Swedes to return bit of history
STOCKHOLM (AP) – A marble fragment removed over 100 years ago from an ancient temple in Athens will be donated to the new Acropolis museum under the citadel, a spokeswoman for a Swedish museum said yesterday. The marble piece from the Erechtheion has been kept at the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, where it was sent for analysis and examination last year. «It is with 100 percent certainty from the Erechtheion,» museum chief Sanne Houby-Nielsen said of the piece, which features a pattern of small, oval-shaped spheres. Last year, the Stockholm museum was contacted by a Swedish woman who wanted it to analyze a small marble fragment she had inherited from her father. His brother had picked it up from near the Acropolis in the 1890s. Having read about the independent Swedish Parthenon Committee, which has advocated the return of antiquities to their rightful locations, she sent the fragment to the museum. It will be shown in Stockholm until the new Acropolis museum is ready, Houby-Nielsen said.
