Greece yesterday disclosed dramatic new evidence of the "irreparable damage" allegedly inflicted on the priceless Elgin marbles during the British Museum's 183-year stewardship of them.
The culture minister, Elisavet Papazoe, said the damage wrought by the museum's botched attempt to clean the 2,500-year-old treasure earlier this century had been much worse than originally thought.
She said the findings of a Greek group of conservationists, who recently inspected the marbles, demonstrated that the very morphology of the sculptures had suffered as a result of the misguided efforts to make them whiter than white. Original carvers' toolmarks had been removed and scratch marks had been left by the unskilled labourers who had used copper chisels and wire brushes to clean the marbles in the 1930s.
"This was the first time the marbles have ever been examined by experts outside the British Museum and unfortunately the findings have confirmed the fears that they were damaged irreparably," Ms Papazoe said. In some cases "excessive rubbing and polishing" had not only destroyed the sculptures' historic surfaces but "deformed" them to a shocking degree, she added.
In their preliminary report, made available to the Guardian yesterday, the Greek conservationists concluded that: "Several of the sculptures lost morphological features which constituted their identity and the criteria by which [historians] have been able to attribute them to the art of that period. You can no longer trace those particular features which define the essence of classical sculpture as it is expressed in the architectural sculptures of the Parthenon."
The six-member team, which comprised archeologists, conservationists and chemical engineers, had waited months to examine the marbles, removed from the Acropolis temple by Lord Elgin in 1801. Then they spent four days examining them with the latest technological methods.
The findings are to be expanded into a 100-page report that the Greeks will present to a two-day international conference at the British Museum later this month. The colloquium will assess the degree of the damage done to the marbles during the 16-month cleaning period.
Prior to the bungled restoration, the sculptures had only been touched with a feather duster, according to the Cambridge academic William St Clair, who first brought the scandal to light last year.
Athens is still pinning its hopes on winning the marbles back from the British Museum by 2004 when it holds the Olympic games. It is presently pressing ahead with plans to build a new state-of-the-art museum at the foot of the Acropolis.
The Greek culture minister said the team's findings fatally undermined the argument that under the British Museum's custody, the marbles had enjoyed better conservation and care than would have been possible in Athens.
"The debate around the marbles is full of myths which have been exposed with this new evidence," she said. "For the first time we have a scientific reality, beyond archive material, which we cannot ignore."
Greece first raised the issue of the cleaning damage when it initially requested the restitution of the marbles through Unesco in 1982. Until now an explanation had not been forthcoming, with the British Museum denouncing the allegations as a gross exaggeration.
"There has been a resistance on the part of the British to reveal what really happened between 1937 and 1938," said Ms Papazoe.
A spokesman for the British Museum said last night: "We have received no official notification about the findings, so it is difficult to comment specifically. The museum admits mistakes were made at that time but we are talking about 50 or 60 years ago."