A fragment of the Erechtheum, a small temple on the northern side of the Athens Acropolis, has been returned to Greece and is now on display in the old Acropolis Museum.

The fragment, a piece of the Ionic temple's elaborately carved architrave (the beam of masonry resting on the columns of Greek temples), was formally handed over to Culture Minister George Voulgarakis on Friday by retired gymnastics teacher Birgit Wiger Angner from Sweden, at a ceremony held in the Athens Acropolis.

Angner inherited the fragment in 1972 from her father, who got it as a gift from his brother, a naval officer named Henning Lund, following his trip to Athens in 1895.

Accepting the fragment, Voulgarakis stressed the great symbolic significance of its return and underlined that retrieving even the least fragment of the Parthenon and other buildings in the Athens Acropolis was invaluable to Greece.

"Mrs Wiger Angner's decision to make this extremely important gesture is linked to the worldwide effort being made for the return of cultural artifacts to their countries of origin," the minister said.

"It is chiefly, however, linked with the promotion of the request for the return and reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (Elgin Marbles)," the minister added.

This repatriation came after another Parthenon fragment was returned by a German university in September. Two ancient artifacts were also returned earlier this year by a private U.S. museum after a decades-long dispute.

Urging museums that still have sculptured sections of the Parthenon to follow her example, Angner expressed hope that the British Museum, which is currently in possession of the most significant surviving sections of the Parthenon's sculptured frieze, would do so in the future.

The Greek government has been lobbying and campaigning for the return of the Parthenon marbles, which are exhibited in the British Museum, but failed to get them back before the Athens Olympic Games in 2004.

The British government has said it was not in a position to put pressure on the independently-managed British Museum, while the museum authorities refused to give them back, citing the reason that it would set a bad example for other countries who have claimed the ownership of most of the antiquities in the museum.

Source: Xinhua