The British Consular Service in the Aegean and the Collection of Antiquities for the British Museum

Gunning, Lucia Patrizio

doi:10.4324/9781315240954

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The distribution of British consular posts in the nineteenth century (cf. Gunning 2009, 189–95), for example, and the journeys taken by British travellers at this time follow a similar pattern (Fig. 9).…”

Section: Routes and Network Connectivity And Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 58%

Early Modern Travellers in the Aegean: Routes and Networks

Loy

2019

Annu. Br. Sch. Athens

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This study uses the collection of fifteenth- to twentieth-century travel literature from the BSA library to consider issues of (elite) mobility in the Aegean Sea. These texts contain a wealth of information on the routes chosen by travellers between various islands and mainland ports, and on the navigability of the Aegean basin. By using a combination of computational Proximal Point Analysis and Social Network Analysis, these routes are visualised, and discussion focuses on how navigation varied both between centuries and according to the traveller's place of origin. It is suggested that travellers were dependent on other sorts of networks, and that routes travelled were shaped greatly by the economics and politics of the day. It is also proposed that methodologies used in this paper offer great potential for engaging broad-scale sets of archive data.

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Section: Routes and Network Connectivity And Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 58%

Early Modern Travellers in the Aegean: Routes and Networks

Loy

2019

Annu. Br. Sch. Athens

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“…Whilst stationed there and then in neighboring Rhodes, Newton had selected, trained, and tasked a number of local colleagues to help in the search for antiquities. 41 By 1861, when he returned to the museum as newly appointed keeper of the Greek and Roman Antiquities Department, Newton had effectively put together an agency for the identification and collection of antiquities in the western part of the Ottoman Empire, namely the Greek Eastern Dodecanese islands and parts of western Turkey. The efficiency shown by the British in this field clashed with the newly found Ottoman interest in collecting antiquities.…”

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confidence: 99%

Planned Plunder, the British Museum, and the 1868 Maqdala Expedition

Gunning

Challis

2023

Hist. J.

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In 1863, Emperor Tewodros II of Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea) took a British consul hostage; five years later, the British sent a punitive expedition. This military expedition continued the brutal tradition of earlier ones and shaped later campaigns in Sudan and West Africa in the 1890s. Typically, a large contingent of non-military personnel accompanied these expeditions and the 1868 expedition to Maqdala was no different. What was unique for Maqdala was the inclusion of a member of staff from the British Museum. We argue that a letter from Charles Thomas Newton, keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, to Sir Roderick Murchison, the president of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), illustrates that the plunder of cultural heritage was planned. We also argue that the plunder did not go to plan. The inclusion of a man from the museum made this expedition unique in the museum's history. The acquisition of these objects through colonial violence constitutes a strong moral reason for their repatriation from the British Museum and the numerous institutions in which they are dispersed. Understanding the planning involved in their plunder illustrates the entanglement of politics and imperialism with scientific and cultural institutions that constituted the backbone of Victorian Britain.

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On early antiquarians in Asia Minor to the start of the 19th century

Duggan

2019

Gephyra

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Both the range of this subject and its time span are truly vast. 1 This paper addresses a few of the issues concerning the activities of European antiquarians and the ancient Greek and Roman inscriptions of Asia Minor over the course of four hundred years from 1400 to 1800, touching upon five matters. Firstly, the collection and removal of antiquities including inscriptions by Europeans. Secondly, the varied functions of the visible ancient inscriptions for the Ottoman state and its inhabitants, both talismanic and therapeutic, and of the "non-literal reading" of an ancient inscription, distinct from the European antiquarian interest in the literal text of inscriptions, in establishing record of, and collections of the inscribed historical texts surviving from antiquity. Thirdly, the question of how safe a home was Europe for antiquities, including inscriptions and manuscripts that were brought from Asia Minor, and how much of scholarly importance that had survived was then lost in transit at sea and in Europe in wars and disasters? Fourthly, the problems with the transcriptions made by hand, the content of the record made and its accuracy. Was the inscription regarded simply as a text, prioritised as a text, or, was the text transcribed in its context including the epigraphic surface, its shape and relief carving, if any, its physical location if in situ, was it understood as forming a whole, and was it recorded as such? Were the letter forms, the number of lines, the different size of letters and words in an inscription, misspellings, etc., accurately noted or not? And, finally, the problems generated through the printed publication from the 16 th c. onwards of the transcriptions that had been made of inscriptions, in particular, those employing a standard font in publication for the study of inscriptions, not least impacting the understanding of orthography. Again, was it a matter of the antiquarian publishing just the text of an inscription, or the text within its context, to scale,

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The British Consular Service in the Aegean and the Collection of Antiquities for the British Museum

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Early Modern Travellers in the Aegean: Routes and Networks

Early Modern Travellers in the Aegean: Routes and Networks

Planned Plunder, the British Museum, and the 1868 Maqdala Expedition

On early antiquarians in Asia Minor to the start of the 19th century

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