On the evening of 1 November 2022 a meticulously produced copy in Pentelic marble of the head of the horse of Selene from the Parthenon sculptures was unveiled at the Freud Museum London.
The project, overseen by the Institute for Digital Archaeology, is gaining substantial media interest and making waves in the world of cultural diplomacy and heritage.
Britain’s stewardship of the Elgin Marbles embodies a psychologically complex story of obsession, possession, and assimilation — so far without a resolution. Might perfect copies, rendered in sacred Pentelic marble, suggest a possible path forward?
Roger Michel, executive director of the Institute of Digital Archaeology, at the University of Oxford, believes the repatriation issue can be resolved with the help of 3-D machining. His research team has developed a robot with the ability to create faithful copies of large historical objects.
The replica sculpture is carved by robots using measurements accurate to a fraction of a millimetre, taken by scanning the original with Lidar cameras. The robot took about five days to carve the sculpture from the same Greek marble used on the originals 2,500 years ago.
The Pentelic copy will be on public display at the Freud Museum until the end of the year.
Archaeology at the Freud Museum
Next year the Freud Museum London will unveil two archaeology-inspired exhibitions.
Freud’s Antiquity: Object, Idea, Desire will run from February – July 2023 and will allow visitors to see at close hand some of the most intriguing items from Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of two and a half thousand objects which he brought with him from Vienna to London.
Tracing Freud on the Acropolis will run from July – December 2023 and takes its cue from Sigmund Freud’s visit to Athens in 1904, and his later recounting of his profound experience in an epistolary essay to the French writer Romain Rolland in 1936.
Comments
The powerful horsehead sculpture in the British Museum stands out as oddly different to all the rest. Other heads from the northen corner of the east pediment are by contrast severely eroded, almost beyong recognition – leading some to the conclusion that it is probably a later replacement of Roman times. If that is indeed the case then what we have here is a newly created replica of a Roman replacement copy that is (whisper it quietly) of notably greater technical and artistic sophistication than the Greek original.
The striking sculpture of a horsehead in the British Museum strikes out as unusually different from the others. Some have come to the opinion that it is likely a later replacement from Roman times because other heads from the northeast corner of the east pediment are, in contrast, extensively deteriorated, nearly beyond recognition. If that is the case, then what we are looking at is a newly made duplicate of a Roman replacement copy that is (say it quietly) noticeably more technically and artistically sophisticated than the Greek original.