The British Museum is facing legal action from one of the UK’s leading heritage preservation organizations over its refusal to allow the 3D scanning of a piece in its Parthenon sculptures collection.
The Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) said it would serve an injunction against the museum imminently, raising the stakes in the dispute between the two.
“We will be filing a complaint by the end of the week requesting the court to order the British Museum to grant our request,” Roger Michel, the IDA’s executive director, told the Guardian. “We want them to treat our application in exactly the same fashion that they would treat similar requests. Their refusal has been capricious and arbitrary.”
Photo: AFP 照片：法新社
The Oxford-based institute had hoped, with the museum’s blessing, to reproduce one of the high relief metopes from the Acropolis temple’s south facade as “proof of concept.” In 2016 it reconstructed Syria’s Palymyra arch of triumph out of Egyptian marble based on photographs following the monument’s destruction by Islamic State.
Advocates believe 3D imaging could be employed to not only create replicas of the classical treasures but help resolve the longstanding row between Athens and London over patrimony of the Parthenon sculptures. Scans would allow a robot sculptor to reproduce the artworks with sub-millimetre accuracy using the same Pentelic marble from which the originals were chiselled, according to the IDA, a supporter of the sculptures’ repatriation to Greece.
The antiquities, regarded as the high point of classical art, have been in the British Museum’s possession since 1816 after their removal from the Parthenon at the behest of Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, which then controlled what is now modern Greece.
Photo: Reuters 照片：路透
Successive Greek governments have argued that the antiquities were illegally hacked from the temple at a time when it was a subject nation without voice or sovereignty. The British Museum says they were legally acquired.
(The Guardian)
大英博物館正面臨一項訴訟，因其拒絕英國一重要遺產保護組織對其館藏帕德嫩神廟雕像系列中之一件作品進行3D掃描。
數位考古研究所（IDA）表示，它將立即請求對博物館之禁令，這讓兩造之爭端加劇。
「本週末之前我們會提出申訴，要求法院命令大英博物館批准我們的請求」，IDA執行董事羅傑‧米歇爾告訴衛報。「我們希望他們用處理類似請求完全相同的方式來處理我們的申請。他們的拒絕是反覆無常和武斷的」。
這家位於牛津的研究所曾希望取得大英博物館的支持，複製雅典衛城神廟南面的一件排檔間飾高浮雕，作為「概念驗證」。敘利亞帕米拉遺跡中的凱旋門被伊斯蘭國摧毀後，IDA在二○一六年依據照片用埃及大理石將其重建。
倡導者認為，3D成像不僅可用來複製經典寶藏，還可以對解決雅典和倫敦之間長期以來對於帕德嫩神廟雕像遺產的爭執有所幫助。支持將雕像送回希臘的IDA表示，掃描將可讓雕刻機器人在與原雕像相同材質的彭特利庫斯山大理石上，以次毫米的精密度複製藝術品。
這些被視為古典藝術最高峰的文物，自一八一六年──當時希臘是由鄂圖曼土耳其帝國所控制──被英國駐鄂圖曼帝國大使埃爾金勳爵命令由帕德嫩神廟拆下後，一直收藏在大英博物館。
歷任希臘政府皆爭辯說，這些文物是趁希臘還是一個沒有發言權或主權的從屬國時，由神廟中非法盜取的。大英博物館則說它們是合法取得的。
（台北時報林俐凱編譯）
In English, “name idioms” are part of what makes English fascinating. Let’s put a few examples under the microscope. Doubting Thomas This expression stems from the Bible. Thomas, one of Jesus’s disciples, refused to believe Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. He declared he wouldn’t accept it until he could see the nail marks in Jesus’s hands and touch his wounds himself. Today, this idiom refers to someone who won’t believe something without concrete evidence. For instance, if your friend’s expertise is reliable, but you’re still suspicious, you might be a “doubting Thomas.” Smart Aleck The origin of this phrase likely comes from
A: Hey, the world’s major dictionaries just unveiled their words of the year for 2025. B: Yup, the Cambridge Dictionary chose the word “parasocial,” which refers to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they don’t really know. A: One-sided parasocial relationships with celebrities, influencers and even AI chatbots have clearly become more common. B: The Oxford Dictionary picked “rage bait” — online content designed to elicit anger by being frustrating, provocative or offensive in order to increase traffic to Web sites or social media accounts. A: The Collins Dictionary picked “vibe coding.” Let’s
A: Apart from the world’s major dictionaries, the online Dictionary.com actually picked “67” as its word of the year. B: What does “67” even mean? A: Even the dictionary wasn’t exactly sure about its meaning. The slang term’s origin might be traced to US rapper Skrilla’s song Doot Doot (67). Aren’t Taiwanese media outlets choosing the Mandarin word for 2025? B: Yeah and after hearing the song Good-for-Nothing, adapted from some catchphrases of Legislator Wang Shih-chien, I’m going to vote for the character “tsung” (hasty) from the lyrics. A: Hopefully, in the new year, we’ll be calm as the
Sea star wasting disease (SSWD) is a strange and serious illness affecting sea stars, or starfish. This disease causes sea stars to develop painful lesions, lose their arms, and eventually turn into a gooey, melted mess. Since it was first observed in 2013, millions of sea stars along the Pacific coast of North America have died from this __1__. Although viruses were once considered a possible cause, researchers now believe that environmental stressors and microorganisms are primarily __2__ for sea star wasting disease. One of the main environmental triggers appears to be warmer ocean water. When the water heats
RSS