Turkey Tells UNESCO No Firman Ever Authorized Elgin to Take Parthenon Sculptures-Undercutting Britain's Legal Case

Turkey declared at a UNESCO summit Friday that an exhaustive search of Ottoman imperial archives found no legal decree — or "firman" — ever authorizing Lord Elgin to remove the Parthenon Sculptures from the Acropolis in the early 19th century, directly undermining Britain's central legal justification for retaining the antiquities at the British Museum. The statement, delivered at the 25th session of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property in Paris, ...

By ANTHEE CARASSAVA