Zeynep Boz, the head of Turkey’s Ministry of Culture’s anti-smuggling committee, said at a UNESCO meeting that no “firman,” as the Sultan’s decrees were called in the Ottoman Empire, has been found that permitted Elgin to remove marbles from the Parthenon in 1801.
“Turkey is a country that would have documents in its archives concerning objects legally sold at that time,” Boz told the Associated Press. “Historians have been searching Ottoman archives for years and have not found a firman proving that the sale was legal, as claimed.”
The British Museum cannot permanently return its exhibits under current UK laws.
Elgin and his crew removed parts of the Parthenon from 1801 for nearly a decade, an already controversial act, as reflected in Lord Byron’s verses, and sold them to the British Museum in 1816. Boz’s statements debunk the British Museum’s longstanding claim that Elgin legally removed the marbles from the Parthenon, making their possession of them legal
According to Boz, the only known document referring to this decree is an Italian translation that does not bear the Sultan’s signature or seal, making it unofficial.
Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni said that Boz’s comments strengthen Greece’s argument that Elgin illegally removed the marbles. “There was never an Ottoman firman that gave Elgin the right to treat the Parthenon marbles with the barbarity he did. The Turkish representative confirmed what the Greek side has been asserting for years: that there was no firman.”
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