Elgin << EHL gihn >> Marbles are a group of ancient Greek sculptures that originally decorated the Acropolis in Athens. They are named for Lord Elgin, a British ambassador to Constantinople, who collected them between 1802 and 1804. Most of the sculptures were part of the Parthenon. They include 56 slabs from the frieze, a band of horizontal relief sculpture around the top of the temple. The collection also includes statues that once stood in the pediments (triangular segments of the roof) and 15 slabs from the metopes (square panels in the frieze above the columns). The collection also contains a caryatid (column in the form of a statue of a woman) from the Erechtheum, another temple on the Acropolis.
In 1801, Lord Elgin received permission from the Ottoman government to remove the sculptures from Greece. Greece was then part of the Ottoman Empire, which was based in what is now Turkey. From 1803 to 1812, Elgin shipped his collection to England. The British government purchased the Elgin Marbles in 1816 for the British Museum.
