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ABSTRACT
When in 1820 consul Henry Salt offered to sell Egyptian antiquities, including the Seti sarcophagus, to the British Museum, the British government was unprepared for the substantial investment required. The subsequent acquisition of the sarcophagus by John Soane was the catalyst in changing the government attitude to collecting antiquities for the national museum. The acceptance of a proposal made in 1835 by Giovanni D’Athanasi to excavate in Egypt turned the government from a passive recipient into an active collector of antiquities for its museum. These episodes provide insights into the mechanisms by which the British Museum’s collection was established. They also illuminate how collecting by a national museum established an object habit that linked antiquities acquisitions, nationalism, and restitution demands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributor
Lucia Patrizio Gunning is a teaching fellow at the Department of History, University College London, where she currently teaches the course: Collecting for the Nation, Amateurs, Collectors and Diplomats: A History of Museum Formation. She has a degree in Languages and Foreign Literatures from the University of L’Aquila in Italy and a PhD in History from University College London. Her book, The British Consular Service in the Aegean and the Collection of Antiquities for the British Museum (Ashgate 2009), provides the basis for her approach to research on the institutional role in the collection of antiquities. This role, the repercussions on today’s attitudes toward cultural heritage, post-disaster reconstruction, and the position of museums in society, are the focus of her current research interests.
Notes
1. F.O. 78/177, fol. 182, 2 November, 1827.
2. Markus Hilger and France Desmarais, ‘From Collecting to Protecting. The Role of the Archaeological Museum in Safeguarding Heritage’, ICOM News 2015 Vol. 68 n. 3–4, December 2015, pp. 24–5.
3. Geoffrey Robertson, ‘Let’s do a Brexit deal with the Parthenon marbles’. The Guardian, April 4, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/brexit-deal-parthenon-marbles [accessed 27 April 2017].
4. ‘The expense of the undertaking, whether successful or otherwise, … would be most cheerfully supported by an enlighten’d nation, eager to anticipate its Rivals in the prosecution of the best interests of literature and science’, F.O. 24/6, fol. 66, in Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire. Conquest and Collecting in the East, 1750–1850 (London and New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), p. 238.
5. Stephanie Moser, Wondrous Curiosities. Ancient Egypt at the British Museum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.101.
6. Moser, Wondrous Curiosities, pp.94–105.
7. Lucia Patrizio Gunning, The British Consular Service in the Aegean and the Collection of Antiquities for the British Museum (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), pp.8–11; Moser, Wondrous Curiosities, p.96.
8. ‘From some late transactions it would appear that Mr. Salt is not accurately informed of the great interest which is felt in this country for Egyptian Antiquities, and that we have consequently lost many objects of great importance which have been eagerly obtained by [the] French Government. I trust therefore that your Lordship will excuse my bespeaking your influence with Mr. Salt and our other consuls that our national Museum may be enriched by many interesting objects which may be in their power to obtain; and that our collection of Antiquities and of Natural History may be unrivalled, as our opportunities and facilities exceed those of any other Nation’, F.O. 78/177, fol. 182, 2 November, 1827, in: Gunning, The British Consular Service, p. 10.
9. ‘I am sorry to say in connection with this subject that Mr S.[alt] employed the power entrusted to him by Government entirely for his own advantage and to the exclusion of other parties, engaging in a kind of trading monopoly in conjunction with Sig. Drovetti in a manner not very creditable to either the individuals or their Governments.’, Catherwood to Hawkins, in Middle East Department, British Museum: M.E. Letter book n. 1, new series, fol. 72, 24 August 1835, in: Gunning, The British Consular Service, p. 10.
10. A consequence of this was that Belzoni’s widow Sarah did not receive any money from the transaction as the sarcophagus was sold to Soane for just £2000. Neil Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: the World of Collecting, 1770–1830 (London: Chatto, 2007), pp.124–126; Moser, Wondrous Curiosities, pp.103–104.
11. Proposition of Giovanni D’Athanasi to the Trustees of the British Museum, M.E., Letter Book n. 2, old series, 1826–60, fol. 118, 11 July 1835.
12. Hawkins , Circular, M.E., Letter book n. 1, new series, fol. 68, 18 Aug. 1835.
13. British Museum, Statutes and Rules of the British Museum (1932), p. 21.
14. A second letter from D’Athanasi was even more specific and it dispels any remaining doubts about the nature of the arrangement. The agent made three different proposals, leaving to the trustees choice on the amount to spend and explaining the impact that this would have on the monumental statue on offer. The statue could be cut ‘in three equal portions’, be taken to the seaside at Alexandria and from there transported to England by one of the vessels already in the Mediterranean, this would cost £1000, being £800 for expenses plus £200 of remuneration, if however there was no desire to have the statue cut, the cost would be higher. In this second case the transport to Alexandria would cost £1500. The final alternative: ‘It would cost an enormous sum to obtain it entire, I will undertake to remove it from the place in which it now stands and deliver it in the courtyard of the British Museum for the sum of £5000’. D’Athanasi to Hawkins, M.E., Letter Book n.2 Old Series, folio 126, 29 June 1837.
15. Gunning, The British Consular Service, chapter 4.
16. James Cuno, Whose Culture? The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009), p.X.
17. Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity?, p.20.
18. Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity?, p.124.
19. Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity?, p.146. See also p.11 and the Introduction of the same book.
Nationalist retentionist cultural property laws serve the interests of one particular modern nation at the expense of the rest of the world. Antiquities are ancient artefacts of times and cultures long preceding the history of the modern nation-state. And in all but a very few cases, they have no obvious relation to that state other than the accident of geography: they happen to have been found within its modern borders.
20. Unesco #Unite4Heritage Conference, Brussels, 9–10 June 2016. See also Deepak Chhabra, Sustainable Marketing of Cultural and Heritage Tourism (London and New York: Routledge, 2010).
21. Peter Wagner, ‘From Monuments to Human Rights: Redefining “Heritage” in the Work of the Council of Europe,’ in State Succession in Cultural Property, ed. by Andrzej Jakubowski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 1.
22. Brian Dolan, Exploring European Frontiers. British Travellers in the Age of Enlightenment (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p.149.
23. Donald Preziosi, ‘Philosophy and the End of the Museum,’ in Museum Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Hugh H. Genoways (New York: AltaMira Press, 2006), pp.70 and 78.
24. Preziosi, ‘Philosophy’, p.74.
25. Preziosi, ‘Philosophy’, pp.74–5.
26. Preziosi, ‘Philosophy’, p.75.
27. Gregor Kleinknecht and Katerine Bagerman, Klein, Art Solicitors, London, ‘The Elgin Marbles - A Classical Repatriation Saga Explained’, Art & Cultural Heritage Law Newsletter, Fall 2008, 1, IV, p.7.
28. Dolan, Exploring, p. 149.
29. Preziosi, ‘Philosophy’, pp.72–3.
30. Emmanuele Curti, ‘Re-inventing Pheidias: Athens, Modern Britain and the Politics of Culture,’ Neale Lecture, University College London, 3–4th March 2000, unpublished.
31. Deborah Challis, ‘The Parthenon Sculptures: Emblems of British National Identity,’ The British Art Journal, 7.1 (Spring/Summer 2006), pp. 33–39.
32. Preziosi, ‘Philosophy’, p.73.
33. Kathleen Wilson, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Impotent. Imperialism and the Politics of Identity in Georgian England,’ in The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800. Image, Object, Text, ed. by Ann Birmingham and John Brewer (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), p.255.
34. Umberto Bacchi, ‘Palmyra Arch in London: “Unethical” reconstruction of “Disneyland” archaeology criticised’. International Business, 20 April 2016, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/palmyra-arch-london-unethical-reconstruction-disneyland-archaeology-criticised-1555659 [accessed 25 April 2017]. See also the opposite point of view in: Nigel Richardson, ‘The Arch of Triumph of Palmyra is recreated in London - 1,800 years after it was built’. The Telegraph, 18 April 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/08/why-the-arch-of-triumph-of-palmyra-is-being-recreated-in-london/ [accessed 27 April 2017].
35. Birger Helgestad and Jonathan Taylor, ‘Ur of the Chaldees. A Virtual Vision of Woolley’s Excavations’ http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/all_current_projects/ur_project.aspx [accessed 25 April 2017].
36. British Museum, ‘The Parthenon Sculptures’ http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/news_and_press/statements/parthenon_sculptures.aspx [accessed 25 April 2017].