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ALCHEMY ON THE ACROPOLIS: TURNING ANCIENT LEAD INTO RESTITUTIONIST GOLD*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2015

JAMES M. BERESFORD
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Abstract

This paper assesses the historical validity of the famous tale that, near the beginning of the Greek War of Independence (1821–32), the Hellenic revolutionary army offered lead ammunition to their Ottoman enemies who they were besieging on the Athenian Acropolis. This gift was presented to the Turks in an effort to halt their quarrying of the Parthenon and the other classical monuments on the hill-top, within the masonry of which the Ottoman defenders were searching for the ancient lead clamps which could be melted down and recast into ammunition. This paper will, however, demonstrate that there is a lack of contemporary evidence to support the tale and the earliest recorded references to the story only occur some four decades after the event was claimed to have taken place. Yet despite this lack of eyewitness evidence, from the early 1980s onwards, the tale has been frequently passed off as historical fact and referenced with regularity by campaigners lobbying for the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

Type
Communication
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 903 - 926
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank William St Clair for his extremely helpful advice during the research of this paper. The manuscript also benefited from the assistance provided by Elinda Labropoulou as well as a number of Greek academics who, due to the nature of the paper, prefer to remain unacknowledged. The author would also like to express his appreciation to the referees who reviewed the paper and provided a number of helpful comments, and the editor of the journal for his suggestions which have improved the initial manuscript.

References

1 The man who shot Liberty Valance (1962), directed by John Ford.

2 Following Merryman, this article uses the term ‘Elgin Marbles’ to differentiate those sculptures currently residing in the British Museum from the rest of the surviving Parthenon Marbles, the vast majority of which are now on display in the top-floor gallery of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. J. H. Merryman, ‘Wither the Elgin Marbles?’, in J. H. Merryman, ed., Imperialism, art and restitution (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 98–113, at p. 98. It should, however, be noted that, in addition to the sculptures Elgin's agents removed from the Parthenon, the Scottish aristocrat also acquired marbles from other temples on the Acropolis, and indeed from other sites in Athens and beyond.

3 M. Mercouri, ‘Address of Mme. Melina Mercouri, minister of culture and sciences of Greece, to the world conference on cultural policies, organized by UNESCO in Mexico, July 29, 1982, on the submission by Greece of a draft recommendation on the return of cultural property to its country of origin’, reproduced on the website of the Melina Mercouri foundation: http://melinamercourifoundation.com/en/speeches1 (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).

4 The ancient clamps were actually constructed of iron, but molten lead had been poured around them to prevent the ferrous metal from becoming exposed to the air and rusting; corrosion that would cause expansion of the metal and a splitting of the surrounding marble. See, for example, I. D. Jenkins, The Parthenon sculptures (London, 2007), p. 34.

5 For modern balanced views of the atrocities committed by both Greeks and Turks during the War of Independence see, for example, W. St Clair, That Greece might still be free: the philhellenes in the war of independence (Cambridge, 2008; 1st edn 1972), and D. Brewer, The flame of freedom: the Greek War of Independence, 1821–1833 (London, 2001).

6 A. Valaoritis, Life and works of Aristotle Valaoritis: vol. A (Athens, 1908), pp. 521–3 (translated from the original Greek).

7 Voutieridis, E., ‘The Greek caretaking of antiquities during the fight for independence: 1821–1829’, Nea Estia, 860 (1 Sept. 1961), pp. 1139–44Google Scholar (in Greek). A copy of the text of the Valaoritis letter is available on p. 1142 of the article. The entire paper (in Greek) can be accessed online at www.ekebi.gr/magazines/showimage.asp?file=98084&code=4756&zoom=800 (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).

8 Ibid., p. 1142. This is further emphasized by contemporary accounts of the siege, notably that published by an anonymous author in 1826, who writes that the chief commander of the Greek forces in Athens was Captain Panagi. This war leader would be killed on the day the Acropolis was handed over to the Greeks when a cannon unexpectedly discharged, throwing Panagi from the walls, so that the commander was ‘dashed to pieces on the rocks’ (Anonymous, ‘The siege of the acropolis of Athens in the years 1821–1822: by an eye-witness’, London Magazine, 4 (Jan.–Apr. 1826), pp. 193–208, at p. 205).

9 At the beginning of the siege, there were only about 300 Ottoman men on the Acropolis regarded as fit for military service (T. Gordon, History of the Greek revolution (Edinburgh and London, 1832), i, pp. 174–5), while by the summer of 1822 there were only 180 Muslim males capable of bearing arms left on the hill-top (G. Finlay, History of the Greek revolution (Edinburgh and London, 1861), i, p. 348). With the Greek army at Athens numbering in the region of 3,000 (Gordon, History of the Greek revolution, i, p. 175), the insurgents thus possessed overwhelming odds of ten to sixteen soldiers to every able-bodied male Ottoman defender. Nonetheless, it proved to be the acute shortage of water on the hill-top that finally induced the 1,100–1,200 Muslim men, women, and children on the Acropolis to surrender on 21 June 1822 (see below, p. 20 n. 49).

10 Voutieridis, ‘The Greek caretaking of antiquities’.

11 See, for example, Gotsi, G., ‘Empire and exoticism in the short fiction of Alexandros Rizos Rangavis’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 24 (2006), pp. 23–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 23.

12 C. Hitchens, The Parthenon Marbles: the case for reunification (London, 2008; 1st edn 1988 published as The Elgin Marbles), pp. 59–60.

13 Ibid., p. 60.

14 Ibid.

15 For Pittakis and Rangavis as co-editors of Ephemeris Archaeologiki, see V. Petrakos, ‘The stages of Greek archaeology’, in P. Valavanēs, ed., Great moments in Greek archaeology (Athens, 2007), pp. 16–35, at pp. 20–1. Despina Catapoti has also recently noted the importance of Rangavis and Pittakis who ‘published the first official archaeological journal Archailogiki Ephimeris while also founded the Archaeological Society in Athens’ (D. Catapoti, ‘A nationalist palimpsest: authoring the history of the Greek nation through alternative museum narratives’, in D. Poulot, F. Bodenstei, and J. M. L. Guiral, eds., Great narratives of the past traditions and revisions in national museums: conference proceedings from EuNaMus, European National Museums: identity politics, the uses of the past and the European citizen, Paris 28 June – 1 July & 25–26 November 2011. EuNaMus Report No. 4. Linköping electronic conference proceedings, No. 78 (Linköping University, Sweden, 2012), pp. 133–68, at p. 149.

16 C. Bouras, ‘Restoration work on the Parthenon and changing attitudes towards the conservation of monuments’, in P. Tournikiotis, ed., The Parthenon and its impact in modern times (Athens, 1996), pp. 310–39, at p. 322.

17 For more on the estrangement of Pittakis and Rangavis, see, for example, Athanassopoulou, Effie F., ‘An “ancient” landscape: European ideals, archaeology, and nation building in early modern Greece’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 20 (2002), pp. 273–305 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See especially pp. 297–8.

18 Gotsi, ‘Empire and exoticism’, pp. 23, 44.

19 Ibid., pp. 23, 26, 44.

20 A. R. Rangavis, Memoirs [Apomnemoneumata] (Athens, 1999), i, p. 273. See also C. M. Güthenke, ‘The philhellenic horizon: Homeric prolegomena to the Greek War of Independence’, in R. Armstrong and C. Hackney-Dué, The Homerizon: conceptual interrogations in Homeric studies (Cambridge, MA, 2006), http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/1317 (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).

21 Athanassopoulou, ‘An “ancient” landscape’, p. 298.

22 For a useful recent overview of the Megali Idea, and the desire to reclaim Palaea Hellas (Old Greece), see J. S. Koliopoulos and T. M. Veremis, Greece: the modern sequel: from 1821 to the present (2nd edn, London, 2007), pp. 245–53. The Great Idea is also discussed in classic works such as C. M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece: a short history (London, 1984), pp. 165–7; R. Clogg, A concise history of Greece (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 47–9.

23 See, for example, Güthenke, ‘The philhellenic horizon’; Mackridge, P., ‘The return of the muses: some aspects of revivalism in Greek literature, 1760–1840’, Kampos, 2 (1994), pp. 47–71 Google Scholar.

24 J. P. Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters, i: Untergang der peloponnesischen Hellenen und wiederbevölkerung des leeren bodens durch slavische volksstämme (Stuttgart, 1830).

25 Y. Hamilakis, The nation and its ruins: antiquity, archaeology, and national imagination in Greece (Oxford, 2007), p. 115. See especially E. Skopetea, Fallmerayer: Telnasmata tou antipalou deous (Athens, 1997).

26 The desire to reinforce the claim that there exists a direct continuity of ethnicity and culture stretching from antiquity through to the present was certainly not limited to Pittakis but has been a consistent feature of Greek scholarship since at least the establishment of the University of Athens in 1837. From the immediate post-revolutionary period through to the present, even highly respected scholars have been expected to defend the tenuous links that, it has been argued, connect the communities of ancient Greece with those of the present. See, for example, Koliopoulos and Veremis, Greece: the modern sequel, pp. 264, 291. Also of interest is the recent article by W. St Clair, ‘Looking at the Acropolis of Athens from modern times to antiquity’, in C. Sandis, ed., Cultural heritage ethics: between theory and practice (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 57–102, at pp. 79–80.

27 William St Clair, whose book, That Greece might still be free (2008), remains the most comprehensive work on the role of foreigners aiding the Greek fight against the Ottoman empire, and who is currently working on a new book, Looking at the Acropolis of Athens from modern times to antiquity (forthcoming), has also recently noted that he has never found any reference to the alleged gifting of lead ammunition by the Greeks to the Turks in the contemporaneous, or near contemporaneous, accounts of the Revolution that are known to him (pers. comm., June 2015).

28 ‘Extract of a letter from M. Gropius, Austrian consul at Athens, relative to the present state of the ancient remains in that city’, 15 Apr. 1824, reproduced in E. Blaquière, Narrative of a second visit to Greece, including facts connected with the last days of Lord Byron, extracts from correspondence, official documents, &c. (London, 1825), pp. 154–8, at p. 157.

29 G. Waddington, A visit to Greece, in 1823 and 1824 (London, 1825), p. 91. Unlike the claims made by Melina Mercouri in Mexico City in 1982, it would therefore appear that it was not the columns of the Parthenon that were broken in an effort to remove the lead from the clamps inside, but rather the walls of the cella. This has also been highlighted by William St Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles: the controversial history of the Parthenon sculptures (Oxford, 1998; 1st edn, 1967), p. 315.

30 St Clair, That Greece might still be free, pp. 144–5.

31 This phrase was frequently used by Mercouri during her visit to Britain in 1986. See, for example, St Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, pp. 325, 394 n. 53.

32 M. Andronikos, History and poetry (Athens, 1999).

33 R. Browning, ‘The Parthenon in history’, in Hitchens, The Parthenon Marbles, pp. 1–16, at p. 12.

34 K. Simopoulos, The looting and destruction of Greek antiquities (Athens, 1993).

35 M. Beard, The Parthenon (London, 2010; 1st edn 2002), p. 95.

36 The repatriationist group was originally established as the ‘British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles’, before switching ‘Restitution’ for ‘Reunification’.

37 BCRPM, n.d., ‘Who we are: our composition, supporters and aims’, BCRPM website: www.parthenonuk.com/who-are-we (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).

38 For the impact of Mercouri and the campaign to reclaim the Elgin Marbles which she initiated in 1982, see, for example, A. Bounia, ‘Cultural policy in Greece, the case of the national museums (1990–2010): an overview’, in L. Eilertsen and A. B. Amundsen, eds., Museum policies in Europe, 1990–2010: negotiating professional and political Utopia (Linkoping, 2012), pp. 127–56, at p. 142; Hamilakis, The nation and its ruins, pp. 256–9; Beresford, J. M., ‘Museum of light: the new Acropolis Museum and the campaign to repatriate the Elgin Marbles’, Architecture, Media, Politics, Society (Amps), 7 (2015), pp. 1–34 Google Scholar, at pp. 4–5. For more on the importance of the Elgin Marbles to Greek politics, see M. Kersel, ‘The politics of playing fair, or, who's losing their marbles?’, in Y. Rowan and U. Baram, eds., Marketing heritage (New York, NY, Toronto, and London, 2004), pp. 41–56, at pp. 49–50; R. Harrison, ‘The politics of heritage’, in R. Harrison, ed., Understanding the politics of heritage (Manchester, 2010), pp. 154–96, at pp. 174–82; Beresford, J. M., ‘Mind the gap: prediction and performance in respect to visitor numbers at the new acropolis museum’, Museum and Society, 12 (2014), pp. 171–90Google Scholar, at p. 176.

39 For the official request for the return of the Elgin Marbles made by the Greek Culture Ministry in 1983, see Harrison, ‘The politics of heritage’, pp. 176–7; D. Wilson, ‘Return and restitution: a museum perspective’, in I. McBryde, ed., Who owns the past? (Melbourne, 1985), pp. 99–106. While Dorothy King has claimed that Mercouri actually shed her tears in the wrong gallery of the British Museum, and had to be informed by a museum curator that the sculptures from the Parthenon were in the adjoining room (The Elgin Marbles (London, 2006), p. 296), Dr King is no longer certain that this was in fact the case (pers. comm. 13 July 2012).

40 Merryman, ‘Wither the Elgin Marbles?’, p. 98. Merryman has laid emphasis on the perceived cultural nationalism bound up with Greek claims for the return of the sculptures ( Merryman, J. H., ‘Thinking about the Elgin Marbles’, Michigan Law Review, 83 (1985), pp. 1880–923CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Merryman, ‘Wither the Elgin Marbles?’, pp. 102–6). Even those broadly in favour of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens have noted the ‘impassioned antics of Melina Mercouri’ (S. Waxman, Loot: the battle over the stolen treasures of the ancient world (New York, NY, 2008), p. 242.

41 Address to the Oxford Union, 12 June 1986. Reproduced on the website of the Melina Mercouri Foundation http://melinamercourifoundation.com/oxford-union-june-12-1986/ (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).

42 Ibid.

43 Wikipedia, n.d., ‘Kyriakos Pittakis’, Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriakos_Pittakis (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).

44 It appears that Hitchens's polemic essay, The Parthenon Marbles: the case for reunification, frequently functions as a key text from which many international campaigners lobbying for the repatriation of the Elgin Marbles draw much of their historical information.

45 E. J. Comino, ‘Reflecting on four decades of campaigning: the IOC-A-RPM perspective’, The international colloquy: the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, London, 19–20 June 2012. Video of the speech available at www.parthenonmarblesaustralia.org.au/index.php/events/london-international-colloquy-videos/197-emanuel-j-comino-am-aus-reflecting-on-four-decades-of-campaigning-the-ioc-a-rpm-perspective(last accessed 2 Sept. 2015). Comino appears to have made regular use of the tale as a means of generating support for the restitutionist cause; more than three years earlier he had offered the story to readers of Neos Kosmos, a Greek-language newspaper published in Australia. (For Comino's assertions, published in the English-language version of the newspaper, see ‘Emanuel John Komino OAM J. P. Winner Kogarah Citizen of the year 2009’, Neos Kosmos, 6 Feb. 2009. pp. 30–1, at p. 31. Article available at: 60.241.173.43/kosmos/2009/02/06/page_31_news_in_english.pdf (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).) Comino may even have referenced the tale when addressing the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2003 (ibid., p. 31), although the author has been unable to confirm conclusively whether this was indeed the case.

46 Reunited, Marbles, ‘A new committee’, Marbles Reunited News: Newsletter of the Marbles Reunited Campaign, 5 (2010)Google Scholar, www.greece.org/blogs/marbles/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/MR_newsletter_1002_Email.pdf, p. 4 (last accessed 2 Sept. 2015).

47 George Bizos, ‘Address by George Bizos at the inaugural meeting to form the South African Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles’, 2009, pp. 19–20. Text of speech formerly available on the Saheti website (though the speech has been removed in 2015). Copies of the speech held at Legal Resources Centre, 9th Floor, Bram Fischer House, 25 Rissik Street, Johannesburg. Email: .

48 ‘Debate on the Parthenon Marbles’, formerly available on the Saheti website (though removed in 2015). For the establishment of the South African Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles in 2009, see Marbles Reunited, ‘A new committee’, Marbles Reunited News, p. 4.

49 The exact number of captives is unclear. The American philhellene S. G. Howe would claim 1,100 Turks surrendered to the Greeks (An historical sketch of the Greek revolution (New York, NY, 1828), pp. 110–12), while both Thomas Gordon (History of the Greek revolution, i, p. 416) and George Finlay (History of the Greek revolution, i, p. 348) put the figure at 1,150. The historian David Brewer has recently followed the claims of these two latter philhellenes (The flame of freedom, p. 172), but the nineteenth-century scholar W. Alison Phillips placed the number of Ottoman prisoners at 1,190 (The war of Greek independence, 1821 to 1833 (London, 1897), p. 101).

50 Extremely generous terms of surrender are listed by Gordon (History of the Greek Revolution, i, p. 411) and Waddington (A visit to Greece, in 1823 and 1824, pp. 62–3). According to Finlay, the terms accepted by the Muslims were rather less favourable but, nevertheless, still clearly promised the Ottoman defenders of the Acropolis ‘their lives, and a small quantity of baggage for each person, with which they were to be transported to Asia Minor’ (History of the Greek revolution, i, p. 348). The Greek signatories were also bound by religious obligation to honour the treaty of surrender when the archbishop of Athens, Dionysius II, ‘having assembled in his house all the primates and captains, made them swear on the Gospels to observe the articles of this capitulation, after which he subscribed it’ (Gordon, History of the Greek revolution, i, p. 411).

51 Howe, An historical sketch of the Greek revolution, pp. 110–12.

52 Finlay, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 348–9.

53 Gordon, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 414–15. It is difficult to ascertain the number of Turks who were killed in Athens in the summer of 1822. The figure ranges from 400, provided above by Howe and Finlay, as well as Waddington (A visit to Greece, in 1823 and 1824, p. 69), while Gordon would write that ‘about 500’ were murdered (History of the Greek revolution, i, p. 416). The anonymous author of ‘The siege of the Acropolis of Athens in the years 1821–1822’, believed the number of murdered Muslims to have been slightly higher, writing that ‘about six hundred Turks were killed’ (p. 206). Modern historians, such as David Brewer, have noted: ‘nearly half of the 1,150 Turks who came down from the Akropolis had been massacred by the Athenian soldiery’ (The flame of freedom, p. 172). Furthermore, in addition to the slaughter that occurred in Athens, a handful of the Muslim defenders of the Acropolis were murdered in the following days and weeks, with St Clair writing: ‘A few other Turks [from the Athenian Acropolis] were taken to Salamis by the Athenians when they abandoned the town, and were killed off at leisure’ (That Greece might still be free, p. 104).

54 Finlay, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 348–9.

55 Gordon, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 414–15. See also Finlay, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 348–9.

56 For more on the evacuation of the surviving Muslims from Athens following the massacres of July 1822, see Gordon, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 414–15; Finlay, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 348–9.

57 Gordon, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 414–15. See also Finlay, History of the Greek revolution, i, pp. 348–9.