An art history book used in Greek high schools will be withdrawn from the curriculum next school year because, in a reference it makes to the Parthenon sculptures, it says they were ‘transferred’ by Lord Elgin without also saying they had been seized.
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“This is a monstrous reference,” Education Minister Andreas Loverdos said, who added that he has notified pertinent authorities to make sure that art history pupils are taught ‘correct information'.

Loverdos said there had already been plans to withdraw the book, published in 2003, in the next school year.

Deputy Education Minister Alexandros Dermetzopoulos expressed similar indignation saying that the reference regarding the transfer of  the sculptures in the book is a ‘distortion’ because it fails to mention that they were seized.

“It’s also a distortion to describe the sculptures as marbles,” he said.

The issue had been raised by Syriza’s shadow education minister Tasos Kourakis who slammed the government for not having intervened earlier to correct the error.
and described the ‘theft’ of the sculptures as a ‘national calamity”.

The mistake, he said, undermines the Greek campaign for the return of the sculptures to Greece ‘where they belong’ from the British Museum.

But Dermetzopoulos questioned the ‘diligence’ and timing of Syriza’s question in the midst of an election period.

The 5th century marble sculptures that adorned the roughly 160-metre-long frieze of the Parthenon were hacked away by the Scottish nobleman Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin- also known as Lord Elgin – in 1801 after receiving a controversial permit from Ottoman authorities that ruled Greece at the time.

The British Museum has refused to return the sculptures to Greece saying they were removed legally.

Greece has been locked in an acrimonious war of words with the British Museum and has campaigned extensively for their return.

The Greeks were outraged last month when the British Museum announced the loan of one of the sculptures, the monumental river God Ilissos, to  the State Hermitage museum in St Petersburg, Russia