THE Greek marbles kept on the private Scottish estate of Lord Elgin should be “returned to their rightful home”, a Cabinet Secretary has said.
Shirley-Anne Somerville, who serves as the SNP MSP for Dunfermline, made the comments after The National reported on the private collection of antiquities in Broomhall House in Fife.
Broomhall was the estate of Thomas Bruce, the “Lord Elgin” who gave his name to the Parthenon Marbles which recently sparked a diplomatic row between the UK and Greece.
Taken from the Acropolis and other ancient sites around Attika in the early 1800s, the bulk of the antiquities Elgin had commandeered were sold to the British Museum in 1816.
But other ancient Greek marbles – including a sarcophagus described by experts as “one of the very few examples of an Attic sarcophagus from Athens bearing an inscription” and which does “not appear in any of the standard modern corpora of ancient sarcophagi” – were kept in the private collection at Broomhall.
The collection is now owned by the 99-year-old Andrew Bruce, the 11th Earl of Elgin.
In 2019, Bruce gave permission for experts from the University of Manchester to examine the artefacts. They reported: “Broomhall in Fife … which has been the seat of the Earls of Elgin since the early 18th century, is home to a small but diverse collection of antiquities, encompassing Greek inscriptions, uninscribed Greek sculpture and architectural fragments.”
Referencing the sarcophagus specifically, the experts went on: “A drawing, dated to 1816, showing Elgin’s collection … clearly depicts this sarcophagus (identifiable from its inscription) sitting alongside sections of the Parthenon frieze. It is unclear why this object was not included in the sale to the British Museum.”
After The National reported on the Broomhall marbles last week, Somerville said they should be returned to Greece.
The Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice said: “The Greek marbles held at Broomhall should be returned to their rightful home in Greece.
“Their return is long overdue and should be facilitated as soon as possible.”
Her comments go further than SNP grandee Michael Russell, who has visited Broomhall (above) and seen the marbles.
He previously told The National: “As far as [Bruce’s] personal property is concerned, well, I suspect it would be sensible for him to think about how he might return it to Greece, but it would be up to him.”
The news comes as esteemed journalist and author Neal Ascherson writes for The National to call for the return of the Greek marbles in the British museum “to the sunlit Acropolis where they belong”.
In his article, Ascherson (below) connects the marbles to a history of racism and perceived British superiority in the days of empire.
He writes: “The Victorian public adored them. They became part of Great Britain’s glory. It was assumed that the Greeks were unworthy of the Marbles, unfit to care for them. But as the 19th century passed, a bizarre question began to excite London intellectuals. How could the Greeks – small, dark, poor, and erratic – possibly have carved these sublime torsos?
“Surely some other race, physically and artistically superior, lived in Attica in the 5th century BC?”
Elgin claimed to have obtained a firman – official permission – to take the marbles from the then-Ottoman-controlled Athenian Acropolis. Yet one expert noted in a 2015 academic paper on the issue: “Few (if any) scholars are willing to defend the view that formal permission was given to remove as many of the marbles as Lord Elgin did in the end.”
And historian Rochelle Gurstein said: “Elgin went beyond his original mandate, amassing a vast store of treasures that included the choicest sculptural remains.”
At the time of the marbles’ removal, there were fears for the artefacts' survival, leading some to argue that Elgin did the world a service by preserving and protecting them.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Broomhall did not engage with calls for the marbles to be returned.
They re-issued the same statement which had been given previously, which says: “The Bruce family, in common with many other museums and collections, has artefacts and archives of historic importance which are regularly made available for the purpose of academic study by scholars and researchers.”
You can read the 2019 paper on the Broomhill marbles here.
