How Idrimi came to London: Diplomacy and the division of archaeological finds in the 1930s

ABSTRACT

From 1936–39 and 1946–49 Sir Charles Leonard Woolley excavated the site of Tell Atchana/ancient Alalakh in southern Turkey on behalf of the British Museum. The statue of King Idrimi, found in 1939, became one of the British Museum’s many prized objects and is on display to this day. At the close of the excavation season in June 1939 the statue became the subject of a dispute between Woolley and the government of the Hatay State, solved only after the intervention of the British Consul of Aleppo, the British Ambassador at Ankara and the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This paper traces the statue’s journey from its discovery to the British Museum and back to the New Hatay Archaeological Museum in the form of a hologram.

Abbreviations: TNA: The National Archives, London; BMCE: British Museum Central Archives

KEYWORDS:

• Idrimi
• Leonard Woolley
• archaeology
• diplomacy; absent objects

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Eleanor Robson (UCL) and Professor Paul Readman and his Modern British History reading group at King’s College London for invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Further thanks go to the anonymous reviewers and to the editors of this volume for their helpful comments and corrections. All mistakes are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Hélène Maloigne has a BA in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology and Languages and an MA in Archaeology from the University of Berne, Switzerland, as well as an MA in Museum Studies (UCL, 2012). She is the registrar of the Tell Atchana/Ancient Alalakh excavations in Turkey and has co-curated the exhibition The Forgotten Kingdom. Archaeology and Photography at Ancient Alalakh in 2014, shown at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul. Her current PhD research explores the popularisation of Near Eastern archaeology in the interwar period in Britain.

ORCID

Hélène Maloigne http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1060-1702

Notes

1. C. Leonard Woolley, ‘Excavations near Antioch in 1936,’The Antiquaries Journal, 17 (1937), 1–15 (p.1).

2. C. Leonard Woolley, Alalakh: An Account of the Excavations at Tell Atchana in the Hatay, 1937–1949 (London: Oxford University Press, 1955); Jesse Casana, ‘Alalakh and the Archaeological Landscape of Mukish: The Political Geography and Population of a Late Bronze Age Kingdom,’ Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 353 (2009), 7–37; Timothy P. Harrison, ‘Tayinat in the Early Iron Age,’ in Across the Border: Late Bronze-Iron Age Relations between Syria and Anatolia: Proceedings of a Symposium Held at the Research Center of Anatolian Studies, Koç University, Istanbul, May 31-June 1, 2010, ed. by Kutlu Aslıhan Yener (Leuven, Walpole, Mass: Peeters, 2013), pp.61–87. The current excavation is led by Prof. Kutlu Aslıhan Yener on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey. Kutlu Aslıhan Yener, Murat Akar and Mara Horowitz, eds., Alalakh Excavations, Vol 2: The Late Bronze II Levels, 2006–2012 (Istanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, forthcoming); Kutlu Aslıhan Yener, Tell Atchana, Ancient Alalakh Volume 1: The 2003–2004 Excavations Seasons (Turkey: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2010).

3. The exact date of the statue and of the inscription are not agreed upon by scholars and are generally not considered to date even to the same century. Woolley, Alalakh; Sidney Smith, The Statue of Idri-Mi. With an Introduction by Sir Leonard Woolley (London: British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1949); for a discussion of the authorship of the inscription see Jack M. Sasson, ‘On Idrimi and Šarruwa, the Scribe,’ in Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians 9/1: In Honor of Ernest R. Lacheman, ed. by Martha A. Morrison and David I. Owen (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1981), pp.309–24.

4. I would like to thank Dr. Rachael Sparks and Ian Carroll for permission to use the image of Idrimi from the Woolley Papers held at UCL Institute of Archaeology.

5. Zainab Bahrani, ‘Assault and Abduction: The Fate of the Royal Image in the Ancient Near East,’ Art History, 18.3 (1995), 363–82, (p.372). See also Bahrani's discussion of the Akkadian word ṣalmu and its translations. Zainab Bahrani, The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).

6. C. Leonard Woolley, Mesopotamien und Vorderasien. Die Kunst des Mittleren Ostens. Translated by Leopold Voelker (Baden-Baden: Holle & Co Verlag, 1961), p.137.

7. Allison Karmel Thomason, ‘The Impact of the ‘Portable’: Integrating ‘Minor Arts’ into the Ancient Near Eastern Canon,’ in Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, ed. by Brian A. Brown and Marian H. Feldman (Boston / Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp.133–58, (p.137).

8. Bahrani, The Graven Image, p. 191.

9. Irene J. Winter, On the Art in the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

10. Bahrani, ‘Assault and Abduction’; Bahrani, The Graven Image.

11. Bahrani, ‘Assault and Abduction’, p.374ff.

12. Marian H. Feldman, ‘Knowledge as Cultural Biography: Lives of Mesopotamian Monuments,’ Studies in the History of Art, 74 (2009), 40–55 (p.46); Samuel A. B. Mercer, ‘The Malediction in Cuneiform Inscriptions,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society, 34 (1915), 282–309; Noel Weeks, Admonition and Curse: The Ancient Near Eastern Treaty/Covenant Form as a Problem in Inter-Cultural Relationships (London: T & T Clark International, 2004).

13. Feldman, ‘Knowledge as Cultural Biography’; Bahrani, The Graven Image, p.152ff.

14. Thomas Beran, ‘Leben und Tod der Bilder,’ in Ad Bene et Fideliter Seminandum. Festgabe für Karlheinz Deller zum 21.Februar 1987, ed. by Gerlinde Mauer and Ursula Magen (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Verlag Butzon & Bercker Kevelaer, 1988), pp. 55–60 (p.60); As noted in Feldman, ‘Knowledge as Cultural Biography, p.55 (note 48) it is ‘highly unlikely that a single English translation can accurately convey the many senses of this Sumerian word’; see also Mark A. Brandes, ‘Destruction et mutilation des statues en Mésopotamie,’ Akkadica, 16 (1980), 28–41 (39f). It denotes the ‘Being, divine properties enabling cosmic activity; office; (cultic) ordinance’. (http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd1/index.html) [Accessed 19.10.2016].

15. Murat Akar, ‘Bir Başkenti Tanıtmak: Yeni Hatay Arkeoloji Müzesi, Alalah Sergi Salonu (Presenting a Capital City: The Alalakh Gallery in the New Hatay Archaeological Museum),’ ANMED - News of Archaeology from Anatolia's Mediterranean Areas, 12 (2014), 261–66, (p.264, emphasis added). This furthermore calls to mind the empty frames still on display in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston after thirteen of its paintings were stolen in 1990. I am grateful to Lucia Pietroiusti for this reference.

16. Donald Preziosi, ‘Narrativity and the Museological Myths of Nationality,’ Museum History Journal, 2.1 (2009), 37–50 (p.38).

17. Akar, ‘Bir Başkenti Tanıtmak’, p.264.

18. Jean-Louis Cohen, ‘Écochard Michel (Paris, 1905 - Paris, 1985),’ in Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française, ed. by François Pouillon (Paris: IISMM Karthala, 2008), p. 364; Scott Redford, ed. Antioch on the Orontes: Early Explorations in the City of Mosaics = Asi’deki Antakya: Mozaikler Şehrinde Ilk Araştırmalar (Istanbul: Koç Universitesi Yayınları, 2014).

19. http://www.hatayarkeolojimuzesi.gov.tr/HatayMuzeWeb/flash/main_EN.html[Accessed 24.03.2017]. This would have been nine rather than ten years after the incorporation of the Hatay.

20. Akar, ‘Bir Başkenti Tanıtmak’, p.262.

21. Yücel Güçlü, The Question of the Sanjak of Alexandretta. A Study in Turkish-French-Syrian Relations (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 2001), p.237.

22. This maintained that, in an attempt to construct a new cultural identity for the citizens of the new republic, distinct and independent from the Ottoman past, the Hittites were proto-Turks and therefore direct ancestors of the modern Turkish community. The centre of Hittite culture was the capital of Hattusha in central Anatolia. Aslı Gür, ‘Stories in Three Dimensions. Narratives of Nation and the Anatolian Civilizations Museum,’ in The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey, ed. by Esra Özyürek (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007), pp. 40–69, (p.46f); Esra Özyürek, ‘Introduction: The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey,’ in The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007), pp. 1–15; Çiğdem Atakuman, ‘Turkey,’ in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, ed. by Neil Asher Silberman, 2012. <http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199735785.001.0001/acref-9780199735785 > [Accessed 10.04.2017]; Melania Savino, ‘Aziz Ogan and the Development of Archaeological Museums in the Turkish Republic,’ Museum History Journal, 8.1 (2015), 88–101 (p.89).

23. Lucia Patrizio Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean and the Collection of Antiquities for the British Museum (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2009).

24. Zainab Bahrani, ‘Untold Tales of Mesopotamian Discovery,’ in Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914, ed. by Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, and Edhem Eldem (Istanbul: SALT, 2011), pp. 125–55.

25. See for example Brian M. Fagan, Return to Babylon: Travelers, Archaeologists, and Monuments in Mesopotamia, Revised Edition (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2007); Brian M. Fagan, The Rape of the Nile: Tomb Robbers, Tourists, and Archaeologists in Egypt (New York: Simon & Schuster Trade, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1975); Magnus T. Bernhardsson, Reclaiming a Plundered Past: Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), p. 117ff; Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, and Edhem Eldem, eds., Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914 (Istanbul: SALT, 2011).

26. James H. Breasted, ‘Obituary: David George Hogarth,’ Geographical Review, 18.1 (1928), 159–61, (p.160); David Gill, ‘Hogarth, David George (1862–1927),’ The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

27. Bernhardsson, Reclaiming a Plundered Past, p. 117ff.

28. Oliver, R. Gurney, ‘Garstang, John (1876–1956),’ The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 23, 2004).

29. Holger Hoock, ‘The British State and the Anglo-French Wars over Antiquities, 1798–1858,’ The Historical Journal, 50.1 (2007), pp. 49–72, (p.50).

30. I have tried to reflect the official nomenclature of the political entity at the respective moment in time when using any of these three names. See also Emma Lundgren Jörum, Beyond the Border: Syrian Policies Towards Territories Lost (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2011), p. 140.

31. The exact size of this share is debated to this day with some authors insisting that not only the population but even the geography of the region was Turkish, Publications de “La Société de l’Indépendance de Hatay” ‘Le calvaire du Hatay: géographiquement, le Hatay est turc’ (1937), 1; 5; Güçlü, The Question of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, p.20; See also Gür, ‘Stories in Three Dimensions’, p.48f. for the connection made between Anatolia as a territory to the ‘Anatolian-ness’ of its inhabitants within the Turkish Historical Thesis and the National Pact.

32. The National Pact was a statement of six articles adopted by the Turkish Parliament in 1920. It set out the indivisibility of the Turkish nation and the integrity of Turkish territory along ethnic and linguistic boundaries and renounced claims to former colonies with an Arab majority population. Dilek Barlas, Etatism and Diplomacy in Turkey: Economic and Foreign Policy Strategies in an Uncertain World, 1929–1939 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), p.183.

33. Philip S Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1987), p. 485; 499.

34. Robert B Satloff, ‘Prelude to Conflict: Communal Interdependence in the Sanjak of Alexandretta 1920–1936,’ Middle Eastern Studies, 22.2 (1986), pp.147–80 (p.177).

35. Barlas, Etatism and Diplomacy, p. 183; Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (New York: I. B. Tauris & Company, 2004), p.202f.; Emma Lundgren Jörum Beyond Syria's Borders: A History of Territorial Disputes in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), p.89.

36. Güçlü, The Question of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, p.235.

37. Lundgren Jörum, Beyond Syria's Borders, p.91.

38. Güçlü, The Question of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, p.292.

39. Güçlü, The Question of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, p.158.

40. Güçlü, The Question of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, p.102, 225.

41. Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in War and Peace (London: John Murray, 1949); Yücel Güçlü ‘Turco-British Relations on the Eve of the Second World War,’ Middle Eastern Studies, 39.4 (2003), 159–205.

42. Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge; The Papers of Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen; KNAT 1/13, diary 1939–1940.

43. From the viewpoint of the Allies these developments proved vital in ensuring Turkey's neutrality during most of World War Two.

44. British Museum Central Archives [BMCE], CE32/44/78, C.W. Baxter to L. Woolley, 11.03.1939.

45. BMCE, CE32/44/75, A.W. Davis to L. Woolley, 23.02.1939.

46. Rolf Stucky, ‘Henri Seyrig - Engagierter Archäologe und Verwalter des Antikendienstes während der Mandatszeit,’ in Das Grosse Spiel. Archäologie und Politik, ed. by Charlotte Trümpler (Köln: DuMont, 2008), pp. 505–11.

47. ‘Les antiquités mobilières découvertes au cours des fouilles appartiennent également à l’Ètat, cependant une partie en sera abandonée au fouilleur à titre d’indemnité’ Guillaume Segret, Une histoire de la législation: Patrimoine en Syrieet au Liban sous le Mandat français (Paris: Geuthner, 2012), p. 249. See also Nicole Chevalier, La recherche archéologique française au Moyen-Orient, 1842–1947 (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations, 2002).

48. Segret, Une histoire de la législation, p.133.

49. Segret, Une histoire de la législation, p. 249.

50. Ergun Özsunay, ‘Protection of Cultural Heritage in Turkish Private Law,’ International Journal of Cultural Property, 6.2 (1997), 278.

51. The decree was only replaced by new legislation in 1973 and this in turn in 1983 by the current Law on the Protection of Cultural and Natural Property. Sibel Özel, ‘Under the Turkish Blanket Legislation: The Recovery of Cultural Property Removed from Turkey,’ International Journal of Legal Information, 38.2 (2010), 177–84, (p.180).

52. BMCE, CE/32/44/92, L. Woolley to J. Forsdyke, 05.07.1939. It transpires from correspondence between Woolley, the Foreign Office and the Embassy at Ankara that the permit was actually valid until 1941, having been made out for 5 years in 1936. The National Archives [TNA], FO 371/23299, E 5566/530/44, L. Woolley to P. Moore Crosthwaite, 05.08.1939.

53. BMCE, CE32/44/98/3/1, A.W. Davis to H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, 29.06.1939.

54. Agatha Christie Mallowan, Come, Tell Me How You Live (London: HarperCollins, 1990), p.171f.

55. BMCE, CE32/44/98/3/1, A.W. Davis to H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, 29.06.1939, p. 3.

56. BMCE, CE32/44/98/3/1, A.W. Davis to H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, 29.06.1939. Woolley and Açıkalın were already acquainted. The latter had seemingly ‘shown great personal interest in the excavations and had visited them several times’. TNA, FO 861/114, A.W. Davis to H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, 22.06.1939.

57. TNA, FO 371/23299, E 5185/530/44, H. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Viscount Halifax, 13.07.1939.

58. Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge; The Papers of Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen; KNAT 1/13, diary 1939–1940, p. 29f.

59. Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge; The Papers of Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen; KNAT 1/13, diary 1938, p. 76.

60. Woolley, Alalakh,1ff; Hélène Maloigne, ‘Sir Leonard Woolley and Tell Atchana, Alalakh (1935–49),’ in Unutulmuş krallık: antik Alalah'ta arkeoloji ve fotoğraf = The Forgotten Kingdom: Archaeology and Photography at Ancient Alalakh, ed. by Murat Akar and Hélène Maloigne (Istanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2014), pp. 34–45.

61. TNA, FO 371/23299, E 5566/530/44, L. Woolley to P. Moore Crosthwaite, 05.08.1939. In July, Knatchbull-Hugessen sent a document to the Foreign Office containing copies of letters and agreements signed between the Turkish and French governments. This dossier included a letter from the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French Ambassador, specifically recognising the validity of contracts given to three archaeological expeditions, including Woolley's. TNA, FO 371/23299, E 5185/530/44, H. Knatchbull-Hugessen to Foreign Secretary, 13.07.1939.

62. TNA, FO 371/23299, E 5566/530/4, L. Woolley to H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, 04.08.1939, (emphasis added).

63. TNA, FO 371/23299, E 6206/530/44, H. Knatchbull-Hugessen to C. Açıkalın, 24.08.1939. An answer was either never given or not retained, and in any case Woolley did not return to Tell Atchana until 1946.

64. Bernhardsson, Reclaiming a Plundered Past, p.183.

65. C. Leonard Woolley, ‘Excavations in Iraq,’ The Times. December 12, 1934; C. Leonard Woolley, ‘Antiquities Law, Iraq,’ Antiquity, 9 (1935), 84–8.

66. Alice Stevenson, Emma Libonati, and Alice Williams, ‘“A Selection of Minor Antiquities”: A Multi-Sited View on Collections from Excavations in Egypt,’ World Archaeology, 48.2 (2016), 1–14 (p.5).

67. Woolley, Introduction, p. 8.

68. Julian Thomas, Archaeology and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2004).

69. Emily Sharpe, ‘British Museum's Ancient Syrian Refugee Who Became King Goes Online’ 7 April 2017.http://theartnewspaper.com/news/museums/british-museum-s-ancient-syrian-refugee-who-became-king-goes-online/ [Accessed 10.04.2017], and James Fraser ‘Idrimi, the 3,500-year-old refugee’ British Museum Blog, http://blog.britishmuseum.org/idrimi-the-3500-year-old-refugee/[Accessed 24.04.2017], which entirely glosses over the issues regarding the statue's arrival at the British Museum raised in this article.

70. See Akar, ‘Bir Başkenti Tanıtmak’, p.264, for a photograph.