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souvenir hunters, ending up in some 10 European countries, or lost
altogether. 



Moritz Hartmann, a Danish officer in the Venetian navy, bought the two heads
from south metope 4 in a street in Athens in 1688 and they are now in the
Danish National Museum. 

The rest of south metope 4 was removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin's
agents in 1802 and - with 14 other metopes and many other Parthenon
sculptures - acquired by the British Museum in 1816. 

The Greek authorities and campaigners in Britain and elsewhere continue to
call for their return to Athens to be reunited with other Parthenon
sculptures there. 

But the British Museum points out that about 50% of the sculptures are lost
forever and the damaged remnants which are left are divided, not just
between London and Athens but a handful of other European museums too. 

"It is no longer possible to recreate them in any real sense," says the BM.
"It must be done 'virtually'." 

Lost details 

The restored metope is part of this process. The project began with
three-dimensional laser scanning of the metope in the BM, and of casts of
the two Copenhagen heads, by the National Museums Conservation centre in
Liverpool and fitting the images together. 

More can be added from a drawing done by the Frenchman Jacques Carrey in
1674. But still a lot of details are entirely lost. 

Dyfri Williams's department developed a story board for the film, which Mark
Timson of the British Museum's New Media Unit translated into a series of
computer-generated models. 

Drawings of the missing pieces were developed based on other metopes in the
museum. 

Fixing-holes in the sculptures show that metal pieces were once included -
for this metope, a headband and sword for the boy were added. 

The 3-D scanning enabled some things about the carving to be understood
which had been a mystery before, says Mri Williams. 


Since the scanning, some ridges of the youth's thigh are now thought to mark
the folds of his cloak. The museum now thinks the cloak was finished off in
plaster, probably after some accident in the carving of the marble. 

"This is quite amazing, what you can see with the scan," says Mr Williams. 


"You go up and round - and we hadn't noticed that bit about the drapery on
top of the thigh beforehand; we knew that there was a roughened patch though
it had never really been explained." 

And then, the colour. Few traces remain of paint on ancient sculpture, and
those that have survived have often changed colour over the centuries. So
the British Museum's film shows alternative colour schemes. 

But it favours a white background and blue surround, matching the colour
scheme found on tombs unearthed in Macedonia. 

Accessible to all 

"I think that real progress can be made in understanding the fragments
scattered all over the world. We can, with the aid of this project, make a
lot of progress on that," says Mr Williams. 

The British Museum has said the ultimate aim should be to create a
"multi-level, interactive educational resource accessible to all" on the
internet and elsewhere. 

That is still the aim, says Mr Williams, but "it's a matter of assembling
the finances for it and the resources to do it - the British Museum has many
different things it tries to do." 

"This has got to be a collaborative process; it's got to be a sharing of our
knowledge. 


The Greeks have to be involved, we have to be involved, the Germans have to
be involved, the Danes, the French, the Italians - because it involves
everybody. Such special sculpture's for everyone." 

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/6986756.stm

Published: 2007/09/12 03:53:36 GMT