From the fifth century to the 17th century, the Parthenon was in hard, continuous use, first as a Christian church, then – after the Ottoman empire invaded in the 15th century – as a mosque. The Turks ultimately used it as an ammunition dump, which exploded in 1687, resulting in irreparable damage.

By 1800, when Lord Elgin, Britain's aristocratic ambassador to the Ottoman court, wandered on to the scene, the Parthenon was standing amid a shantytown-cum-garrison. The surviving fabric of the building was a fragile ruin.

Napoleon had already sent agents to acquire antiquities from Athens, especially the Acropolis. The locals were using it as a quarry. Travellers and collectors were helping themselves to pieces of sculpture, large and small.

(It's because of these facts that Britain says Greece's argument – if it had the Elgin marbles, more than 85 per cent of the original would be recreated – is absolutely untrue. Half the outer marble panels, a third of the inner frieze and more than half the statuary at both ends of the Parthenon have been lost to the mists of time, say the British, with bits and pieces scattered in other European museums.)

Elgin later wrote that it was "not part of my original plan to take with me anything else but molds," but he had changed his mind: "The modern Greeks have looked upon the superb works ... with ingratitude and indifference. They do not deserve them!"

He was granted a letter of permission from the Turkish court stating that his workmen could "remove, as they wish, certain pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures there on, that no opposition be made to them."

Between 1800 and 1803, Elgin arranged for the removal of about half (some 75 metres) of the sculpted inner frieze, plus 17 life-sized marble figures and 150 of the 92 outer sculpted panels. Many of the pieces were chiselled or hacked off, but some were simply lifted off the ground.

In 1816, Elgin sold the works to the British government for the huge sum of £35,000, half of what they'd cost him in bribes and expenses.

Was Elgin a protector or a plunderer? Genuinely concerned about rescuing part of the marbles from further decay? Or an imperialist looter, guilty of cultural appropriation on a grand scale?

In academic circles, the jury remains out. But at the time, Lord Byron had no hesitation in damning him. In his epic poem Childe Harolde, he called Elgin a "spoiler," and said Greece's heritage had been "defac'd by British hands."

The overwhelming consensus, however, is that right or wrong, Elgin's actions saved the treasures he took from the neglect and pollution the remaining marbles were subject to for another 200 years.

Indeed, by the 1970s, Athen's acid rain was so toxic that the face of a horseman on the building's west side was all but obliterated. By 2004, many of the surviving marbles had been removed to the old Acropolis museum.

This week, the British Museum explained the reasoning behind its adamant stance:

"The question is, `Do you believe in the value of a worldwide collection here?'" said spokeswoman Hannah Boulton.

"If you agree with that first principle, then whatever you may think about the way material has been acquired in the past is secondary to that fundamental purpose."

In his book,Who Owns Antiquity?, James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, argues that ancient artifacts are "evidence of the world's ancient past and not that of a particular modern nation. They comprise antiquity, and antiquity knows no borders."

U of T's Nakassis doesn't buy the "property of the world" argument: "The idea that antiquity belongs to everyone and is more properly appreciated detached from its context reeks, to me, of a kind of crass globalism."

From a historical, anthropological, and archaeological perspective, he says, all the marbles should be located in Athens, "where they were produced and meant to be appreciated.

"I think most people would agree. All other things being equal, a monument should stay together so that it can be appreciated as an entity."

Neither director William Thorsell nor anyone else at the Royal Ontario Museum agreed to discuss the controversy. No surprise to Victor Rabinovitch, director of the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull.

"There are a lot of museum people staying quiet, hoping the British don't move on this," he says. "It's a murky issue."

The heritage argument is that objects shouldn't be moved from their setting, he says. But the "enlightened liberal view" is that spreading artifacts to other locations around the world is how different cultures are exposed and explained to each other.

Rabinovitch won't take a side, but explains the central arguments of both. Modern Greeks believe treasures such as the marbles, are their patrimony. The context in which they asked for their return in the past has changed, he says.

"Now they have a stable political situation and a new museum with environmental and security controls located as close as possible to the original site."

The British Museum, conversely, has possession "and that's nine-tenths of the law. It shows them to the world as part of universal, not just Greek, culture. The marbles are a signifier of the museum's importance."

Nakassis isn't impressed by the latter argument.

"The loss of the marbles wouldn't substantially diminish the importance of the British Museum. It has loads of jaw-dropping material from ancient Greece and Egypt and elsewhere."

Indeed, it does. And that's precisely why it will not, dare not, give in to Greece's request – now or ever.

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