”

The IDA scanned the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum and 3D images were uploaded to a drill-fitted robot arm, which last week successfully produced a copy of a horse’s head sculpture following four days of carving.

Mr Michel has said the replicas may be better than the originals, because rather than showing 2,500 years of damage, they would be created whole and painted in bright colours as they were when first created.

Mr Michel said: “These replicas would be more educationally useful to the British Museum. They would show the statues as they would have appeared to the Ancient Greeks, which would tell us more about their culture than the damaged white statues on display.”

The museum has not commented on the chances of accepting replicas.

Ioannis Raptakis, Greece’s ambassador to the UK, has previously welcomed the possibility of offering the museum replicas, but it is understood Greece would push for a full repatriation and not a loan deal.

The Telegraph previously revealed that any deal with the British Museum would entail Greece having to accept Britain’s legal ownership of the statues, which would be a red line for the Greek authorities.