The first perfect replica of a Parthenon sculpture was presented at the Freud Museum in London on Tuesday by the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA). What makes the replica of the sculpture fascinating is that it is carved from the same Greek marble (Pentelic) used for the original 2,500 years ago, according to greekreporter.com.
The sculpture is a Selene horse’s head, carved by robots from marble that Greece provided. It’s a perfect duplicate of one of the many sculptures held by the British Museum ever since Lord Elgin took them illegally from the Parthenon in Athens in the early 19th century.
The Oxford-based Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) is responsible for creating the reproduction of the Parthenon sculpture after secretly scanning the originals in the British Museum. This, nevertheless, was met with an angry response from the museum.
“The British Museum was deeply concerned to hear suggestions that unauthorized scanning took place in our galleries. Any such activity would be a breach of our visitor regulations,” a statement said earlier in March. “We regularly receive requests to scan the collection from a wide range of private organizations … and it is not possible to routinely accommodate all of these.”
However, the IDA used Lidar cameras to produce measurements accurate to a fraction of a millimeter. The aim of its founder Roger Michel is to convince the British Museum that the original sculptures could be returned to Athens and replaced by identical copies.
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