The moment of treasure recovery
Divers investigating a sunken sailing vessel once owned by Lord Elgin have now discovered a fragment of marble from the Acropolis in Athens that had previously gone unnoticed.
One marble fragment of the Acropolis of Athens was found in the remains of a ship that sank in 1802.
The discovery was announced this week by the Greek Ministry of Culture, in , accompanied by several photos of the discovery.
As detailed by , the ship is the Mentor, a brig that sank southeast of the island of Kythira in the Aegean Sea.
The ship was used by Thomas Brucethe seventh Earl of Elgin, to transport sculptures from the ruins of the Acropolis to the United Kingdom.
The Acropolis is an elevated area in Athens that contains some of the city’s most important buildings — most notably, the Partenona temple dedicated to Athena, the city’s patron goddess.
The sculptures that Lord Elgin was to remove represent scenes from Greek mythology, especially the birth of Athena. It is not certain whether the newly discovered fragment is from the Parthenon itself or from another location on the Acropolis.
After the ship sank, Elgin ordered sponge divers to descend to the wreck. They recovered many of the sculptures, which were sold to the British Museum in 1816, where they remain to this day.
Archaeologists have been excavating the remains of the ship since 2009. The ship itself is mostly disintegrated, but remains from the 19th century have been found, such as a chess set.
At the time Lord Elgin was removing the sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Marbles, Greece was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Elgin claimed that he was given proper authorization by Ottoman officials to transport the sculptures.
A Greece has asked for the sculptures to be returned to the British Museumclaiming that Elgin did not have the necessary permission and pointing out that Greece was being occupied by the Ottoman Empire at the time.
Analysis of the recently discovered remains of the wreck is now underway.
