The accepted wisdom is that archaeological remains have been safer in the hands of western civilization than in those of other cultures. But does this common belief have a sound basis in history?

An example frequently used is that the Parthenon marbles were being used by the Turks for target practice and Lord Elgin saved them from further destruction. Another telling example is that the Frenchman J.-F. Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics in a short space of time during the early 19th century whereas Egypt had been Muslim since the 7th century. Islam is also accused of having burned the great library at Alexandria. An indisputable example from recent times is the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas by the fanatical Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

But let us look at the other side of the coin. Rome, which was the womb of western civilization, had no compunctions about destroying the past, to which the ruins of Palmyra are an eloquent witness. The Greeks had set an example with the burning of Persepolis by Alexander. The list of Roman depredations is long indeed. In fact, if we do an inventory of standing Greco-Roman buildings today, it might come as a surprise that most of what look like ancient Greek temples were built by Rome in the styles they copied from Greece. The imposing amphitheater at Miletus, the Greek cradle of philosophy, for example, is not a Greek but a Roman construction.

The crime committed at Bamian is of course impardonable. But from a long historical view, things turn up such as that while the Byzantines were destroying images in Constantinople, the Muslims were not engaged in the wanton destruction of monuments in the countries they conquered. They just ignored them and created their own architectural styles. This was not true of northern India, where Afghans levelled all the Hindu temples they could find as manifesting the worst sort of idolatry. The British, as monotheists as the Muslims, adopted in India a cultural policy of live and let live. On the other hand, the 8th earl of Elgin, the son of "marbles Elgin", had no compunction about burning to the ground in 1860 the Chinese summer palace built by emperor Qianlong to a Jesuit design in the 18th century. Even a hardened soldier such as Charles Gordon deplored this unnecessary act of vandalism. In recent times, the Chinese converted Qianlong's ruined palace into the setting for engraved copies of all the unequal treaties that China was forced to sign with European powers during the 19th century.

THE ELGIN MARBLES

Let us for a moment return to Athens and its acropolis. Whether the Ottomans did or did not use ancient artifacts in their military training is a matter of debate. But it is a fact that the Venetian commander and future doge Francesco Morosini in 1687 aimed his cannon at the Parthenon and left the glorious building in its present ruined state. He had the plausible excuse that the Ottomans were using it as an arsenal, but this does not make his deed any less reprehensible from the perspective of saving the past, especially as Venice's conquest of Athens was of no strategic importance and lasted only one year.

Cultural vandalism was sometimes applied by European countries within themselves. After Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders, basically because he was a lecher who did not accept churchly remonstrance, the great English monasteries were left to decay, where they were not actually knocked down. A testimony to these deeds is today the ruins of Fountains abbey, which was declared a World Heritage Site. And the good burghers of Banbury destroyed their Gothic church in 1602, which they replaced with a non-descript, somewhat squattish church in 1858. In Spain the church authorities of Córdoba bashed the center of the great mosque built from the 8th to the 10th century and stuck in it a Christian edifice of no particular style with fake buttresses on its sides. To his credit emperor Charles V (1519-1556) called what they did an act of barbarism. In France, a building contractor was given a permit to dismantle the basilica at Cluny, the largest Romanesque church ever built. He went at it literally hammer and tongs and was stopped in time to barely preserve the belfry and a transept. This happened at the beginning of the 19th century!

So was Elgin right in carting away the Parthenon marbles? And was the West in the past much more the saviour of the past than other cultures? Europe in general became mindful of archaeology for its own sake, and not just to preserve its own monuments, before other continents did. China, Japan, and other higher cultures were quite conscientious about preserving their respective pasts, but it cannot be said that they had the same attitude towards cultures distinct from their own. This difference was due to increasing European world hegemony. Although this power also carried with it the ability to destroy, there is no evidence that Westerners were particularly bent on destroying the monuments of other peoples.

The Elgin marbles issue is another question altogether. It has become an intra-European quarrel because Greece wants the Parthenon marbles back and the British Museum is most reluctant to part with them. For an objective observer today what should count is accessibility to the great artistic achievements of the past, and by this measure the British Museum, where the Elgin marbles are always in view, beats Greece, where museums can be closed on the state's say so, hands down.