Museum may be sued over Elgin ‘snobbery’

ers to scan the Elgin Marbles, which were removed from the Parthenon in Athens by Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, 200 years ago.

A plan to create replicas of the 2,500-year-old sculptures was hailed as a possible solution to the dispute over their ownership which has bedevilled relations between Britain and Greece since they were sold to Bruce by Athen’s Turkish occupiers.

The Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) had asked permission to scan one the 32 sculptures now in the British Museum as “proof of concept”.

The scan would enable a robot sculptor using real chisels to create a copy using marble from the same quarry as the originals.

The scans would be made using a handheld 3D camera and the marbles would not be moved or touched.

Roger Michel, executive director of the IDA, believes the copies will be so good the originals could be returned to Greece for reunification with the missing half. Britain could then display its own version, possibly alongside a restored version brightly painted as the originals would once have been.

The request to digitally scan one was rejected by Peter Higgs, the Museum’s acting keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities, with no explanation.

In a message to Mr Michel, he explained that the museum was making special provision to permit the study of objects in its collections before stating “we are unable to facilitate your request”.

Mr Michel said he would take the case to court as a matter of principle.

The Harvard-trained lawyer claims the decision reflects an “arrogant sense of cultural primacy”. He said: “Stated in very crude terms, the British Museum is just too snobby to give them back to the Greeks.”

The British Museum said that digital scanning could provide useful information about the marbles, however it did not explain the reason the IDA was refused permission to make its own scans.