The Parthenon Enigma

by Joan Breton Connelly

  It should not be forgotten that the Parthenon served as a Christian church for slightly longer than it was a temple of Athena, at least from the mid-sixth century A.D. until the conquest by the Ottoman Turks in 1458.15 The long practice of Christianity within its walls may have erased any memory of the sacrificial scene carved above the Parthenon’s eastern door. In fact, the sculptured panel showing the family of Erechtheus was taken down to accommodate the apse at the time of the conversion (facing page). The central slab of the east frieze would remain hidden until Elgin’s day, built into an Acropolis fortification wall. Christianity might have pushed back against any remnant of the “pagan” myth of the sacrifice of Erechtheus’s daughters, a distraction from the salvific sacrifice of Christ. We know that the Christians defaced other Parthenon sculptures in an attempt to mitigate their heathen message. On the other hand, they left one metope, at the very northwest corner of the temple, completely untouched, because it resembled, to their eyes, the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation.16

  Reconstruction drawing of the Parthenon as church in the twelfth century, showing east end with apse, by M. Korres. (illustration credit ill.124)

  IN CONCLUDING OUR LOOK AT the Parthenon, let us consider the question of how, generally, conventional wisdom comes to be established as fact. Indeed, how does “knowledge” get made? Helpful in this regard is Joel Mokyr’s important work on the “knowledge economy,” in which he lays out ways of thinking about resistance to new ideas. Mokyr demonstrates how knowledge is a self-organizing system that can be explained in Darwinian terms. Like genes, ideas are subject to a kind of natural selection. Unless innovations are advantageous, knowledge systems resist change and favor self-replication, rejecting novelty and deviations from accepted norms. Thus, contradictory knowledge has few “reproductive opportunities.”17

  “In the evolution of useful knowledge,” Mokyr writes, “resistance to novelty comes from the preconceptions of existing practitioners who have been trained to believe in certain conceptions they regard … as axiomatic.”18 Mokyr cites a number of famous examples: Tycho Brahe’s denial of the Copernican system, Einstein’s resistance to quantum theory, Priestley’s refusal to give up belief in phlogiston, von Liebig’s denial of Pasteur’s proof that fermentation was a biological and not a chemical process. Despite Edward Jenner’s discovery, in 1796, of the vaccination reaction, it took another century and the triumph of germ theory for his work to be accepted. Indeed, when he applied to the Royal Society to announce his findings, Jenner was told not to risk his reputation by presenting anything that appeared so much at variance with established knowledge.19

  In the case of the Parthenon frieze, I believe that two developments in the first half of the nineteenth century might, in their own ways, have contributed to the narrowing of debate over how we view its sculptures and the building they were set on. Together these two forces account for much of the tenacity of the conventional wisdom.

  A mere two months following the official announcement of the invention of the daguerreotype photographic process, in October 1839, an Excursion Daguerrienne set out for the Athenian Acropolis. On this expedition, Pierre G. G. Joly de Lotbinière shot the first daguerreotype of the Parthenon (this page).20 One cannot imagine how many millions of photographs of the temple have been taken since. Indeed, for most people, the first and only introduction to the monument will be through photographs, film, or digital images.

  Daguerreotype, P. G. G. Joly de Lotbinière, 1839, in Excursions daguerriennes (1841–42). (illustration credit ill.125)

  Frédéric Boissonnas photographing the Parthenon, at northwest corner, 1907. (illustration credit ill.126)

  Socratis Mavrommatis photographing the Parthenon, 1988. (illustration credit ill.127)

  Over the next century and a half, photographers flocked to the Acropolis, striving ever harder to capture the Parthenon’s vaunted magnificence. There were no lengths to which they would not go, however precarious, to get the perfect shot. From Frédéric Boissonnas’s extraordinary series of images taken in the first decade of the twentieth century (previous page, top) to Socratis Mavrommatis’s expert documentation of the Acropolis restoration over the past thirty years (previous page, bottom), the reproduction of the Parthenon through photography has made the image impenetrably iconic.21 It became, as it would remain, whatever these countless images seemed to suggest. That it might not correspond to an understanding reinforced by that endless reproduction would be akin to suggesting that the Mona Lisa is not actually smiling.

  One can hardly escape our modern notions of what visual images are for: documenting the present or what is. But revisionist work on the function of images in Greek antiquity has stressed a rather different role: to enable viewers to see what was no longer visible, that is, the mythical days of the legendary past.22 There was no need for images of what could be seen by the human eye. Their primary role was, instead, to restore a time and a world that were lost, and thereby to make the past present. Once we engage with this ancient way of thinking, we can appreciate its internal logic. Looking at ancient images not as snapshots of contemporary reality but as windows onto the remote past, we come closer to the experience of how the ancients themselves looked at them. And we see how certain interpretations, however long-standing, become implausible.

  The second development of the past two centuries has been the stress placed on the civic and political content of the frieze at the expense of its mytho-religious aspect. The reinforced association of Parthenonian style with our notion of democratic government has been relentless. But the fact that our banks and post offices (and the U.S. Custom House on Wall Street in New York, seen on facing page) may look like Greek temples is no reason to conclude that Greek temples themselves were decorated with secular iconography drawn from the historical present. Nevertheless, the identification of the Parthenon with modern Western ideals was so intense by the nineteenth century it was impossible for some to resist the impulse to carry away and take possession of the icon, or at least parts of it, which is precisely what happened.

  By the time the little mosque was removed from the Parthenon in the 1840s, Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, in his role as British ambassador to the Ottoman court at Constantinople, had long perpetrated his own, far more notorious removal, managing to cut most of the sculptures from the temple, pack them up, and ship them to England.23 Whether Elgin secured permission from Sultan Selim III is contested to this day.24 What is clear is that Elgin took the sculptures at a time when the Greeks were under Turkish occupation and not in control of their country. Whatever favors the sultan may have granted Elgin were given largely because England was the enemy of the Ottomans’ enemy, France.

  By August 1800, Elgin had assembled a team of artists to draw, mold, and measure the Acropolis monuments. He himself would remain in Constantinople for the next year and a half, leaving supervision of the work to a twenty-nine-year-old chaplain at the British embassy, the Reverend Philip Hunt, and the Italian landscape painter Giovanni Battista Lusieri. The team had difficulties gaining entry to the Acropolis, which served as a military installation at the time. For six months they occupied themselves drawing monuments in and around Athens. To get on with their mission, they would need an official letter from the Ottoman court. A document of authorization, or firman, is said to have been issued in May 1801. Its terms were, apparently, too vague, and so Hunt asked for a second, more specific firman, said to have been issued on July 6 of that year. This document does not survive; indeed, it was not to be found even in 1816 when the British Museum’s Select Committee held an inquiry into the possible purchase of the Parthenon sculptures from Elgin. All that we have today is an Italian translation of an “official letter” outlining the permissions granted to Elgin, the same document that was shown to the Select Committee by Hunt in 1816. It is signed not by the sultan but by Sejid Abdullah Kaimmecam, the kaimakam pasha (acting grand vizier), and is addressed to the qadi (chief justice) and the voi
vode (civil governor) of Athens.

  U.S. Custom House, New York, 1833–1842. Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, architects. (illustration credit ill.128)

  Formerly in the possession of William St. Clair, this letter has now been purchased by the British Museum. It states that Elgin’s team may freely enter and leave the Acropolis, “to view, contemplate, and also draw the images.” They are given further permission for “setting up scaffolding round the ancient temple of the Idols, and with moulding in lime paste (that is plaster) the same ornaments, and visible figures, in measuring the remains of other ruined buildings, and in undertaking to dig, according to need, the foundations to find the inscribed blocks, which may have been preserved in the rubble.” The firman further ensures that no one should meddle with their scaffolding or implements and that “when they wish to take away some pieces of stone with old inscriptions, and figures,” no opposition should be made.25

  There is no explicit mention of permission to cut sculptures off the Parthenon. Interestingly, a letter from Mary Nisbet, the Countess of Elgin, to her mother on July 9, 1801, similarly fails to mention any such authorization. Lady Elgin expresses delight with the second firman and its permissions, which include “to copy and model everything” on the Acropolis, “to erect scaffolds all around the Temple, to dig and discover all the ancient foundations, and to bring away any marbles that may be deemed curious by their having inscriptions on them.”26

  Elgin, his wife, and his agents seem to have taken an expansive view of their permit. Much of the removal and packing of the sculptures for transport to England occurred in the spring of 1802, when Elgin himself was away from Athens. Lady Elgin stayed behind and oversaw the operations. She did so with particular zeal. After all, it was her family fortune that was financing the ambitious program. Her letters to Elgin lend color to the final days of packing up the marbles:

  24th of May, 1802,

  11 o’clock at night.

  Now for some news that will please you. I have got another large case packed up this day—a long piece of the Basso Relievo from the Temple of Minerva—I forget the proper term. So I have by my management, got on board four immense long heavy packages, and tomorrow the Horse’s Head, etc. etc. is to be carefully packed up and sent on board; this is all that is ready for going. If there were twenty ships here, nothing more could be sent for some time—the last two cases is entirely my doing and I feel proud, Elgin!

  One senses the insecurity and eagerness to please in this twenty-four-year-old wife, already pregnant with her third child. It cannot have been easy for her; indeed, we are told that Elgin’s many absences caused her so much stress that she suffered asthma attacks, for which she took opium pills.27 Still, her desperation for approval makes painful reading.

  Tuesday 25th of May

  Know that besides the five cases I have already told you of, I have prevailed on Captain Hoste to take three more; two are already on board, and the third will be taken when he returns from Corinth. How I have fag[g]ed to get all this done, do you love me better for it, Elgin?

  I am now satisfied of what I always thought—which is how much more Women can do if they set about it, than Men. I will lay any bet that had you been here you would not have got half so much on board as I have.

  His Lordship seems to have done too little to comfort his wife or to make her feel appreciated.

  Give me credit for my exertion dearest Elgin for I have been very anxious to do as much as possible … I love you with all my heart. Oh, never let us part again.28

  It was not meant to be: five years later, Lord Elgin would begin divorce proceedings against Mary for adultery, winning sole custody of their five children.

  From the moment the sculptures were taken down from the Parthenon, there was public outcry. The British naturalist, mineralogist, and historian Edward Daniel Clarke gives an eyewitness account of the lowering of a metope in August 1801. He observes that “removed from their original setting the Parthenon marbles have lost all their excellence!”29 As the metope was hoisted down, the rigging dislodged an adjoining block that fell to the ground, smashing with a thunderous noise. Clarke tells us that upon seeing this, the disdar (local military governor) could no longer restrain his emotions. He took his pipe from his mouth, let a tear fall, and uttered, with an emphatic tone, “Te-los (The end! Enough!).” The artist Edward Dodwell, also on hand, wrote of the experience: “During my first tour to Greece, I had the inexorable mortification of being present when the Parthenon was despoiled of its finest sculptures; and when some of its architectural members were thrown to the ground.” Even Chateaubriand piled on, charging Elgin with sacrilege.30

  Lord Byron expressed his famous outrage initially in the poem The Curse of Minerva (1811), immortalizing the sin of Elgin thus: “England owns him not: Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.” The following year, the poet published his full-blown attack in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, devoting much of the second canto to the atrocities of the pillage.31 Within three days, the book sold out, going to press another four times before the end of that year—a nineteenth-century blockbuster. All of England now knew what Elgin had done to the Parthenon: “Dull is the eye that will not weep to see / Thy walls defac’d, thy mouldering shrines remov’d / By British hands.”

  Since Byron’s day, there has never been a time when the removal of the Parthenon sculptures has not been considered controversial.

  ONE CAN ONLY WONDER what the experience of visiting the Parthenon will hold in future years. Will one ever see the Parthenon sculptures returned to Athens, reunited with what Elgin left behind? Indeed, more than 60 percent of them are scattered across Europe, mostly in London, but also in Paris, Copenhagen, Vienna, Würzburg, Palermo, the Vatican, and Munich.

  I hope that by now I have demonstrated that the Parthenon sculptural program is an integral part of a complex network of meanings in which geology, landscape, topography, memory, myth, art, literature, history, religion, and politeia are intricately interwoven. The sculptures, then, cannot properly be separated out from this system and made to stand alone, fetishized as masterpiece objets d’art. Indeed, they were never meant to be independent movable objects but part of a building, one that still stands in the center of Athens.

  They are architectural elements of a religious structure, the temple of Athena, which itself fits into a religious system, a program of belief and ritual that formed the very fabric of life in the ancient city. Pediments, metopes, and frieze are in intimate dialogue with one another. Queen Praxithea, shown on the east frieze, is the nymph daughter of the river Kephisos shown on the west pediment. The succession myths of Athens play out on the pediments and frieze, while cosmic and epic boundary events are manifest in the metopes. The sculptures thus derive their original and essential meaning from their immediate context of one another, the sanctuary they share, and the city for which they were created. Apart from one another they are merely relics, however finely wrought.

  The very stone the makers used emerged from Mount Pentelikon itself. Purposefully quarried from there and cut into blocks, the marble was transported to Athens and carried up to the Acropolis. Thus, the Parthenon’s parts may be said to spring from the very geology of Attica.

  The wholeness of the Parthenon demands our respect and warrants our every effort to reunify it, such as we can. Let us, for a moment, consider the state of the central figures of the west pediment. Poseidon’s shoulders are held in London while his pectoral and abdominal muscles remain in Athens. Athena’s battered head, neck, and right arm are displayed in the new Acropolis Museum while her right breast remains in the British Museum. This deliberate and sustained dismemberment of what are some of the most sublime images ever carved by humankind brings shame on those who work to uphold this state of affairs.

  Angelos Chaniotis has recently likened the separation of the Parthenon sculptures to the breaking up of an exquisite symphony, never to be performed as a complete whole.32 He invites us to imagine that a lost symphony
by Tchaikovsky has been discovered. Suppose the score’s manuscript was then torn apart and sold to various collectors. And suppose, further, that one of the collectors refused to let “his” sheets of music be performed with the others, preventing the experience of the composition as a whole.

  Chaniotis asserts that this would seem an absurdity beyond imagination were not the British Museum taking just such a stand with respect to the Parthenon sculptures. The museum is adamant that “its” fragments of the marbles should not be displayed with the rest of the pieces in Athens; to do so, they say, would prevent visitors in London from comparing the marbles with other specimens of world art. Chaniotis calls into question this privileging of an institution’s mission as a “universal museum” over the integrity of the ancient work of art itself.

  Our intellectual and humanistic objective should be to reassemble as much of the original Parthenon as possible and as near as is feasible to its original physical context, that is, the Athenian Acropolis. The new Acropolis Museum at the south slope of the Sacred Rock is situated to do precisely this, or could do, if it were allowed.

  It was long argued that the sculptures could not go back to Athens because the Greeks lacked a proper place to house them. (Never mind what we know about how the fragments were cared for in London, thanks to Duveen and others.) This stumbling block has been spectacularly overcome by the completion of Bernard Tschumi’s new Acropolis Museum, opened in June 2009.33 Tschumi gives us a bold minimalist design in which poured concrete, steel, and glass create a vast open space, allowing the material culture of the ancient Acropolis to breathe and shine. The installation is fresh and original, filled with startling innovations in its use of materials and techniques. Among my personal favorites is the novel use of stainless steel as a base for supporting a marble column capital from the Erechtheion, the steel cast in vertical ribs that evoke the fluting of an Ionic column. Stainless steel mesh makes a surprisingly effective backdrop for smaller finds, including terra-cotta plaques, limestone relief sculptures, and a pair of bronze eyelashes from a lost statue.34 It is a welcome alternative to the velvety fabrics long used to display antiquities in the airless neoclassical museums of Western Europe and the United States, with their “encyclopedic” and “universal” claims. In the light that floods into the giant hypostyle halls of the new Acropolis Museum, sculptures too are shown off to superb advantage.