3

Constructing Identities on Marbles and Terracotta: Representations of Classical Heritage in Greece and Turkey
Bozidar Jezernik

he Encyclopdie of 1765, with its entry on museums, was the rst Western source to claim that a collection could honor a nation. By the end of the 18th century, the idea that museums could demonstrate what a state was worth, as well as make an example of the civic virtues of its elites, became widely accepted in educated circles. Museums developed into instruments of modernization and marks of modernity as they became some of the most important features to distinguish the West from the rest of the world (see Parnauvel 1855:46). In time, this gave rise to museums in peripheral Europe as a part of the process of modernization or, as it was called at the time, Europeanization, of the continent. During the second half of the 19th century, museums began to proliferate in Europe. The awareness that museums were important xtures of a well-provided state then spread to other parts of the world and became a means of signaling to the West that one was a reliable political partner, imbued with respect for, and adherence to, western symbols and values (Duncan 1994:279). However, it was not until the 1870s that a worldwide boom in museum creation began to ll in the blank spaces on the cultural map (Prsler 1996:2425).

Roman Empire to become and remain for centuries a mere province of Turkey (Elizabeth 1837:9698). Their example was used to argue for the development of civilization. In this manner, Bishop Berkeleys poem stating that civilization had always rolled on in a great wave from east to west, was glossed by Aubrey de Vere who quoted the old Latin adage that a serpent is powerless until he has eaten a serpent. This adage, he said, could be applied to nations: Every nation which has vindicated to itself any true greatness has absorbed, either politically, or morally and intellectually, some nation that had preceded it. The Greek intellect absorbed and assimilated all that was most valuable in the political and philosophic lore of nations further to the east, except Palestine. Rome in turn absorbed Greece; and Roman law with Teutonic manners (both fused together by the vital heat of Christianity), built up the civilisation of Medival Europe. The European common wealth thus inherited all that antiquity and the east had done and thought:America inherits us. [De Vere 1850, vol. 1:194195] Attention given to the extant remains of Greek and Roman art developed in the rst half of the 15th century when Ciriaco de Pizzecolli, known as Cyriac of Ancona (13911452), traveled extensively in Greece and Asia Minor, and related his encounters with the decaying remains of classical antiquity (Bodnar 2003:ixxxii). Within the next century, this enthusiasm spread to Germany, France, and Britain. During the 17th century, the interest in Greece, as Henry Peacham put it, where sometime there were more Statues standing than men living

The Glory that was Greece

In the 19th century, Western writers used the meta-narrative of the Fall to describe ancient Greeks as the wisest and the most accomplished people in the world whose fate made them masters of the known world and who yet gave way to the rising

MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 320, ISSN 0892-8339, online ISSN 1548-1379. 2007 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Presss Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals. com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/mua.2007.30.1.3.

4 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 30 NUMBER 1

(1634:107), led to systematic traveling in search of the discovery of Greek buildings and works of art. Since it was thought reasonable that travelers should rescue all they could nd of classical remains from the degenerate Greeks and barbarous Turks who were not considered adequate keepers of a great heritage, they were motivated not only by their desire to get to know the country but also by the hope of proving their good moral education by transplanting old Greece into England (Peacham 1634:107). Many statues were taken from all over Greece (Randolph 1687:20; Thvenot 1687:105), and occasionally more harm than good was done. George Wheler, for instance, described a trunk of the statue of Apollo that he had seen in a temple on the island of Delos. The trunk was left behind by an Englishman who made an effort to carry it away, but nding it impossible, he broke off its head, arms, and feet, and carried them with him (Wheler 1682:56). Eventually, it became a well-established practice that Western travelers carried off the marbles whenever it was possible (Wood 1753:2). As John Morritt, who visited Athens in 1795, described in his letters, Some we steal, some we buy, and our court is much adorned with them (Morritt 1914:179). During the Age of Enlightenment, things Greek came into fashion as structuring tools for taste and cultural identities. Philosophers like Jean Jacques Rousseau pictured themselves as Greeks or Romans draped in the togas of Cicero and Lucretius to reenact the orations of the ancients (Lowenthal 1985:374). This intense interest in ancient Greek culture arose from a genuine feeling of kinship, and European linguists had postulated that the ancient Greeks and later Europeans had both sprung from an original Indo-European linguistic stockand presumably racethat was quite distinct from the linguistic and racial makeup of the Semitic peoples of the Middle East (Silberman 1989:5). Before long, educated western Europeans had come to regard classical Greece as the foundation from which all European civilization had sprung, and saw themselves as its cultural heirs. We are all Greeks, Percy Bysshe Shelley declared. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece (Shelley 1878, vol. 2:384). Although Greece reemerged as an independent state, it was believed that its great glory and power have for ever passed away (Elizabeth 1837:98). With classicism

attracting ever more devotees, people in the West increasingly came to feel that the modern Greeks were not t to guard their classical heritage, and it was supposed that true heirs of the Hellenist legacy lived not in Greece, but in all the lands of the West (Cuthbertson 1885:218). They themselves, not the modern Greeks, were its true heirs not only because they cared and knew more about the classical heritage, but because they made it universala legacy inspiring philosophers and statesmen, poets and architects. The belief in the universality of the classical Greek heritage was translated into the wholesale acquisition of classical antiquities for private collections, which in turn formed the basis of such major European museums as the Louvre and the British Museum. With the rise of great European museum collections, expeditions were arranged to augment the holdings; no stone was left unturned. In the 19th century, appropriation of the physical remains of ancient Greece buttressed the western European claim to that cultural heritage, which was used to establish a relation between universal and national history. As a symbol of the sacred tie that exists between Europe and Greece (Cochrane 1837, vol. 2:277), it provided powerful support for the notion that (western) Europe was categorically superior to all other continents, and this in turn justied European imperialism or colonialism as missions civilisatrices. The whole process was not devoid of paradox, however. Many Western travelers who discovered Greece and its classical heritage had learned classical Greek at school. Inspired by Homer and his larger-than-life characters, they were dumbfounded by the contemporary Greeks who could not well understand the Ancient Greek (Wheler 1682:355; see also Hill 1709:175; Tournefort 1718, vol. 1:77; Pococke 1745, vol. 2:10), let alone follow the verses of the Poet (Garston 1842, vol. 2:311312). While struggling to speak or understand modern Greek, they noticed that it differs only from the ancient in a system of barbarisms (About 1855:9). According to Edmond About, the key to the system was simply to distort properly the words which we learned at college (About 1855:10). Thus, the modern Greeks became barbarians, literally barbaraphonoi (Iliad 2.867), or those whose language sounds like bar bar to an ancient Greek (Friedman 1981:29).

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES ON MARBLE AND TERRACOTTA 5

Rich Europeans coming to visit the cradle of Western civilization characteristically drew melancholic comparisons between the glory that was Greece and its modern degeneration. Louis Forbin, for instance, described Athens as a town modestly stationed at the foot of the Acropolis, and silent as the slave who feels ashamed of his misery and chains (Forbin 1820:3). They shared this view with the Ottoman authorities in Greece. Whilst Thomas Hughes and his companions were examining the Acropolis, the disdar aga (castellan) asked them to tell him about the genie who had erected these grand buildings. Upon their assuring him that they were all the work of human beings, he assumed they must have been giants, but when they made an effort to convince him that these giants were the ancestors of the Greeks, he burst into laughter and pointed at the inhabitants of the modern city (Hughes 1820:260).

Thrace in Paris. As suggested by Mary Beard and John Henderson: Roman temples, in fact, had a lot in common with modern museums, and shared some of their paradoxes: they displayed for general admiration the outstanding pieces of Greek genius; at the same time, their institutional and religious status, the divine authority that they represented, served to legitimate the plunder and the conquest that had acquired those masterpieces. Appropriation had been the name of the game for longer that we might imagine, and is inescapably at the heart of the discourse of culture in the West. [1994:9, 11] Until 1687, the ravages of time had not yet undermined the Acropolis, and the Parthenon still stood relatively unharmed, as did many other classical monuments. Their destruction was reserved for a civilized polite age and people renowned for their love of the arts. On September 26, 1687, Doge Morosini and Count Knigsmark invaded Athens. During the siege of the Acropolis these modern Goths directed their artillery at the Parthenon and destroyed forever the most glorious architectural triumph of men (Curtis 1903:371). Once the town had fallen, Morosini conceived the idea of embellishing Venice with the spoils of Athens, and endeavored to remove a group of gures including Poseidon and the horses of Athenas chariot from the pediment of the Parthenon. The ropes with which the workers were lowering them broke and the gures were dashed to pieces (see Jezernik 2004:219). Throughout Ottoman rule of Athens, antiquities had been hard to obtain, particularly as the death sentence could be passed on any Turk or Greek found to have allowed a relic to be removed without the sultans permission. When, in 1759, Governor Tzistarakis, an Athenian Turk, blew up a column in the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which he wished to incorporate into the mosque that he was building in Monastiriki Square, he was heavily ned and dismissed from his post (Mackenzie 1992:28). The permission to remove a fallen piece of sculpture or make excavations was never granted except to an ambassador in high favor, like Marie de Choiseul Goufer or, after Napoleons invasion of Egypt in 1798, to Lord Elgin. Consequently, in no European countrylet us repeat it for the sake of truthhave the remains of antiquity been so much respected as

Roman Temples and Modern Museums

Taste for things Greek has led to mass depredations of the countrys classical riches ever since Roman times, with pottery, sculpture, and architecture falling prey to foreign visitors. The Roman authorities carried off large numbers of statues, and Pausanias recorded that Emperor Nero alone robbed the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi of ve hundred brazen images, which were partly statues of gods, and partly of men (Pausanias 1824, vol. 3:104). In the time of Trajan, it was commonly said that Rome contained as many marble statues as human beings. However, after Constantine the Great founded his new Christian Rome in the East in 324, Greek works of art retraced their steps eastward, to the Greek city of Constantinople. The City of Caesars remained the greatest repository of ancient art until 1204 when its fall into crusaders hands signaled the turn of the tide. In the following centuries, artifacts of ancient Greece lled up the galleries of western Europe with their most valuable acquisitions. Never was the rate of loss so high, however, as in the beginning of the 19th century when western cultural imperialism used purchase, bribery, and inuence to strip Greece of huge quantities of its remaining treasures to adorn European collections and museums with the nest relics of ancient art: the Parthenon frieze in London, the Aphadian pediments in Munich, the Winged Victory of Sam

6 MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 30 NUMBER 1

in Turkey (Slade 1837, vol. 2:306). Or, as Lady Craven complained in a letter to her future husband: The Temple of Minerva, in the citadel of Athens, was used by the Turks as a magazine for powder, which blowing up has ung down such a quantity of beautiful sculpture that I should be very happy to have permission to pick up the broken pieces on the groundbut, alas, Sir, I cannot even have a little nger or a toe. [Craven 1789:256] Only occasionally, those travelers who were very well with the Turks here, and particularly with the governor of the town (Morritt 1914:180), could have hoped for successful negotiations with the commanding ofcer of the castle that put them in possession of a number of broken parts from the Acropolis (see Morritt 1914:175). Nature left the Acropolis in almost perfect condition for centuries until it was vandalized under the pretext of love of art in the full light of modern times. In 1787, the French ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, de Choiseul-Goufer, commissioned Louis Franois Sbastien Fauvel to procure antiquities. The ambassadors instructions were clear enough: Take all you can. Do not neglect any opportunity to pillage anything that is pillageable in Athens and its territory. Spare neither the dead nor the living (St. Clair 1998:63). Fauvel followed his patrons advice, enthusiastically acquiring what he could, where he could, rst for his patron and then for himself. With such great success he soon lled the courtyard of his house in Athens with antiquities in quantities sufcient to ll a museum (Hughes 1820:270). In 1788, he stole an inscribed marble from the paved oor of a monastery for, he said, he could not obtain it in any other way; when he wished to remove three pieces of verd-antique columns that he found forgotten in a corner of the Acropolis of Athens, he bribed a Turkish soldier to throw them from the walls of the citadel on to a dung-heap below. Then he set his sights on a Parthenon metope that a storm had brought down; it had been broken into three pieces by the fall, which in the event was fortunate, for otherwise it would have been impossible to induce the soldier, as he did, to slide the pieces along the walls above the theatre of Dionysos and drop them down to him below. When he unearthed a slab of the Parthenon frieze, however, it was intact and, the Turks being particularly amenable to bribery, he obtained permission to remove it. But it proved too heavy

and half the depth had to be sawn off the back, in which process the heads of the women sculptured on it in low relief were broken; they were not lost, however, for they accompanied the prize when he smuggled it down to the Piraeus for shipment. His booty was considerable: in 1787, he dispatched to France for the Count sixteen cases of marbles and forty of plaster casts of the most important sculptures of Athens; the next year, over twenty more sculptured fragments took the same road. [Bracken 1975:1718] Many Westerners justied the looting of art treasures by holding the Turks responsible for mutilating and destroying the Acropolis and other classical monuments through ignorance, iconoclasm, or barbarism (Craven 1789:220; Quin 1835, vol. 2:194; Giffard 1837:162; Slade 1837, vol. 2:303; De Vere 1850, vol. 1:99; Burt 1878:32). Allegedly, they were guilty of breaking the stones of the Acropolis to build a new mosque or fountain and to repair their houses and the walls of the fortress (Chandler 1776:47; Craven 1789:221, 257), of pounding fragments of the Parthenon marble that would adorn a virtuosos cabinet to make lime (Craven 1789:220; Giffard 1837:162), and of shooting the heads of statues out of their cannons for lack of better ammunition (De Vere 1850, vol. 1:99100). All this, even though it was a well-known fact that upon the whole, the Christians have proved unkinder guardians of the ruins of Athens than the Moslems (Arnold 1868, vol. 1:87). Even if the objects bought and stolen from degenerate Greeks and barbarian Turks would have been better off left lying where they were (see Constantine 1984:10), the Westerners only rarely asked the question posed by Adolphus Slade: what has kept the monuments of Athens, (not to mention those of the plain of Argos, of Constantinople, &c.) above ground during four centuries of their rule? Did Minerva bind their hands? Did the shade of Theseus guard his fane?that edice almost as perfect now as it was two thousand years ago. Did Jove suspend a thunderbolt before his temple? [Slade 1837, vol. 2:303]

The Elgin Marbles

In 1802, Thomas Bruce, seventh earl of Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Porte and art collector, procured a rman (letter order) from the

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES ON MARBLE AND TERRACOTTA 7

sultan, then sovereign of Greece, that his men should be allowed to measure and draw the buildings and sculptures, to put up ladders and scaffolding, to make plaster casts, to remove obstructions from the monuments, and to conduct excavations, taking away anything of interest that the excavations yielded (St. Clair 1998:337341). Although the rman conferred no authority to remove sculptures from the buildings or to damage them in any way, Lord Elgins agents took the parts of the frieze that had survived the explosion, the statues on the pediments, and all the metopes that remained on the south side of the temple; these are now known as The Elgin Marbles. The loss of the Caryatides, carried off by Lord Elgin, caused more distress in Athens than the removal of the Parthenon frieze, as they were believed by many Turks and Greeks to be living beings, held by an enchanters spell. The strength of the peoples feeling on this subject can be gauged by a story that circulated among the citizens and visitors of Athens: one of the Caryatides removed by Lord Elgin wept dolefully all night long, and its cries were answered by loud sobbing from its sisters in the Acropolis. Only the following morning were the sacred breasts of the mourners restored to their former peace, the rising sun drying the tears on their stony faces (Hughes 1820:259261; Bramsen 1820, vol. 2:84; Giffard 1837:162163; De Vere 1850 vol. 1:9192; Crowe 1853:110; Bremer 1863, vol. 1:9). In 1814, as compensation for his deeds, Thomas Bruce presented the city of Athens with a town clock with musical chimes that was erected in the open space near the marketplace (Hughes 1820:267; Trant 1830:267;Walsh 1836, vol. 1:126; Friedrichsthal 1838:109; Byron 1926:163). Lord Elgins gift was regarded by many as adding insult to injury, as if to recall the despoiler of the Parthenon every hour to remembrance (Hughes 1820:267). For others, however, the rst public clock in Greece seemed a valuable gift and worthy indemnity for the people of Athens (Walsh 1836, vol. 1:126; see also St. Clair 1998:206). In 1816, Lord Elgins collection was purchased by the British nation and placed in the British Museum. The damage done to the Parthenon by that operation was a much vexed question. Lord Elgins achievement was censured by many as plunder (Rser 1836:91; Zachari 1840:141; Bremer 1863, vol. 1:9), earning him scofng nicknames such as

stone-monger,marble-dealer,marble-stealer and the last, the worst despoiler of the Greek temples (Michaelis 1882:142). Lord Byrons name is especially linked with the Acropolis. Allegedly, it was he who wrote on the brick support built to replace the gure removed by Lord Elgin, the famous line, Quod non fecerunt Gothi fecerunt Scoti (What the Goths spared, the Scots have destroyed) (Temple 1836, vol. 1:81). Lord Elgin himself, and many other British authors, contested this view, suggesting that the damage done to the building had been greatly exaggerated, and describing the act not as one of vandalism, but as one of conservation of these precious remains of ancient sculpture, which were safer in the British Museum and could be seen by more people than in Athens (see Bruce 1810:46; Bramsen 1820, vol. 2:7982; Fuller 1829:540541; Walsh 1836, vol. 1:125; Giffard 1837:162; Wordsworth 1839:117118; Bremer 1863, vol. 1:9; Young 1876:33; Farrer 1882:37; Michaelis 1882:136; Lunn 1896:8687; Russell Barrington 1912:5254; James 1921:138). In the ensuing debate, interest in antiquities and expertise served as compelling arguments to justify British custody of the Greek legacies. Thus, the British captain and traveler Edmund Spencer repudiated as anti-British any doubt that the British Museum was a better place for the work by Phidias and his pupils than its birthplace (Spencer 1851, vol. 2:266267). Notwithstanding the power of such an argument, some British authors expressed their opinion that the Parthenon sculptures should be restored to their proper and natural home when suitable circumstance arose (Cochrane 1837, vol. 2:289290). This remained the prevailing view among British authors into the second half of the 19th century, with the proviso that, as antiquarian Thomas Henry Dyer put it, Athens should be placed under a civilised government, and the ravages of violence and decay, in its beautiful monuments, be not merely arrested, but repaired (Lunn 1896:8687). At the close of the 19th century, British authors developed the argument that the priceless treasures in the British Museum were a legacy left to the whole civilised world, and not to one particular people (Johnson 1885:70). Hence, all overtures to the British government to restore the Elgin Marbles were met with an unfavorable response. The Greeks hope that the day would come when Britain would restore these sculptures to their place was deemed absurd, as

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the people who would bombard their antiquities in a revolution were not t custodians of them in the intervals of domestic quiet (Mahaffy 1876:86; see Watereld 2004:348350). At the beginning of the 20th century, however, even those British authors who were convinced that Lord Elgin had done well to seize the Greek monuments and preserve them from destruction, agreed that now that their right preservation would be as much secured on the Parthenon as in England, surely England should rise to a generous magnanimity, and return the originals to their right home, and substitute casts for them in our Museum (Russell Barrington 1912:5253). This, however, did not materialize. The removal of the Elgin Marbles from the Acropolis to London by Thomas Bruce is one of the best-known cases but it is far from being unique. Most Western lovers of art were eager collectors. If, in 1749, there were still 12 statues on the west pediment of the Parthenon, by 1800, only four of them remained (Watereld 2004:335336).

Rescuing Ancestral Remains

Historical consciousness took a distinctive form under conditions of European modernity.1 In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, lovers of art thought nothing of dismantling ancient buildings to make new ones. Even in the 17th century, leading architects used the Colosseum as a marble quarry for their own works. It was only when changes set in train by the French and Industrial revolutions caused a radical break in the ow of history that the past became a refuge from an all-too-new and disillusioning present (Lowenthal 1985:xxi). In the 19th century, Western states were greatly concerned with the possible existence of underground remains of old buildings and displaceable works of art. People only began systematically digging up ancient statues when a growing sense of progress and modernity facilitated the cult of antiquity and an increased interest in the past. In most Western countries, regulations were introduced to control excavations made for such remains or objects even on private land. With modernization, this attitude spread across the globe. The rst attempts at rescuing ancestral remains in Greece stemmed from a philhellenism that itself was largely imported. In 1811, the Philomousos Etaireia was established with the object of disseminating education amongst all

classes, acquiring the modern languages, and investigating the history and antiquities of Greece. In furtherance of the latter objects, remnants of ancient sculpture were no longer allowed to be taken out of the country or even to be removed from a district on any pretext whatever (Emerson and Humprey 1826, vol. 1:282283; Tobin 1855:246; Mahaffy 1876:4546). To gain support for the liberation of Greece, philhellenes promoted contemporary Greeks as the descendant of those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to gure to itself as belonging to our kind (Shelley 1878, vol. 2:384). The name Hellenes replaced regional names that were in use before the War of Independence, and Hellenic personal names become customary (see Young 1876:49). Thus, Demetrius Zographs, who had formerly been in Lord Byrons service and had distinguished himself as a captain in the War of Independence, awakened to the ancient glories of his country: the walls of his house were studded with mutilated inscriptions, fragments of statues, friezes and capitals, and he had his four children christened Themistocles, Alcibiades, Pericles, and Aspasia (Fuller 1829:36). Growing nationalism focused on preserving the cultural heritage and motivated the rst attempts at rescuing ancient artifacts. Among the rst constitutional acts of the new state, and among the roles and duties of the new governor of Greece, was the stipulation that, he shall not permit the selling or exporting of antiquities outside the country. In the mid-1820s, the books of the library of the Philomousos Etaireia and the few antiques that formed the nucleus of the museum were placed for security in the Acropolis (Emerson and Humprey 1826, vol. 1:282). In 1829, the rst governor of Greece, Ionnis Kapodstrias, founded the countrys rst archaeological museum on the island of Aigina, the capital of Greece at that timea role that it lled until 1834. Its rst director submitted a list of measures to the government to ensure that the antiquities of this country to be sacredly guarded (Cochrane 1837, vol. 2:277). The excavations and searches began almost immediately after the Ottomans left (Morris 1842, vol. 1:80). Provisional local governors all over the country began excavating in the areas under their charge, sending the ndings to the National Museum and reporting on their discoveries. In 1829, the provisional governor of Elis (Peloponnese) made

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES ON MARBLE AND TERRACOTTA 9

an effort to educate the people of the area, explaining, Museum is the word for the place where antiquities are kept and guarded. Antiquities is the word for old works of art which were made by our Greek ancestors and which were kept safe or under the ground (Avgouli 1996:251252). Soon after the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece in 1834, a law was passed that prohibited the removal of antiquities from the country. The law declared as a general principle that, all antiquities found in Greece, as the legacy of Hellenic forefathers, are to be considered the common national possession of all Hellenes (Tobin 1855:246; Boetticher 1883:70; Brown 1905:65, 217). In the same year, the National Archaeological Museum was founded in Athens, and the collection of its predecessor on the island of Aigina was moved there (Avgouli 1996:246). The care of the antiquities of Athens was conferred to the conservator of antiquities for mainland Greece, besides whom there were two others, one for the Peloponnese and the other for the islands. Their duty was to search for antiquities and preserve them in safe places until a regular national museum could be constructed. Numerous laborers were employed in 1834 to clear away rubbish and repair the monuments of the Acropolis (Temple 1836, vol. 1:78; Cochrane 1837, vol. 2:285286; von Klenze 1838:391; Cumming 1839, vol. 2:115116; Mure 1842, vol. 2:70). In 1838, the Greek scholar Iakovos RizosNeroulos opened the rst conference of the Greek Archaeological Society on the ancient Acropolis of Athens, stating that these stones, thanks to Phidias, Praxiteles, Agoracritus and Myron, are more precious than diamonds or agates: it is to these stones that we owe our political renaissance (Tsigakou 1981:11). Western lovers of the arts kept an anxious eye on the attempts of the Greek government to reconstruct the Acropolis (see Cumming 1839, vol. 2:115116; Giffard 1837:152; Tischendorf 1846, vol. 2:310). More than a few of them believed that, if that be seriously undertaken, all the museums of Europe, which have any scrap of that great work, should now take more pride in giving it back, than could have been felt in the original acquisition (Giffard 1837:152). However, lack of funds proved a great obstacle to the undertaking, and the Greek government contented itself for a time with pulling down a mosque and other buildings built on the Acropolis by the occupying Ottoman authorities.

Its action was received with sympathy and toleration by the Westerners who found it better to have ruins, than such Turkish erections on the rock of the Acropolis (Bremer 1863, vol. 1:9). The ideology of travel implied that travelers enriched their homes with souvenirs. As the British traveler to Athens, Walter Colton exclaimed, visitors, who should have appeared here only as admiring pilgrims, have expressed their veneration in detaching fragments, and transporting them to their ambitious cabinets (1836:259). In the rst half of the 19th century, the popularity of Athens as a tourist center grew. With this increase, vandalism grew too, as many travelers thought it necessary to carry off a piece of marble as a relic: if the head or leg of a statue, so much the better. If concealment was advisable, they might allay their desires by clipping off a nose, or an ear (Hughes 1820:266; Laurent 1821:109110; Trant 1830:264, 268; von Klenze 1836:300; Herv 1837, vol. 1:131; Slade 1837, vol. 2:306307; De Vere 1850, vol. 1:85; Janke 1874:90; Young 1876:37; Braun-Wiesbaden 1878, vol. 1:192). Soon, a guard of soldiers had to be established to defend the Acropolis against the devouring hands of those collecting tourists who travel with a hammer in their pocket, and who lament the money they had spent if they did not bring away the nose of a statue to ornament their country-house (About 1855:177). The Greek authorities prohibited the trade in objects of art, but as the government did not buy them, brokers carried on a clandestine trade, concealing their goods under their cloaks. If some piece of marble was too large or too heavy to be carried hidden, it was broken into pieces. Dealers retailed a statue as they would a sheep for sale (About 1855:178179). As it turned out, the laws intended for protection became the strongest stimulant to destruction or concealment. To make matters worse, the diversion of classical Greeks antiquities from the land did not necessarily bring about a transfer to at least a European museum (Wyse 1865:92). During the 19th and 20th centuries, art lovers could buy genuine Greek antiquities in specialized shops in Athens, and they did, if they could negotiate an acceptable price (Willis 1853:213; Wyse 1865:9192; Farrer 1882:7172; Byron 1926: 183). Although the prices were frequently higher than in London or Paris, Greek antiquities became a magnet for many Western travelers who

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nevertheless complained of ludicrously high prices, and lamented that Athens was a place where all things are for sale: the city itself, if it could nd a purchaser. Allegedly, even a certain professor of archaeology at the University of Athens who owned a private collection of antiquities sometimes showed it proudly to his Western visitors and let them know that every object in his collection had its price (Farrer 1882:72). If the whole of Greece had been pretty well cleared of anything of value, eventually every hamlet got a village archaeologist who bought up anything that was discovered in the neighborhood to resell it at a higher price (Farrer 1882:157). As the law forbade sale out of the country or even the removal of any antiquities from a district whatsoever, numerous little museums were established. They contained much both of beauty and of interest, but before long there were too many of them, so that works of art were often relegated to some dark out-houses, only lighted through the door (Mahaffy 1876:46), located in spots unvisited by civilised man (Farrer 1882:62). Western travelers found many reasons for disappointments during their visits to Greek museums. The relics of antiquity, the greatest wealth of the country, stored there were neither perfect nor complete. The fragments were not sorted or arranged, many of the mutilated statues were lying prostrate and in no way restored (Wyse 1865:91; Mahaffy 1876:50; Farrer 1882:6263). The next landmark in protecting the ancient heritage was set by the excavations at Olympia (18751876), which established the principle that all the nds should remain in Greece, though Germany retained the right to make copies and casts (except in the case of obvious duplicates, when the less perfect specimen could be taken away). Additionally, all nds were to be published concurrently in Greek and German (Boetticher 1883:6465). All portable discoveries were promptly removed to two little sheds close by, styled grandiloquently the Museums. But a further difculty arose in consequence of the absurd obstinacy of the deme of Olympia in asserting its municipal rights, and declining to let anything be removed from the spot; so that all these marbles and bronzes, instead of being studied at Berlin or even at Athens, waste their sweetness on literally desert air, and can only be known to the general public through the medium of casts and

photographs: since a collection of ten cottages, containing one spare room between them, which is all the place can boast, can hardly be considered accommodation sufcient for any great number of archologists. [Farrer 1882:191192] In fact, it was not Athens or Greece alone that contributed to the enrichment of its visitors identity: this destiny was shared by other parts of the Balkans as well. Edward Browne, for instance, in his travel report informs readers that in the old Roman towns through which he passed during his travels in Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Thessaly, the people, upon notice given, would bring what Coyns they had, called them Heathen-mony. In the Countries of Servia and Bosna; the Armenians and Jews make Collections, and send them to Ragusi [present day-Dubrovnik]; from whence the greatest part is carried into Italy (1673:21). According to Alberto Fortis, who visited Dalmatia on several occasions during the 1770s, the so-called Morlaks, who inhabited the village of Podgraje, used to pay some attention to stones that they came across when ploughing or digging, but ever since they were forced to drag some sepulchral columns, without any reward, to the sea-side, they have vowed perpetual enmity against all inscriptions, and the moment they discover them, they either break, or bury them under ground, deeper than they were before: and in justice, they ought not to be accused of barbarism on this account; for there is an easy way of making them become, not only preservers of, but searchers for ancient monuments; and that is, only to give them hopes of some premium for their discoveries, and labour. [Fortis 1774, vol. 1:35] Fortis adds that he himself found, by accident, in a certain Morlak house, a sepulchral monument and bought it for very little money which, with some other such acquisitions, he brought with him to Italy (Fortis 1774, vol. 1:35). It is impossible to list all the instances of such exchange made over the centuries. At the beginning of the 20th century, the archaeologist David Hogarth described how he and his company during their stay in the Satalian Gulf bought, from the local inhabitants, ancient coins and other antiquities in marble and terracotta. In the event, they spent some exhilarating hours in unashamed quest of forbidden things. He reported:

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES ON MARBLE AND TERRACOTTA 11

It was easy enough now to justify our looting, for, else, those marbles had gone long ago into the limekiln. But I doubt if any one of us thought a moment about justication, as we were loading the whale-boat once and again with spoils of Sid. We were lled full of the lust of loot, possessing ourselves of treasure readymade, reaping that we had not sown, tasting a joy which recks as little of justication as any on earth. It is the joy which has made pirates and libusters and mercenary adventurers of all sorts and conditions of men, and kept them so till death. It recruited Greeks to ght for Persia, and Germans to ght for Rome, Norsemen to ght for Constantinople, and anyone and everyone to ght in Grand Companies, and Knightly Orders, and Janissary and Mameluke battalions; and it will recruit their like to the end of time. It has no rivals among motives of human action, but Love and Fear, and it has so often conquered both, that who will say, the greatest of these three is not the Lust of Loot? [1910:121122] As portrayed by another British archaeologist, who himself bought some antiquities during his Balkan journeys, parting from their possessions was not always easy for the local people who were often forced to make such transactions against their will for lack of other means of livelihood: I have said that Mahometans of Nik i refuse to sc betray any emotion. I was wrong. Even the stoicism of the Moslem can break down at parting with his arms. An ancient Turk who had covenanted with a friend of mine to sell his intlock for thirty orinsit had a date upon it of three centuries back, and is destined to adorn a museum at Berlinfairly burst into tears as he concluded the bargain, exclaiming My greatgrandfather will rise from his grave to rebuke me! [Evans 1878:196]

about Orientals, Greeks, and Turks, who regarded travelers as possessed of magic arts by the aid of which they sought for hidden treasures among the ruins of ancient cities (see Hughes 1820:233; Laurent 1821:206207; Wilson 1839:494495; Hamilton 1842, vol. 1:390; Bowen 1852:181; von Hahn 1854, vol. 1:164; Tozer 1869, vol. 1:203204). Reportedly, this opinion was so widespread among the people of the East that some individuals, as avaricious as ignorant, who dug up a marble statue in their gardens, refused any price for it. Wishing to obtain possession of the fancied treasure, they chose rather to pound the marble, destroying the statue (Hughes 1820:232; Laurent 1821:206207).2 The Reverend Samuel Wilson, a member of the Literary Society of Athens, for instance, gave an account of an old man in Greece who asked him where Englishmen got their money, for they were so immensely rich. At his reply that they worked hard, they were a learned people, and knowledge was power, the old man shook his head most signicantly and answered back: All that may be very well, but I know how you get your wealth. How?By magic.By magic! How so?Ill tell thee, said he with a cunning air, and told me the following story. An English magician once came to Athens. Going to the disdar, he said; there stands among the old ruins a broken column;will you give me a leave to take it away? It is worth nothing. Not for the world, replied the disdar; for if I did, my head would not be worth a par.Come now, returned the English magician, dont make a fuss about nothing; let me have it, and I will give you a hundred purse.Not for ve hundred. Will you for a thousand? This was too strong a bait, and the bargain was struck. The magician now stalked over the ruins, came up to the old column, pulled out a book of magic in English, read a moment in the book, and then stepping behind the column, placed his hand upon a peg for his magic taught all about it when lo! The whole column opened, and inside, the magician found an immense treasure in gold, silver and precious stones. All these he scraped together, and off he set for London. Thats the way you get your wealth. [Wilson 1839:494495] Until the First World War no country possessed a field for archaeological research so extensive and rich as did the Ottoman Empire. It comprised a large part of ancient Greece, with Illyricum,

Building the Imperial Museum

In the 19th century West, people were fascinated by archaeology; however, it was understood not in historical terms but as an important means of distinguishing between the people of the West and the people of the East. When Western travelers toured the vast Ottoman Empire looking for archaeological sites, they imagined themselves seeming to the locals very foolish, wasting their time looking at such useless things. Until the mid-19th century, reports of Eastern travels frequently included stories

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Macedonia and Thrace, the Sporades Islands, Crete, Asia Minor, western Armenia, the basins of the Euphrates and Tigris, and western Arabia. These lands were the seat of the Hittite, Chaldean, Assyrian, and Babylonian empires, and of the Hebrew and Syrian kingdoms; they were later dominated by the Greek and Roman governments and civilizations, and were dotted everywhere by the remains of their glorious cities. At the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, many agreed that if the Ottoman government undertook this work of disinterring the treasures of antiquity more systematically, its museums would soon rival, if not excel, the best in Europe. But this work was left to foreigners, the operations of the Ottoman government having been chiey limited to supervising the operations (Grosvenor 1895, vol. 2:772; Mller 1897:133136; Garnett 1911:257). In the rst half of the 19th century, only some Ottoman ofcials undertook archaeological excavations themselves. Veli Pasha, the son of Ali Pasha of Ioanina and governor of Morea, ordered an excavation near the theatre of Argos and discovered 16 marble statues and busts in good style and preservation, notably one of Venus and another of Aesculapius (Dodwell 1819, vol. 2:217; Hughes 1820: 198199; Laurent 1821:145, 167; Trant 1830:118; see also Stoneman 1987:190). On one occasion, Veli Pasha paid a visit to Athens in order to see its ancient monuments. Veli Pashas visit surprised his Western contemporaries, This would not have been surprising in any European, but is by no means usual with a Turk (Gell 1823:364). The idea of collecting antiquities, instead of allowing them to be destroyed or carried off to museums abroad, seems to have come from the marshal of the imperial arsenal, Fethi Ahmet Pasha, who in the second half of the 1840s collected different relics of antiquity in the ancient Church of St. Irene and its courtyard (Hamdy and Reinach 1892vii; Mendel 1912, vol. 1:xxi). Despite the fact that the collection became a museum only in 1869, Thophile Gautier, who visited it in 1852, saw it as a striking indication of progress (1854:295). In contrast to the Magazine of Antiquities, the new museum actively sought new acquisitions through the Ottoman administrative network. In 1870, Minister of Public Education Safvet Pasha instructed local governors that they should acquire any old works, otherwise known as antiquities, by

any means necessary, including direct purchase (Shaw 2003:8586). After the acquisition of antiquities from Cyprus in 1873, the Church of St. Irene was not big enough to accommodate the whole collection. The collection was removed, in 1875, to the more spas cious and artistic inili Kk (Tiled Pavilion), an edice erected by Sultan Mehmet II in 1473, but by then repaired and remodeled so that it could preserve and display the beautiful works that Europeans value highly (see Shaw 2003:92, 96). Although designed to attract European visitors more than Ottoman subjects, its Western visitors were dissatised with the way it exhibited its collection to the public. During his visit to the museum, Alfred Colbeck, for instance, saw nothing but confusion: Various sculptured marbles have also been collected in a museum, without any classication, or attempt to ascertain their comparative value. The severe iconoclasm of the believers in the Koran has thrown them confusedly together, and would probably treat an offer to sort them out, and arrange them, as a connivance of idolatry. . . In the Treasury are stored an extensive collection of antique objects, but here there is the same lack of order as in the museum, and the same indifference to comparative value, golden vessels of rare beauty, adorned with priceless gems, in the midst of a mass of mere tinsel worth nothing at all. [1887:152] Safeguarding the ancient artifacts became the ofcial policy of the Ottoman Empire in 1869. As reported in The Times (of London) on December 20,1869, in compliance with the new rules, the Porte used to refuse permission to foreigners to make any excavations for the discovery of antiquities within its territory, the plea being that it desires to reserve all such objects for the Imperial Museum at Istanbul (Anonymous 1869). If they had rationalized the acquisition of classical heritage as a precautionary measure against Turkish negligence, the Ottomans justied the antiquities laws, passed in 1874, as precautionary measures against European pilfering (Shaw 2003:89). However, many Europeans were able to nd ways to circumvent the new rules.

What a Vandal Turk Could Do

After the appointment of Osman Hamdi as its director in 1881, the Ottoman museum of antiquities in Istanbul, established as an ideological

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES ON MARBLE AND TERRACOTTA 13

bridge between European and Ottoman heritage, turned into a battleground for the possession of material elements of that heritage (Shaw 2003:108). Hamdi Bey (18421910), the son of Edhem Pasha, who had been grand vizier, was sent to study in Paris. There, in addition to acquiring the knowledge of Western jurisprudence, which was his primary object, he studied at the cole des Beaux Arts. Desirous of giving his own country the benet of the culture he had acquired during his residence in Paris, his efforts upon his return to Istanbul were directed toward the creation of an Ottoman national museum on the lines of the Paris Louvre. Anxious to elevate it to the level of the great European museums, Hamdi Bey had begun to petition the sultan for state funding for Ottoman-run excavations, arguing that, today most of the European sovereigns, including our most gracious Kaiser and the ruler of Austria-Hungary, patronize archaeological undertakings (Marchand 1996:317). Hamdi Bey, and the museum under his direction, became famous when he unearthed sarcophagi in the vicinity of Saida, the Sidon of the ancients, once the principal city of Phoenicia. One Mohammed Sheriff Effendi had originally discovered these sarcophagi while digging on a plot of his land at the beginning of 1887. On March 2, 1887, in conformance with the law of antiquities, he reported his ndings to the local authorities. The report attracted the attention of the kaimakam of Saida, Sadik Bey, who went to the spot to see the well for himself. During his visit, he discovered an entrance to two more caves with sarcophagi. He rushed to the vali of Syria, Nashid Pasha, and the mutesarif of Beirut, Nassushi Bey, with the information about the immense richness of the ndings, and conded the guard over the well to the local gendarmerie to prevent the removal of the ancient artifacts (Hamdy and Reinach 1892:i).3 As reported in The Times on May 4, 1887, the Westerners were not allowed to enter the necropolis, while the local effendis went in freely, and one has already mutilated a statue, and has the arm in his dukkan (shop)! (Wright 1887c). By and by, information like this gave rise to the alarming rumors about the wholesale destruction of the sarcophagi and sculptures (see Wright 1887c). Upon the order of Nashid Pasha, all further works were suspended until the arrival of the engineer of the vilayet, whom he appointed the supervisor of the works. On March 15, the engineer arrived at

Saida and, under his surveillance, seven more caves were opened, each of them containing sarcophagi. On March 24, the engineer, Beshara Effendi sent a report about the ancient necropolis to Nashid Pasha, to be transmitted to the Ministry of Public Education in Istanbul. On April 18, 1887, Hamdi Bey sailed for Beirut to extract the sarcophagi and ship them to the museum in Istanbul. The excavations were nished on June 20, when 21 sarcophagi of exquisite beauty were loaded onto the Ottoman steamer The Assir (Hamdy and Reinach 1892:iii, 2; Mendel 1912, vol. 1:19). On April 29th he came. He called on Mr. Eddy and Dr. Ford and set about the removal of those priceless treasures of Greek and Phnician sculpture. Dressed like a common navvy [sic] in a blouse and heavy shoes, he superintended the cutting of a tunnel from the orange gardens to the oor of those subterranean rock-hewn rooms, built a tramway, rolled out the colossal sarcophagi to the gardens, and then built his tramway down to the seashore where he constructed a wharf on piles. He then brought a steamer from Constantinople, had a large opening made in its side, oated huge blocks, encased in wrappings and boxed, to the side of the steamer, drew them into the hold, and carried them away triumphant to Constantinople, where they remained in the museum, the admiration of the learned and unlearned tourists from all parts of the world. One of them is supposed to be the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great. Mr. W. K. Eddy deserves the credit of having rst made them known, before the antiquity hunting vandals of Sidon had broken them to pieces. As it was, one of the exquisitely carved statuettes was broken in the fragments offered for sale, but it was nally secured by Hamdi Beg. [Jessup 1910, vol. 2:507] When the sarcophagi, compared then to the Elgin Marbles by experts who valued artistic interest and worth (see Waldstein 1889), reached Istanbul, inili Ksk was found to be too small to , house them. In 1892, a new monument, foreseen by Hamdi Bey to render the Imperial Museum in Istanbul as an equal to the most illustrious museums of Europe (Hamdy and Reinach 1892:vii), was built, and opened to the public (Hamdy and Reinach 1892:iii; Coufopoulos 1895:8891). Those Westerners who saw the new museum agreed that Istanbul got with it a new museum which every Turk may well be proud of (Mller 1897:133). According to

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Mrs. Max Mller [i.e., Georgina Mller], at the end of the 19th century, no collection of sarcophagi or funeral monuments in the world could rival the collection in the new museum at Istanbul; there was every prospect that the collection would increase substantially, and if these treasures once become more generally known they will prove a powerful attraction to many intelligent travellers, just as the Parthenon marbles draw people to the British Museum, or as the Venus of Milo collects hundreds of worshippers around her in the Louvre of Paris (Mller 1897:135). The museum became, during the 19th century, one of the fundamental institutions of the modern state (Bennett 1995:7677), serving as an instrument whereby members of civilized society could be distinguished from barbarians. The 19th century invented traditions were based on the kind of representation of the past that aspired to emphasize what made the West different from the rest. According to these representations, the Christian and scientic legacy of the history-conscious West was signicantly superior to the barbarous customs of the East. Thus, Hamdi Beys accomplishments could not be accepted by all Europeans as signs of a felicitous marriage of the Ottomans with Western civilization. After he unearthed the magnicent sarcophagi, it was thought in the West that the Ottomans had no right to keep these treasures of classical antiquity and considered it very unfair that he should not at once have made over his sarcophagi to the care of one of the great European museums (Mller 1897:134). Despite strict orders to the guards, the American missionary Reverend W. H. Eddy went into the tombs hewn in the solid rock 30 feet below the surface to measure and describe all the sarcophagi. On March 12, 1887, he wrote a letter to his father about the discovery that had the potential to be of very great artistic and archaeological importance. In it, he expressed his anxiety that the treasure will probably be consigned to the archaeological limbo at Constantinople. If the artifacts could not be brought to London for the use of the world, he suggested, could they not be preserved in situ? (Wright 1887a). The ancient necropolis in the vicinity of Saida also attracted the attention of the French excavator Edmond Durighello. He sent a long report to the French Ministry of Public Education in which he

suggested that these admirable monuments should be exported to the Louvre; however, his proposal was not approved (Durighello 1890, Number 2:1). On April 7, 1887, Dr. William Wright, of the British and Foreign Bible Society, contributed another letter to the editor of The Times, claiming that: It is now clear from the information to hand that the discovery at Sidon will prove of surpassing interest. The Sidonian treasures, however, are in a fair way to be lost. Legally the Turks have a right to do what they please with the sculptures, but I think they might be induced to let them remain where they are. The cost of guarding and preserving the tombs in situ might be covered by a small fee admission, and Sidon would become a new centre of attraction. [Wright 1887b] Wright received the letter through Dr. Henry Jessup with a note in which he expressed the hope that the authorities of the British Museum would take immediate measures to secure these treasures and prevent their falling into the hands of the vandal Turk. In his memoirs of 53 years spent in Syria, Dr. Jessup alleged that it was the publication of Reverend Eddys letter in The Times that spurred Hamdi Bey to go to Saida. When the newspaper reached Istanbul, and Hamdi Bey happened to see Rev. Eddys and Dr. Wrights letters, he purportedly said, Ill show what the Vandal Turk can do! (Jessup 1910, vol. 2:506507).

The Division Between Us and Them

The many loopholes in the 1874 Law of Antiquities and the absence of its enforcement made the Ottoman Empire an exhaustless mine for Western archaeologists and excavators who exploited its antique remains for the benet of the museums of Europe. Hamdi Bey, unhappy about the huge amount of antiquities leaving the empire, had persuaded the sultan to introduce the same strict law on excavations that had already been instituted in Greece and other European countries by then, making that kind of trafc illegal. The revised Law on Antiquities of 1884 declared that, all types of antiquities extant or found, or appearing in the course of excavation or appearing in lakes, rivers, streams, or creeks, belonged to the state. No excavation could be undertaken without leave and supervision and it was absolutely forbidden to export antiquities found within the Ottoman

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES ON MARBLE AND TERRACOTTA 15

Empire without the express consent of the Imperial Museum (Brown 1905:65, 223; Shaw 2003:110). The Ottoman authorities put an end to the use of antiquities as a bargaining chip with which to make deals and placate European allies. Their symbolic value, as ties to a shared heritage and as markers of continued sovereignty, began to take precedence over their value as gifts (Shaw 2003:124). During the 19th century, it became widely accepted that each nation had the duty and right to conserve and maintain its own national heritage, and similar laws were adopted in all Western countries. When Greece passed a similar law, the Westerners understood that with respect to the modern heir to ancient glory, It cannot be expected that they should avoid being jealous of foreigners carrying away these treasures, and adorning with them the museums of foreign capitals (Mahaffy 1876:xv). However, as the love of Greece was construed as the love of the West that was entirely incompatible with the Orient (see Gourgouris 1996:139), it was taken for granted that the Ottomans, with their unsympathetic persuasions, were unsuitable inheritors of the works of the Greeks (Constantine 1984:89). Therefore, when in the Ottoman Empire a law was passed protecting archaeological sites and monuments, it was thought fair to decry it, nay, to defy it, in the interest of archaeological science, but too often from far lower motives (Mller 1897:134). In the West, the records of ancient times were considered a means for the improvement of taste and cultural identity, a fruit-bearing wealth if housed in (Western) museums (Greenwood 1888:357) where ancient relics were not simply put on display, but used to provide tangible evidence that legitimized the present, particularly the division between Us and Them (cf. Lowenthal 1996:239). Consequently, the measures taken by the Ottoman Empire to protect its ancient heritage were unfavorably received in the West, where many art lovers considered allowable in carrying off, that is, stealing, whatever ancient works of art can be recovered from Turkish soil, whether by fair means or by foul (Mller 1897:134). As these measures, in the eyes of Westerners, blurred the division between the West and the East, there were grumblings that the Ottoman Empire should dare to call these treasures its own (Mller 1897:134). While excavations by foreigners were still permitted and encouraged by the Ottoman government,

all objects unearthed were to be deposited in the Imperial Museum at Istanbul, the excavator being allowed only to make drawings or casts. The great and increasing suspicion and distrust of foreign excavators was largely justied by the persistent efforts many had made to evade and violate the agreements they themselves had signed, and by virtue of which permission to excavate had been granted. At the close of the 19th century, an American explorer of Babylon, for instance, said that he would believe no good of a Turk, and feel bound by no moral code in dealing with him (Grosvenor 1895, vol. 2:776). Even at the beginning of the 20th century, Western archaeologists found it difcult to comprehend why they should take what they recovered during their excavations in the East to the museum in Istanbul instead of London, Paris, or Berlin. The British archaeologist David Hogarth, for instance, regretted very much that he was allowed to take all the objects from the rst House of Artemis in the Ephesian plain to England for a time to be cataloged and studied: I wanted nothing less than to see them again when I left Stambul, and nothing more than to keep them for ever in London (1910:153154). Although the 1884 law expressed a different, more Western attitude towards the ancient heritage, it continually proved too weak to implement. Excavators had to apply for permission, but the mechanism designed to conserve antiquities for the Imperial Museum was not often implemented and loads of artifacts continued to ow westward. Moreover, close personal ties between Sultan Abdlhamid II and Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia and Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria allowed for the circumvention of the Antiquities Law at the whim of the sultan (Marchand 1996:102; Shaw 2003:117). In November 1899, for instance, the Porte issued a Note verbale announcing that the sultan now authorized the Berlin royal museums to keep for themselves half of the antiquities that they discovered in the course of authorized investigations; until the advent of the First World War, German museum bureaucrats, archaeologists, and diplomats would continue to invoke this secret accord (Marchand 1996:311). In 1903, the Mschatta Gate, discovered by German explorers, was presented as a personal gift of the sultan to the kaiser. The kaisers gift was a team of black thoroughbreds to complement the white horses given by Franz Joseph I of Austria.

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The horses arrived at Istanbul in November 1903; several weeks later, the Mschatta Gate arrived in Berlin, packed in 442 cases (Marchand 1996:315316). Purportedly, the sultan himself suffered no pangs of conscience; indeed, he was said to have boasted to a retainer of the painless diplomatic gains made by the Mschatta gift, Look at these stupid foreigners; I pacify them with broken stones (Watzinger 1944:170). Regardless of all objections, the sultan continued to use antiquities as items of barter. Thus, seven consignments with a selection of ndings from Ephesus arrived in Vienna between 1896 and 1906 (Wiplinger and Wlach 1996:175). Hamdi Bey was so enraged with the sultans actions that he tendered his resignation. However, the sultan had more reservations about the director of the Imperial Museum whom he suspected of sympathizing with the Young Turks, than about European heads of states with whom he could barter seemingly useless stones. Hamdi Beys resignation was refused, but the museum director returned to his post considerably less enthusiastic about foreign excavators and increasingly attuned to the dangers of an inondation scientique allemande (German scientic ood) (Marchand 1996:316; Shaw 2003:119).

inferior Other, and to be more like Europe was to advance (Kabbani 1986:6). Therefore, the Ottomans were trying hard to be modern and prove themselves as if to be of the (Western) world. They did this by, among other things, developing their interest in antiquities and their preservation. They could not boast, like the Greeks, that their ancestors gave rise to European arts and civilization (see Beaujour 1829, vol. 2:367368), however, they were not judged by the same standard as their neighbors. The stereotyped unchanging Turk was emphasized above all others in Western narration. Their endeavors to preserve the classical heritage in order to Europeanize themselves found little favor in the eyes of modern Westerners.

Notes
1. Michael Rowlands even went so far as to claim that, We are modern because we are historically conscious, and historically conscious because we are modern (1994:135). 2. In Lady Hester Stanhopes travel accounts, one comes across a curious story of an expedition she led in 1816 at Ascalon in Palestine in search of hidden gold among the ruins of Astartes Temple. When they discovered not gold but a superb colossal statue without a head, which belonged to the heathens, she, knowing how much it would be prized by English travellers, ordered it to be broken into a thousand pieces that malicious people might not say she came to look for statues for her countrymen and not for treasures for the Porte (Stanhope 1846, vol. 3:168). 3. Kaimakam here refers to a governor of a kaza, which roughly corresponds to a city with its surrounding villages. Vali, in turn, is a governor of a vilayet (a province). Mutesarif, nally, is the governor of a sanjak, which is a subdivision of a vilayet.

Conclusion
During the Age of Enlightenment and after, Western Europeans construed ancient Greece as a unique land, peopled not with humans, but superhumans. Occasionally, disputes erupted over which western European nation had the strongest claim on Greece, but there were no doubts that collectively they monopolized its ancient heritage. During the 19th century, classical glories bolstered Greek pride and unity, but classical antiquity had been dened in advance by west Europeans. As a result, modern Greeks were cast in the role of living ancestors for European civilization, a notion reinforced by archaeology (Morris 2000:3738). When the Greeks passed the antiquities laws and built museums for their preservation, they were imagined as true beneciaries of their forefathers, albeit not yet fully adequate for maintaining their prestigious heritage. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Europe was seen as a foil to the Ottomans and as endowed with all conceivable positive attributes, the East was judged on its similarity to, or difference from, the West. To be less like Europe was to be the

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Bo idar Jezernik is a professor in the Department of z Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of, among other books, Wild Europe: The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers (Saqi Books, 2004). Abstract
During the late 18th century and after, Western Europeans construed ancient Greece as an exceptional land, peopled not with humans, but with super-humans. As a result, modern Greeks were cast in the role of the living ancestors of European civilization. When they passed the antiquities laws and built museums for their preservation, they were imagined as true beneciaries of their forefathers, even though not yet fully adequate for keeping their prestigious heritage. However, when the Ottomans endeavored to modernize their country and developed their interest in preserving antiquities, the history-conscious West judged their efforts by much different standards. [Keywords: museum history, Ottoman Empire, cultural property, historical consciousness, Orientalism]