The Owners
The most “respected” newspaper in the world, the New York Times, in its International issue of December 6-7, 2014, informs us that: “A decision by the British Museum to lend a sculpture from the Elgin Marbles to the Hermitage Museum … ignited a new round … in one of the world’s most enduring battles over the ownership of ancient artifacts” The “Times,” as expected, in a very professional manner informs as that “[T]he Scottish nobleman Thomas Bruce, the Earl of Elgin, … removed … the [sculptures] from the left-hand corner of the west pediment of the Parthenon … in 1801 … sold them to the British government, which passed them on to the British Museum in 1816” [emphasis added].
The sculpture loaned to the Hermitage, in Russia, is the reclining figure of a God dedicated to the Athens river “Ilissos.” According to the “Times,” the “Elgin Marbles,” to which the Ilissos statue belongs, are “regarded as among the most magnificent vestiges of ancient Greek art…”
Ilissos
[Note: In English the word “pediment”, the triangular shape above the columns at the front and back of a temple, probably derives from the word “pyramid’. The Greek word is “aeto-ma” (accent on the “e”, pronounced as “e” in “end”), deriving from the Greek word “aetos’, which means “eagle”. Therefore, the Greeks probably saw the triangle as a place for the eagles to rest.]
Let us examine who owns the sculpture of Ilissos, or better who owns any work of art on this planet. The answer is ridiculously simple: the man or woman that created that work of art. Let us go a step further: Why does an artist create a work of art? Answer: a) To satisfy his own self, b) to gain the appreciation of his fellow humans by showing it to all of them and c) sometimes to convey a social message. It seems that the meaning of ownership is not in the mind of the artist. That he has the right to do anything he wishes with his creation does not include the commercial meaning of ownership as understood for millennia.
In our crooked societies, old and present, the “owners” of the works of art are the Gages, the David Rockefellers, Hitlerite Nazi thieves, British Noble thieves, etc., or Pericles of ancient Athens. They are the people who buy or steal the works of art. Many of these “owners” keep the works of art locked in their mansions, away from the rest of the world. In the case of buying, the artist gets his next loaf of bread.
So, essentially any work of art, in a “normal” [non-crooked] society belongs to the world, especially after the death of the artist. This is accomplished by the “invention” of the museums, which, inevitably, belong also to the world. Therefore, what to do with the statue of the Ilissos river should be decided by the world and not by Neal McGregor of the British Museum, or by Mikhail Piotrovsky of the Hermitage, or Samaras, the Prime Minister of Greece. It is incredible that a single person, McGregor, Esquire, of course with the consent of the corresponding political ”ruler” [Cameron in our case], decides what to do with the statue created in Athens 2,500 years ago.
Thus, our problem devolves to the need to change our crooked societies. History has already shown us the way: Catal Huyuk, about 10,000 years go. Athens, about 2,000 year ago. The cities of Northern Italy, about 1,000 years ago. The Paris Commune of 1871. The Spain of 1936. And today it is shown by: The Emerging South America, Parecon, Inclusive Democracy, Murray Bookchin, and Noam Chomsky. Finally this need is found in the minds all the honest people of the world who, number about 2/3 of the total number of the population of the world.
However, some initial geographical and even philosophical remarks about Ilissos are in order:
The Ilissos river is not … a river. Actually, it can be classified as a torrent. The surface drained by Ilissos, the mountains that surround Athens and the flat area of the city, is not big enough to sustain a continuous flow, year around. Most of the time its bed is dry.
The figure of the young man symbolizing the God of the Ilissos river could have been … a horse!
“Men imagine gods to be born and to have raiment and voice and body, like themselves … oxen, lions and horses if they had hands wherewith to grave images, would fashion gods after there own shapes and make them bodies like their own”. That was the Greek philosopher and poet Xenophanes (ca. 560-478 BCE), a contemporary of the Greek who sculpted the statue of the Ilissos river God for the Parthenon.
At this point, it is interesting to try to guess how the Athenian who created the statue of the Ilissos river, 2500 years ago, [the real ”owner”] would have reacted if he learned what the “descendants” of the ancient Athenians are experiencing today. Anyway, here is a memory [my memory] of a contemporary Athenian that he would like to relate to the sculptor of the statue of the Ilissos river:
I was born in Athens. I “met” Ilissos [pronounced “eeleesos”, accent on “o”], the river, for the first time around the age of six or seven, in 1936 or 1937. I have all kinds of memories of the area of the river as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult here is the most important for me.
Memories
On November 4, 1973, at the age of 43, my late wife and I joined a demonstration, of about 10,000 people, against the 1967-1974 military dictatorship, on the occasion of a memorial service for a former Greek Prime Minister at the main cemetery of Athens. The access road to the cemetery crosses the Ilissos, which by now is covered with steel reinforced concrete, and touches a rocky area where Socrates is supposed to use to rest with his friends, as it is a stone’s throw from the Acropolis and the residential part of ancient Athens . Then the police of the dictators started shooting. The crowd tried to take cover. My wife and I were close to the rocky area and took cover by the tall retaining wall of the Zeus temple [the temple with the few very tall columns, familiar to millions of tourists]. About 150 yards of where we took cover, the police of the military dictatorship attacked the demonstrators. What happened is depicted in the photo inserted here:
The woman that is kicked on the head is a young journalist that was hospitalized for months due to the injuries inflicted on her head and neck. Seventeen people were arrested, most of them students. This photo was shown to the court. It was rejected. Eleven days later the uprising of the students and the workers started at the Polytechnic followed three days later by the historic massacre of November 17, 1973.
Today’s reality
On December 6, 2008, Korkoneras, a Greek policeman shot and killed Alexis Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old Greek kid for no reason at all. At the moment of the shooting Nikos Romanos, a pal of Alexis of the same age, was standing a few inches away on his side. The bullet of Korkoneras overturned the life not only of the family of Alexis but also the life of Nikos Romanos. The anger for the murder of his pal turned Nikos Romanos into an urban guerrilla. He was arrested and imprisoned.While in prison he was allowed to take the entrance exams for an institution of technical studies and was admitted. When the government prohibited him to attend his classes Nikos Romanos started a hunger strike. Around day 28 he was starting to have problems of survival. His father, seeing the seriousness of the situation, decided to meet, Samaras, the Greek Prime Minister and Haralambos Athanasiou, [also referred by me as the “Nostril” in my TeleSur article “A tale of a Failed Massacre” of Dec. 217 2014] the Minister of Justice, ignoring the wish of his son who had decided to fight to the very end. The reaction of both was negative. Actually, deciding his death. Nikos Romanos made clear that he he was ready to die. Finally, the two “Rulers” were forced to allow him to attend his classes and he ended the hunger strike.
A few days ago I was walking on a street here where I live on my way to pay a bill. On a wall in black letters there was a one-word slogan: “Dignity”, Nikos Romanos.
My guess is that the sculptor of the Ilissos would like to know what was done with the kicking “pig”. Let him know: nothing!.
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