The Robot Guerrilla Campaign to Recreate the Elgin Marbles
The Parthenon, developed some 2,500 many years in the past by the sculptor Phidias, was the quintessence of Hellenic architecture: excellent lines, tall Doric columns along the sides and friezes in superior and minimal reduction that express a Panathenaic procession, an historic Greek pageant to rejoice the city’s patron goddess, Athena, as properly as 4 Ionic columns supporting the roof of the opisthodomos, the back area of the temple.
For 1,000 several years, the temple was remaining additional or significantly less intact. When Christianity received a foothold in the jap element of the Roman Empire, the Parthenon turned the Church of the Parthenos Maria (Virgin Mary), then a mosque and ultimately a Turkish gunpowder depot.
In 1687, during a siege by the Venetians, the munitions exploded, killing hundreds of folks, tearing off the roof of the setting up and shattering 28 columns, areas of the frieze and the inside rooms. For the upcoming century or so, the rubble offered doorsteps and hearthstone for the regional populace and mortar for the creating trade, when the Turkish garrison utilised the carved figures for target exercise. By the time Lord Elgin took up his diplomatic post in Constantinople, some 40 percent of the temple’s unique sculptural decoration had been ruined.
A vaguely worded license from the Ottomans licensed Lord Elgin’s adult males to take away “some parts of stone with previous inscriptions, and figures.” Although there was no explicit permission to minimize sculptures off the Parthenon, Elgin apparently took an expansive look at, carting off about 50 % of the surviving sculptures on the Athenian citadel. His trove bundled 17 everyday living-size figures from the temple’s pediments, 15 of the 92 metopes that adorned the exterior of the constructing and about half — a 247-foot part — of the sculpted frieze that after ran around the inside.
The earl had prepared to have these historic treasures grace Broomhall, his state house in Scotland. But one particular cargo, aboard the H.M.S. Mentor, was delayed when the ship foundered off the Greek island of Cythera in 1802. A lot of crates had been missing overboard, and it took far more than two decades to salvage them from the sea.
The Parthenon, developed some 2,500 many years in the past by the sculptor Phidias, was the quintessence of Hellenic architecture: excellent lines, tall Doric columns along the sides and friezes in superior and minimal reduction that express a Panathenaic procession, an historic Greek pageant to rejoice the city’s patron goddess, Athena, as properly as 4 Ionic columns supporting the roof of the opisthodomos, the back area of the temple.
For 1,000 several years, the temple was remaining additional or significantly less intact. When Christianity received a foothold in the jap element of the Roman Empire, the Parthenon turned the Church of the Parthenos Maria (Virgin Mary), then a mosque and ultimately a Turkish gunpowder depot.
In 1687, during a siege by the Venetians, the munitions exploded, killing hundreds of folks, tearing off the roof of the setting up and shattering 28 columns, areas of the frieze and the inside rooms. For the upcoming century or so, the rubble offered doorsteps and hearthstone for the regional populace and mortar for the creating trade, when the Turkish garrison utilised the carved figures for target exercise. By the time Lord Elgin took up his diplomatic post in Constantinople, some 40 percent of the temple’s unique sculptural decoration had been ruined.
A vaguely worded license from the Ottomans licensed Lord Elgin’s adult males to take away “some parts of stone with previous inscriptions, and figures.” Although there was no explicit permission to minimize sculptures off the Parthenon, Elgin apparently took an expansive look at, carting off about 50 % of the surviving sculptures on the Athenian citadel. His trove bundled 17 everyday living-size figures from the temple’s pediments, 15 of the 92 metopes that adorned the exterior of the constructing and about half — a 247-foot part — of the sculpted frieze that after ran around the inside.
The earl had prepared to have these historic treasures grace Broomhall, his state house in Scotland. But one particular cargo, aboard the H.M.S. Mentor, was delayed when the ship foundered off the Greek island of Cythera in 1802. A lot of crates had been missing overboard, and it took far more than two decades to salvage them from the sea.