Abstract
This chapter examines the British Museum’s state-sanctioned role as restorer and steward of ancient civilizations, particularly those mentioned in the Bible. In this chapter, I contend that the discovery of antiquities and their import to the Museum relied upon a complex machinery of social affiliations and synchronized networks of political power. Indeed, its acquisition of antiquities in the early nineteenth century marked a relational interplay between Trustees of the British Museum, scientific societies, and antiquarian explorers. This nexus of affiliations went beyond personal curiosities and upkeep of individual social privileges. For the Museum, these networks enabled it to transition from a domicile of curiosities to Britain’s master archive—especially as it pertains to the study of the Bible. In examining the British Museum’s archival development in the early nineteenth century, this chapter also looks at inscriptions of power in its architectural spaces and acquisition practices.
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Notes
- 1.
Ruth Hoberman, Museum Trouble: Edwardian Fiction and the Emergence of Modernism (Charlottesville, NC: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 149.
- 2.
Neil Asher Silberman, Between Past and Present: Archaeology, Ideology, and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 3.
- 3.
Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (New York: Routledge, 1995), 96.
- 4.
Carla Yanni, Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005), 23.
- 5.
Shawn Malley, From Archaeology to Spectacle in Victorian Britain: The Cases of Assyria, 1845–1854 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 2.
- 6.
Charles Knight, “New Egyptian Room, British Museum,” The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, November 10, 1838, 436.
- 7.
William Whitla states that also contributing to the marketplace of biblical knowledge was “the increase of literacy, the advent of the stem press, and the reduction of the paper tax[;] Bibles became cheaper and more widely read.” Victor Shea and William Whitla, eds., Essays and Reviews : The 1860 Text and Its Reading (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 8; Barbara Zink MacHaffie, “Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies: Archaeology and the Popularization of Old Testament Criticism in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Church History 50, no. 3 (September 1981): 321, https://doi.org/10.2307/3167321.
- 8.
William Osborn, Ancient Egypt: Her Testimony to the Truth of the Bible; Being an Interpretation of the Inscriptions and Pictures Which Remain upon Her Tombs and Temples (London: Bagster and Sons, 1846); Austen Henry Layard, A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh (London: John Murray, 1851); Austen Henry Layard, The Monuments of Nineveh: From Drawings Made on the Spot (London: John Murray, 1849); James Silk Buckingham, The Buried City of the East, Nineveh: A Narrative of the Discoveries of Mr. Layard and M. Botta at Nimroud and Khorsabad (London: Office of the National Illustrated Library, 1851); Joseph Bonomi, Nineveh and Its Palaces: The Discoveries of Botta and Layard Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ (London: Office of the Illustrated London Library, 1852); George Rawlinson, The Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Records Stated Anew (London: John Murray, 1859); Ellen Henrietta Raynard, Stones Crying Out, and Rock-Witness to the Narratives of the Bible Concerning the Times of the Jews (London: Book Society, 1865); James Fergusson, The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored: An Essay on Ancient Assyrian and Persian Architecture (London: John Murray, 1851).
- 9.
MacHaffie, “Monument Facts,” 321.
- 10.
Neil Asher Silberman, “Power, Politics and the Past: The Social Construction of Antiquity in the Holy Land,” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. Thomas E. Levy (New York: Fact on File, 1995), 14; Thomas Richards, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (London: Verso, 1993), 14; Malley, From Archaeology to Spectacle, 2–3, 72–75; Hoberman, Museum Trouble, 148–49.
- 11.
Samuel Gosnell Green, The Story of the Religious Tract Society for One Hundred Years (London: Religious Tract Society, 1894), 6; Aileen Fyfe, Science and Salvation: Evangelical Popular Science Publishing in Victorian Britain (London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 16–60.
- 12.
E. W. Payne, Pleasant Mornings at the British Museum: Or, Memorials of By-gone Ages Historical Department (London: Religious Tract Society, 1858), preface.
- 13.
Ibid., 22.
- 14.
“New Greco-Roman Saloon, Just Opened at the British Museum,” The Illustrated London News, April 7, 1855, 324.
- 15.
Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, 103.
- 16.
Richards, The Imperial Archive, 15.
- 17.
Henry Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1991), 238.
- 18.
Taylor Combe et al., A Description of the Collection of Ancient Marbles in the British Museum: With Engravings (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1830); British Museum, Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum, 42nd ed. (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1840); William Sandys Wright Vaux, Handbook to the Antiquities of the British Museum (London: John Murray, 1851).
- 19.
MacHaffie, “Monument Facts,” 321–22.
- 20.
George Rawlinson, A Memoir of Major-General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), 1–21.
- 21.
Edward Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists: British Gentlemen and the Empire of the Mind (New York: Routledge, 2005), 126; George Rawlinson, A Memoir, 335.
- 22.
Henry Rawlinson, “Note on a March from Zoháb, at the Foot of Zagros, along the Mountains to Khúzistán (Susiana), and from thence through the Province of Luristan to Kirmánsháh, in the year 1836,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 9 (1839): 52.
- 23.
Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists, 127.
- 24.
William R. Hamilton, “Address to the Royal Geographical Society of London; Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 27th of May, 1839,” Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London 9 (1839): lx.
- 25.
British Museum, Statutes and Rules for the British Museum, as Altered in Consequence of the Report of a Committee, rev. ed. (London: Order of the Trustees, 1839), 41–45. Hamilton was also elected president in 1837 and 1838, see “List of Members,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 7 (1837): xxxi; “List of Members,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 8 (1838): lxiii.
- 26.
William R. Hamilton, “Address to the Royal Geographical Society of London; Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 21st of May, 1838,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 8 (1838): xxxvii–xxxviii.
- 27.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 27th of May, 1839,” ix.
- 28.
William R. Hamilton, “Address to the Royal Geographical Society of London; Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting on the 21st of May, 1838,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 8 (1838): liv.
- 29.
“List of Members,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 9 (1839): xxxix–xlvi. An 1835 list of British Museum Trustees appears in “Minutes of Evidence,” in Report from the Select Committee on the Condition, Management and Affairs of the British Museum (London: House of Commons, 1835), 1–2.
- 30.
British Museum, Statutes and Rules (1839), 3–8.
- 31.
Viscount Mahon, “Monday, April 23rd, 1849, Anniversary Address,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 2, no. 18 (1853): 1–2.
- 32.
Henry Rawlinson, “Notes on Some Paper Casts of Cuneiform Inscriptions upon the Sculptured Rock at Behistun Exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries,” Archaeologia 34, no. 1 (1851): 75.
- 33.
Ibid., 76.
- 34.
“Thursday, March 7th, 1850,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 2, no. 21 (1853): 58–60; For Trustee status, see British Museum, Statutes and Rules for the British Museum, Revised Tenth of May, 1851, rev. ed. (London: George Woodfall and Son, 1851), 32.
- 35.
“Tuesday, April 23rd, 1850,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 2, no. 22 (1853): 70–71.
- 36.
“Tuesday, April 23rd, 1850,” 70–74; For list of Trustees and officers of the British Museum, see British Museum, Statutes and Rules (1851), 31–39.
- 37.
Lord Seymour, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Constitution and Government of the British Museum; With Minutes of Evidence (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1850), 817.
- 38.
George Rawlinson, A Memoir, 166.
- 39.
Malley, From Archaeology to Spectacle, 25.
- 40.
Austen Henry Layard, Autobiography and Letters from His Childhood Until His Appointment as H.M. Ambassador at Madrid, ed. William N. Bruce (London: John Murray, 1903), 1:10, 25, 44.
- 41.
George Rawlinson, A Memoir, 152.
- 42.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 1:27.
- 43.
Austen Henry Layard, Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia, Including a Residence Among the Bakhtiyari and Other Wild Tribes Before the Discovery of Nineveh (London: John Murray, 1887), 1:12.
- 44.
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 41, 289.
- 45.
Layard, Early Adventures, 1:398–99.
- 46.
W. B. Shelby, “Account of the Ascent of the Kárún and Dizful Rivers and the Ab-í-Gargar Canal, to Shuster,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 14 (1844): 263; Layard, Early Adventures, 2:184–86, 310–19, 368; Layard, Early Adventures, 1:202–03; Austen Henry Layard, “A Description of the Province of Khúzistán,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 16 (1846): 63–97.
- 47.
In 1839 and 1842, Layard had submitted papers to the Royal Geographical Society, see Layard, Early Adventures, 1:4; Layard, “Ancient Sites Among the Baktiyari Mountains. With Remarks on the Rivers of Susiana, and the Site of Susa,” The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 12 (1842): 102–09.
- 48.
In 1845, George, Earl of Aberdeen was Trustee by virtue of his presidency of the Society of Antiquaries of London, see “PNT Volume 1 Issue 5 Front Matter,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 1, no. 5 (1849): f4.
- 49.
Arthur Hamilton Gordon, The Earl of Aberdeen (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1893), 18.
- 50.
Ibid., 319.
- 51.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:81, 102.
- 52.
Layard, Early Adventures, 1:12.
- 53.
Henry Rawlinson, “Note on a March from Zoháb,” 83.
- 54.
Ibid.
- 55.
Ibid.
- 56.
Ibid., 71.
- 57.
Ibid., 85.
- 58.
Ibid., 85–87. The phrase “in the palace” in Dan. 8:2 is found in the King James Version, which was the likely English translation used by Rawlinson.
- 59.
Layard, “A Description of the Province of Khúzistán,” 9.
- 60.
Layard, “A Description of the Province of Khúzistán,” 93–94; Layard, Early Adventures, 2:290.
- 61.
Timothy Larsen, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1–10; Leslie Howsman, Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 35–73; Felix Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 9, 14; John Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century England and Germany (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985), 180.
- 62.
Silberman, “Power, Politics and the Past,” 9–23; Felix Driver, Geography Militant, 323; Ruth Kark and Haim Goren, “Pioneering British Exploration and Scriptural Geography: The Syrian Society/The Palestine Association,” Geographical Journal 177, no. 3 (September 2011): 264–65.
- 63.
Layard, Early Adventures, 2:488.
- 64.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:156.
- 65.
Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldæan Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-Worshippers; and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians (London: John Murray, 1849), 1:21.
- 66.
Layard, Nineveh and Its remains, 1:21–22.
- 67.
Layard, Nineveh and Its remains, 1:29; Steven Lukes, Individualism (Colchester, UK: ECPR Press, 2006), 41–48.
- 68.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:161.
- 69.
Stanley Lane-Poole, The Life of the Right Honourable Stratford Canning: Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, from His Memoirs and Private and Official Papers (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1888), 2:149.
- 70.
Ibid.
- 71.
Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1:23–24.
- 72.
Ibid., 1:24–25.
- 73.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:159.
- 74.
Lane-Poole, The Life of the Right Honourable Stratford Canning, 2:138.
- 75.
Gordon Waterfield, Layard of Nineveh (New York: Frederick A. Prager, 1968), 132–33.
- 76.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:162.
- 77.
Maureen Moran, Victorian Literature and Culture: Introductions to British Literature and Culture (London: Continuum, 2006), 33–35; For more comprehensive treatments of Individualism in England see Lukes, Individualism, 32–39; Ian Watts, Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 228–44.
- 78.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:166.
- 79.
Waterfield, Layard of Nineveh, 141; Lane-Poole, The Life of the Right Honourable Stratford Canning, 2:149.
- 80.
Quoted in Malley, From Archaeology to Spectacle, 35.
- 81.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:172.
- 82.
Lane-Poole, The Life of the Right Honourable Stratford Canning, 2:138; For the quote by Layard, see Waterfield, Layard of Nineveh, 141.
- 83.
Layard, Autobiography and Letters, 2:178.
- 84.
Edward Ziter, The Orient on the Victorian Stage (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 138.
- 85.
Peter Roger Stuart Moorey, A Century of Biblical Archaeology (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 9; Lesley Adkins, Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), 191.
- 86.
“Reviews: Ninevah and Its Remains,” Sharpe’s London Journal 9 (1849): 49.
- 87.
“Nineveh and Its Remains, by Austen Henry Layard, Esq., D.C.L,” The Quarterly Review 84 (1849): 106.
- 88.
The review of Layard’s book Ninevah and Its Remains from the Quarterly Review is reproduced in several other journals and magazines; see “Layard’s Discoveries in Nineveh,” The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science and Art, May to August 1849, 106–33; “Nineveh and Its Remains, by Austin Henry Layard, Esq., D.C.L.,” The Living Age 22, no. 255 (April 7, 1849): 19–43.
- 89.
“Layard’s Discoveries,” 106.
- 90.
“Nineveh,” The People’s Illustrated Journal of Arts, Manufactures, Practical Science, Literature, and Social Economy, no. 2 (May 8, 1852): 30.
- 91.
W. Blanchard Jerrold, How to See the British Museum, in Four Visits (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1852), 167.
- 92.
Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 2:110–11.
- 93.
Malley, From Archaeology to Spectacle, 3.
- 94.
Seymour, Report of the Commissioners (1850), 3.
- 95.
Ibid., 9–10.
- 96.
British Museum, Statutes and Rules (1839), 41.
- 97.
Seymour, Report of the Commissioners (1850), 7.
- 98.
Ibid., 3–4.
- 99.
Ibid., 3–7.
- 100.
Clements R. Markham, The Fifty Years’ Work of the Royal Geographical Society (London: John Murray, 1881), 36–37.
- 101.
British Museum, Galleries of the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1892), xvi.
- 102.
Markham, The Fifty Years’ Work, 36–37.
- 103.
Seymour, Report of the Commissioners (1850), 817.
- 104.
Ibid.
- 105.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 21st of May, 1838,” lvii.
- 106.
Ibid., xxxix.
- 107.
Ibid., xxxvii.
- 108.
Ibid., xlix.
- 109.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 27th of May, 1839,” liii.
- 110.
George Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 35–36.
- 111.
Anne DeWitt, Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 21–28; Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 37–38; William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time (London: John W. Parker, 1837), 3:580–88.
- 112.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 21st of May, 1838,” lvii.
- 113.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 27th of May, 1839,” lxxxv.
- 114.
Ibid., lvii.
- 115.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 21st of May, 1838,” xlviii.
- 116.
Ibid.
- 117.
Ibid.
- 118.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 27th of May, 1839,” lx.
- 119.
Ibid.
- 120.
Henry Rawlinson, “Note on a March from Zoháb,” 83.
- 121.
Henry Rawlinson, “Note on a March from Zoháb,” 85; Pliny the Elder, The Fifth Book of the History of Nature, Written by C. Plinius Secundus, trans. Philemon Holland (London: George Barclay, 1847–48), 1:145.
- 122.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 27th of May, 1839,” lxi.
- 123.
Ibid.
- 124.
Kark and Goren, “Pioneering British Exploration,” 266–69.
- 125.
R. S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible and Empire: Postcolonial Explorations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2.
- 126.
Hamilton, “Anniversary Meeting on the 27th of May, 1839,” lxiii.
- 127.
Charles Fellows, preface to A Journal Written During an Excursion in Asia Minor (London: John Murray, 1839), v.
- 128.
Charles Fellows, The Xanthian Marbles: Their Acquisition, and Transmission to England (London: John Murray, 1843), 2.
- 129.
Driver, Geography Militant, 9; Ian Jenkins, Archaeologist and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800–1939 (London: British Museum Press, 1992), 141–42.
- 130.
Fellows, The Xanthian Marbles, 2.
- 131.
Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes, 141.
- 132.
Seymour, Report of the Commissioners (1850), 62.
- 133.
Ibid.
- 134.
Fellows, The Xanthian Marbles, 2.
- 135.
Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes, 142.
- 136.
Seymour, Report of the Commissioners (1850), 62.
- 137.
Fellows, The Xanthian Marbles, 142.
- 138.
William Simpson, “Memoir of Joseph Bonomi, F.R.A.S., F.R.S.L,” in Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, by Society of Biblical Archaeology (London: Office of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1878), 6:563. In 1842, Bonomi went to Egypt with the Prussian Expedition under Karl Richard Lepsius, and returned to England in 1844.
- 139.
Samuel Birch to Joseph Bonomi, November 13, 1842, ADD 9389/2/B/71, Joseph Bonomi: Correspondence and Papers, Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Cambridge, UK.
- 140.
Layard, Early Adventures, 2:451–52; Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1:15.
- 141.
“Ancient Ninevah,” The Athenaeum: Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts 2, no. 819 (July 8, 1843): 632; Hilary Fraser and Judith Johnston, Gender and the Victorian Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 212.
- 142.
Joseph Bonomi to Samuel Birch, 1843, Add 389/2/B/76, Joseph Bonomi: Correspondence and Papers, Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Cambridge, UK.
- 143.
E. A. Wallis Budge, Memoir of the Late Samuel Birch, LL. D.: Biographical Notice, List of Works, etc. (London: Harrison and Sons, 1887), 10.
- 144.
Ibid.; British Museum, Statutes and Rules (1851), 36.
- 145.
“Thursday, April 2, 1846,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London 1, no. 6 (1849): 130–31.
- 146.
Quoted in Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes, 154.
- 147.
Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, 33.
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Cuéllar, G.L. (2019). Mastering Biblical History in the British Museum. In: Empire, the British Museum, and the Making of the Biblical Scholar in the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24028-8_2
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