US Congress Resolution on Returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece

First published March 21, 2021.

Figures from the Parthenon's east pediment as displayed at the British Museum in London.

In March 2021, just before Greece marked 200 years since the start of its War of Independence, two members of the US House of Representatives introduced a resolution urging the United Kingdom to return the Parthenon sculptures, often called the Elgin Marbles, to Athens. The measure was symbolic: a House resolution expresses an opinion and cannot move a single statue. But it added American voices to a campaign Greece has pursued for decades, and it came in the same week that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson restated London's refusal. Here is what the resolution said, how each side argued its case, and where the dispute has gone since.

The 2021 resolution and who introduced it

The resolution was introduced on 18 March 2021 by Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, and Gus Bilirakis, a Republican from Florida. Both were co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Hellenic Issues, and Maloney had co-founded it, so the measure was presented as a bipartisan gesture of support for Greece in its bicentennial year.

Maloney framed it as unfinished business from Greek independence and summed up its purpose in one line:

"This bipartisan resolution calls on the United Kingdom to finally return these treasures."

Bilirakis stressed that the sculptures were created by Athenian citizens under the direction of the sculptor Phidias, and argued that they belong in the city for which they were made. The Hellenic Leaders group shared the announcement on Twitter the same day:

Today, ahead of the 200th anniversary of #Greece’s independence, @RepMaloney & @RepGusBilirakis, the co-chairs of the Congressional Caucus on Hellenic Issues, introduced a resolution calling on the United Kingdom to return the #ParthenonMarbles to Greece: https://t.co/1qQcjW9QZc pic.twitter.com/09qsPC2VUz

— HellenicLeaders (@HellenicLeaders) March 18, 2021

Resolutions like this one are usually referred to committee and rarely reach a vote. Their value lies in signalling where members of Congress stand and in keeping an issue in the news.

What the Parthenon sculptures are

The Parthenon was built on the Acropolis of Athens in the 5th century BC as a temple to Athena, and its sculptural decoration was created under the supervision of Phidias. It had three main sculpted parts: the pediments, the triangular gables at each end filled with large statues; the metopes, 92 carved panels around the outside; and the frieze, a continuous band of relief running around the inner building.

The collection in the British Museum includes about 75 metres of the frieze, 15 of the 92 metopes and about 21 figures from the pediments, together with pieces from other Acropolis buildings. Taken together, the London pieces make up more than half of the Parthenon's surviving sculpture. In Athens, the Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009, shows the frieze in its original sequence, with white plaster casts standing in for the sections held in London, a deliberate visual reminder of what is missing.

How the sculptures came to London

Between 1801 and 1812, agents working for Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed large amounts of sculpture from the Acropolis, which was then under Ottoman rule. Elgin was a diplomat and collector, not an archaeologist. He later sold the collection to the British government, and Parliament approved the purchase for £35,000 in June 1816, far less than the roughly £74,000 Elgin said it had cost him. The sculptures arrived at the British Museum that August.

The legal heart of the dispute is a document known as the firman, a permit Elgin said he obtained from Ottoman authorities in 1801. No original has been found in Turkish archives; the main surviving version is an Italian translation held by the British Museum. Scholars disagree about what kind of document it was, whether it carried legal force, and whether it allowed sculptures to be removed from the building at all, rather than simply drawn, measured or collected from the ground. In 2024 Turkish officials said they knew of no such firman in their records and expressed support for return.

The British position, as stated by Boris Johnson

In an interview with the Greek newspaper Ta Nea published in March 2021, Johnson repeated the long-standing government view that the sculptures:

"were legally acquired by Lord Elgin, in accordance with the laws in force at the time."

He added that the rightful owners are the trustees of the British Museum. Supporters of that view also point to the British Museum Act 1963, which bars the museum from permanently giving away objects in its collection except in narrow circumstances. Changing that would take a new Act of Parliament. The museum has also argued that displaying the sculptures alongside other world cultures in London gives them a different, universal kind of value.

The Greek position, as stated by Lina Mendoni

Greece's culture minister, Lina Mendoni, replied that Johnson had not been properly briefed on new historical research about the period of Ottoman rule. She said her ministry could supply documents showing that "the British Museum possesses the Sculptures illegally."

Greece's argument rests on several points: that the Ottoman authorities were an occupying power with no right to give away the monument; that the firman, if it existed, did not permit the removal of fixed sculptures; and that the pieces are fragments of a single work of art that should be seen together in sight of the building they decorated. Greece formally requested their return in 1983, when the actress Melina Mercouri was culture minister, and has pressed the claim through every government since.

What has happened since 2021

Later in 2021 a UNESCO intergovernmental committee on the return of cultural property concluded that the United Kingdom had an obligation to return the sculptures and called for talks. In late 2022 British and Greek representatives resumed discussions about possible arrangements, with ideas such as long-term loans or a cultural partnership floated in the press as ways around the 1963 Act.

Relations hit a bump in November 2023, when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak cancelled a planned meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis after Mitsotakis spoke publicly about the marbles during his visit to London. The debate has continued since, in parliaments, museums and public forums, without any change in where the sculptures stand.

For visitors who want to form their own view, the best approach is to see both halves: the Duveen Gallery at the British Museum in London and the top-floor Parthenon Gallery of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, where the building itself is visible through the glass walls.

Sources: Greek Reporter, 19 March 2021; HellenicLeaders on Twitter, 18 March 2021; Wikipedia: Elgin Marbles.