Greece got back more than 200 classical and medieval antiquities from European countries, a step it hopes will help bring back the Parthenon marbles from Britain.

Greece's Culture Ministry Tuesday presented the artefacts -- from ancient coins and vases to parts of a Byzantine church -- at a special ceremony in Athens.

"We are moved to receive today... these parts of our cultural heritage," Culture minister Antonis Samaras told reporters at the Athens Archaeological museum. "These are not just pieces of art, but precious links to people's historical identity."

Greece has campaigned for decades to get back from the British Museum the Parthenon sculptures, also known as Elgin marbles, saying they are an integral part of one of the world's most important monuments.

The British Museum, which contains roughly half of the 160 metre frieze that adorned the 2,500-year-old temple and was removed in 1801 by Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, has refused to return the treasures.

Greece hopes to strengthen its case when it opens the new Acropolis Museum, especially designed to host the marbles, in June. It has campaigned for the return of treasures from around the world.

Germany, Belgium and Britain returned the hundreds of items shown Tuesday following Italy's offer of two Parthenon fragments to the new Acropolis museum last year.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis on Saturday toured the New Acropolis Museum a month before Greece's newest and state-of-the-art museum opens to the public some 400 metres beneath the Acropolis Hill.

"We are in the final stretch towards the official inauguration," Karamanlis told reporters following his tour with Culture Minister Antonis Samaras.

"To the millions of people expected to visit the Acropolis and the new museum every year we are sending out the message that modern Greeks, in practice and with specific works, are honoring our history and civilisation," the premier said, stressing that Hellenic culture remains one of the most significant cornerstones of world civilisation.

Karamanlis was also accompanied by New Acropolis Museum's director, Prof. Dimitris Pantermalis, and the head of the prime minister's press office, Yiannis Andrianos.

Ideology, politics and bone-headed provincialism come together comfortably when they make war on the world's great museums.

The issue is cultural property. Countries believing that colonialists stole their spiritual heritage are uniting in a send-back-our-stuff campaign. They envision populations and art objects moving in opposite directions: While citizens try to emigrate to Europe and North America for better lives, art objects should travel the other way, delivering national identity and self-esteem through ancient artifacts.

Greece yearns for the return of the Elgin Marbles, owned by the British Museum since they were taken from the Parthenon in 1803. Peru wants Yale University to return thousands of Inca artifacts discovered by the Yale historian who uncovered the lost mountainside town of Machu Picchu in 1911.

Turkey, China, Cambodia, Guatemala -- they all pine, if you believe their political leaders, for fragments of their distant past that are held abroad and must be brought "home" where they "belong."

And then there's Egypt. The government has its eye on the Rosetta Stone, a fragment of rock that opened up ancient Egyptian culture. It was carved for a temple in 196 BC but later abandoned and used as building material. French soldiers accidentally discovered it in 1799 while rebuilding a fort in the city of Rosetta during Napoleon's brief reign over Egypt. When the British moved in, they shipped it to the Brit-ish Museum.

The text inscribed on the stone, itself a document of craven colonialism, announces an agreement between Egyptian priests and Ptolemy V, the Macedonian ruler of Egypt, praising the generosity of Ptolemy and promising to demonstrate loyalty by erecting statues of him in the holiest places.

It's utterly boring but it's trilingually boring, in ancient Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic (the everyday language of contracts). In 1822 a French Egyptologist cracked the hieroglyphics code and thereby learned to translate ancient Egyptian.

Who now deserves to own such a wondrous object? The state of Macedonia, or maybe the Macedonian part of Greece? Unfortunately, populations have shifted so much in two millennia that neither can demonstrate historical continuity with 196 BC. Nor can Egypt. No one pretends that 2009 Egyptians are the same people who pledged fealty to that alien king. Modern France has a case, for guessing the text's importance in 1799 and decoding it just 23 years later. But on fifth thought, perhaps the Rosetta Stone should remain in the British Museum, where it's been well treated for two centuries.

That's more or less the argument behind Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate Over Antiquities (Princeton University Press), by James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and nine fellow professionals. Cuno, the author of another book on the same subject last year, has emerged as the champion of museums who want to keep their holdings -- and not a moment too soon.

For years, the emotional propaganda of rights-asserting nations has been winning this war and scoring some specific victories. The Italians managed to get the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to send 68 objects to Rome, and Yale has agreed to send some Machu Picchu material to Peru -- though not nearly as fast as Peru would like.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are using the ownership controversy as another nail in what they hope will be the coffin of Israel. For more than half a century,

Israel has possessed the Dead Sea Scrolls -- discovered in the middle part of the 20th century in caves near the Dead Sea's northwest shore -- exhibiting them in Jerusalem, and sending them around the world. Some of these two-millennium-old documents are to arrive at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on June 27, for a six-month stay. But the Palestinians have decided, after all this time, that the scrolls were found on what they (dubiously) consider Palestinian land, therefore Palestinians own them. The Toronto Star recently displayed this nonsense on page one.

Cuno believes major museums, with their Enlightenment-inspired dedication to spreading knowledge, can best protect antiquities, study them and reveal the relationships of distinct ancient cultures by exhibiting them side by side. Cuno speaks the cosmopolitan language of cultural pluralism. The other side, insisting that art remain where it happened to be found, deploys the rhetoric of jealous nationalism in the service of government.

Culture matters more than concocted national pride, as curators and museum directors know. At last they're reasserting their principles, after an embarrassing period of passivity and pusillanimity.

Greek government unveils new home for Elgin Marbles

Fresh demands for the return of the Elgin Marbles are accompanying the launch next month of the £115 million Acropolis Museum, which has a reserved space for the world's most famous piece of classical statuary.

The 270,000 sq ft museum is being established as a home for the 160-metre long strip of marble that adorned the Parthenon until 1801. The museum, which stands just 400 metres from the Parthenon, opens in June – three decades after the building was first proposed.
Antonis Samaras, the minister for culture and athletics said: "The opening of the Acropolis Museum is a major world event. June 20th will be a day of celebration for all civilised people, not for Greeks alone. I want the Britons especially to consider the Acropolis Museum as the most hospitable place for them."
Greeks hopes have been emboldened by the return to Athens from Germany and Sweden of a host of treasures, including some taken from the Acropolis itself. The frieze adorned the Parthenon until 1801 when Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed it, along with a host of other treasures when Athens was under enemy occupation.
They were sold by Lord Elgin to the British Museum for £35,000 after Parliament voted in 1816 to acquire them for the nation and were vested "in perpetuity" in the trustees of the British Museum. The Greek Government disagrees.
Mr Samaras is the successor to the late Melina Mercouri, whose strident claims for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles made headlines more than 20 years ago.
The language today is more restrained, yet more confident. "I, along with every other Greek, wants the marbles reunited, just as Melina did," he said. "The argument against was that there was no deserving museum in Greece to house them. Now, this argument is off the table – it cannot stand anymore. The Acropolis Museum was Melina's dream, and now we see it standing."
Greece retains 36 of the 115 panels in the Parthenon frieze. With the reproduction in its glass-walled upper gallery of the exact dimensions of the Parthenon temple, the building allows the marbles to be represented in their original configuration and context, in a way that could never be done in the British Museum.
The Greeks have also taken heart from polls that have shown that the majority of Britons support the return of the Marbles.
The fight for the return of the Marbles has led to committees being set up in 14 countries to lobby for their return.
The gallery offers a simultaneous view of the Parthenon itself, the extraordinary temple to the goddess Athena and, in the view of many, the greatest classical building in the world.
Constructing a vast new museum in one of the world's most ancient cities was not easy. When archaeologists began work they uncovered a 5th century BC settlement. The response of the architectural team of Bernard Tschumi from New York and Michael Photiadis from Greece was to build the elegant modern structure above the archaeological diggings. The site, which is still being excavated, can be seen by visitors through the museum's glass floor.
Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, has rejected overtures from Athens and said that it is the museum's duty to "preserve the universality of the marbles, and to protect them from being appropriated as a nationalistic political symbol".
If the British Museum, which says it is barred by its constitution from handing back its treasures, were obliged to return the marbles, the floodgates might open on other restitution claims. Nigeria, for instance, wants the return of the Benin bronzes, looted by Britain in 1897. The 270,000 sq ft museum is being established as a home for the 160-metre long strip of marble that adorned the Parthenon until 1801. The museum, which stands just 400 metres from the Parthenon, opens in June – three decades after the building was first proposed.
Greeks hopes have been emboldened by the return to Athens from Germany and Sweden of a host of treasures, including some taken from the Acropolis itself. The frieze adorned the Parthenon until 1801 when Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed it, along with a host of other treasures when Athens was under enemy occupation.
They were sold by Lord Elgin to the British Museum for £35,000 after Parliament voted in 1816 to acquire them for the nation and were vested "in perpetuity" in the trustees of the British Museum. The Greek Government disagrees.
Mr Samaras is the successor to the late Melina Mercouri, whose strident claims for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles made headlines more than 20 years ago.
The language today is more restrained, yet more confident. "I, along with every other Greek, wants the marbles reunited, just as Melina did," he said. "The argument against was that there was no deserving museum in Greece to house them. Now, this argument is off the table – it cannot stand anymore. The Acropolis Museum was Melina's dream, and now we see it standing."
Greece retains 36 of the 115 panels in the Parthenon frieze. With the reproduction in its glass-walled upper gallery of the exact dimensions of the Parthenon temple, the building allows the marbles to be represented in their original configuration and context, in a way that could never be done in the British Museum.
The Greeks have also taken heart from polls that have shown that the majority of Britons support the return of the Marbles.
The fight for the return of the Marbles has led to committees being set up in 14 countries to lobby for their return.
The gallery offers a simultaneous view of the Parthenon itself, the extraordinary temple to the goddess Athena and, in the view of many, the greatest classical building in the world.
Constructing a vast new museum in one of the world's most ancient cities was not easy. When archaeologists began work they uncovered a 5th century BC settlement. The response of the architectural team of Bernard Tschumi from New York and Michael Photiadis from Greece was to build the elegant modern structure above the archaeological diggings. The site, which is still being excavated, can be seen by visitors through the museum's glass floor.
Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, has rejected overtures from Athens and said that it is the museum's duty to "preserve the universality of the marbles, and to protect them from being appropriated as a nationalistic political symbol".
If the British Museum, which says it is barred by its constitution from handing back its treasures, were obliged to return the marbles, the floodgates might open on other restitution claims. Nigeria, for instance, wants the return of the Benin bronzes, looted by Britain in 1897.

"London now has a unique possibility to live up to modern thinking and international agreement by declaring to bring the Parthenon Marbles back to Athens"

London is hosting the Olympics in the year 2012. London now has a unique possibility to live up to modern thinking and international agreement by declaring to bring the Parthenon Marbles back to Athens, says Professor Mika Kajava from the University of Helsinki and Vice President of the Finnish Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Sculptures.

This would be a perfect connection of noble principles from ancient time with modern implementation of the Olympic idea. Such an action also shows real respect for other cultures and historical cultures and their heritages, Professor Kajava continues.

Blaming others, based on personal values, for what their forefathers have done, is seldom very constructive. A support of those, who are ready to follow international agreements, based on commonly accepted values, would in my mind be more productive, Kajava continued. Both the British Museum and the politicians in UK will gain in international public respect by declaring that they are ready to restitute the Parthenon marbles to Athens in connection to the Olympics in London in 2012."

Professor Kajava spoke at the seminar on the Parthenon Marbles, which was part of the official programme of the state visit of the President of the Hellenic Republic, H.E., Dr. Karolos Papoulias.

It is wonderful to see that the marbles are not only an issue for one single country, but a common goal, President Papoulias stated.

In addition to the moral point of view, also the aesthetic point was used as an argument for the restitution of the marbles.

The Acropolis is the most well known symbol of one of the most productive and glorious periods in the history of mankind. When work began on the Parthenon in 447 BC, the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. The Acropolis of Athens and its monuments are a part of the UNESCO World Heritage.

ATHENS: Greece is making new demands for the return of the Elgin Marbles to coincide with the opening next month of the £115 million ($230 million) Acropolis Museum, which has a reserved space for the famous piece of classical statuary.

The museum has been established as a home for the 146-metre-long frieze that adorned the Parthenon until 1801.

The Greek Minister for Culture and Athletics, Antonis Samaras, said: "The opening of the Acropolis Museum is a major world event. June 20 will be a day of celebration for all civilised people, not for Greeks alone. I want the Britons especially to consider the Acropolis Museum as the most hospitable place for them."

Greek hopes have risen after the return of treasures from Germany and Sweden.

The Parthenon frieze and other treasures were removed by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, when Athens was under enemy occupation. He sold them to the British Museum for £35,000 after Parliament voted in 1816 to acquire them for the nation.

Mr Samaras is a successor to the late Melina Mercouri, whose strident claims for the return of the marbles made headlines more than 20 years ago. The language today is more restrained, yet more confident.

"I, along with every other Greek, want the marbles reunited, just as Melina did," he said. "The argument against was that there was no deserving museum in Greece to house them. Now, this argument is off the table ... The Acropolis Museum was Melina's dream, and now we see it standing."