A group of UK MPs are putting pressure on the government to return the disputed Elgin Marbles to Greece or risk "great discredit". Labour MP Edward O'Hara led the MPs in tabling a motion in the House of Commons on Thursday calling for the return of the antiquities in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics. There has been a long-running debate as to the future of the sculptures, which once formed a frieze on the front of the Parthenon in Athens. The 14 MPS, including former minister and chairman of the Commons works of art committee Tony Banks, said a £29m museum is under construction in Athens for the occasion. "This gallery will remain empty as long as the Parthenon Marbles are not available for display in it," the motion said.
Removal
"(This House) is concerned that this will bring great discredit to the British Government and the British Museum." The 56 sculpted friezes are housed at the British Museum where they were sent after their removal from Greece during Ottoman Turkish rule They are known in Greece as the Parthenon sculptures and date from between 447 and 432 BC. They depict the most formal religious ceremonies of ancient Athens - the Panathenaea procession. In 1799 the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, removed the friezes and brought them to the UK. The Greek Government has long fought to have the artefacts returned and remains willing to make periodic attempts to overturn Britain's claim that its possession of the marbles is legitimate. In August the Greek Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos said international pressure would mount ahead of the 2004 Olympics for them to be given back, even if only on loan. http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Chauffeur of film producer Peter Guber pleads guilty to art heist
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (November 1, 2001 3:14 p.m. EST) - Peter Guber's former chauffeur has been sentenced to one year in county jail for stealing a Picasso drawing and other artwork from film producer 's home. Sammie Archer III, pleaded guilty Aug. 29 to first-degree residential burglary, grand theft by embezzlement and receiving stolen property. He also was placed on five years probation and ordered Tuesday to pay $5,000 in restitution by Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner. The 35-year-old Archer, also known as Tony Hargain, was arrested May 3 after he allegedly tried to sell Picasso's 1937 ink-on-paper drawing "Faune," valued at $100,000. A Christie's auction house employee researching authenticity found the work listed as stolen on a police Web site.
Several Picasso plates, two bronze sculptures and an $80,000 Tiffany lamp also were taken from Guber's West Los Angeles estate sometime between Dec. 28-29. They have not been recovered. Guber's film projects have included "Rain Man" and "Batman." http://www.nandotimes.com/
Unrest in Middle East threatens field work
RISKS ALREADY HAVE PUT SOME PROJECTS ON HOLD
BY JOHN NOBLE WILFORD New York Times
In the first Afghan War, 1839-42, the British army officer and Assyriologist Henry Creswicke Rawlinson had to abandon for years his research that would eventually lead to critical breakthroughs in the deciphering of the cuneiform writing system, which in turn opened up the ancient history of the Middle East. In the Crimean War, 1854-56, British and French archaeologists had to withdraw from excavation sites to the south in Mesopotamia, where they were uncovering the palaces and cuneiform tablets that attested to the successes and tribulations of the early empires of Babylon and Assyria. The two world wars in the last century halted archaeological and paleontological field work on a global scale. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, American scholars who have research projects from the eastern Mediterranean to Pakistan and throughout Central Asia have grown increasingly concerned that history may be repeating itself. They fear that unsettled conditions and possible flare-ups of anti-Americanism in the entire Middle East could make the risks of doing field work there unacceptable. A few projects have already been put on hold.
For the most part, however, American archaeologists said they were taking a wait-and-see approach. Most field work is conducted during academic breaks, in December and January and in the late spring and summer, so few excavations are active at this time. But decisions about resuming or postponing the work in the next seasons will have to be made soon. ``Clearly we're operating under changed circumstances,'' said Dr. Jeremy Sabloff, director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology. ``We have serious concerns for our researchers and students, and we intend to err on the side of greater caution.'' Separate teams from the universities of Chicago and Pennsylvania were in Syria on Sept. 11 and for several weeks afterward, but they reported no trouble. Still, American archaeological institutes from Athens to Cairo to Amman and beyond have tightened security. Some archaeologists expressed concern about Egypt, where terrorists have struck before.
Archaeology had already ceased to exist in Afghanistan, a victim of tribal warfare, the Soviet Union's invasion in the 1980s and Taliban rule. As a land conquered by Alexander the Great and at the eastern frontier of the Roman world, a crossroads on the legendary Silk Route between China and the West, Afghanistan in better times would be an inviting place for scholars. Now, Pakistan has become too risky. German archaeologists recently closed a dig in northern Pakistan. Americans said they would have liked to return there to excavate cities of the ancient Indus civilization, which flourished in the third millennium B.C. But ``I would not go to Pakistan right now,'' said Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. ``I'll go to India instead.'' Shifting venues has been a tactic of archaeologists in past upheavals. When revolution and war closed Iran and Iraq to Western scholars, most of them moved to sites in Syria and Turkey that were from a similar period in antiquity. The result was a rewarding survey of ancient life in the upper valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Political unrest is endangering efforts to re-establish research operations in both Iran and Iraq. In the last year or so, American archaeologists and other Westerners said they were making progress, especially in Iran, and were cautiously optimistic that the authorities there would permit them to resume some research. In Iraq, though Americans remain excluded, French, Italian and German archaeologists have returned to dig at a few sites of the world's first great cities and empires. The Iraqis themselves have resumed digging and reported recently the discovery of a temple to the goddess Ishtar at the ancient city of Babylon. The journal Science reported in July that a few American scholars were permitted to accompany a team of Western researchers visiting Iraq ``to size up some of the 15 Iraqi excavations begun in the past 18 months after nearly a decade's hiatus.'' The current unrest is nothing new for researchers with projects in Israel. Many archaeologists had been pulling out of there before Sept. 11.