Cambridge professor gives talk on antiquities trade

Yannis Galanakis, a member of the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, gave a lecture entitled “The Diplomat, The Dealer, and The Digger: Writing the History of the Antiquities Trade in Nineteenth-Century Greece.” The talk took place last Friday to an audience of undergraduate and graduate students as well as patrons of the Baltimore Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA).

The AIA, the largest archaeological society in the world, hosted the Kress lecture, the first of six lectures running throughout the school year at Hopkins.

Galanakis, an expert on ancient Greece in the Bronze Age and Iron Age, spoke about the process of the illicit antiquities trade in Greece in the nineteenth century and the corruption that went along with it.

“I became interested in the way officials, traders, diggers and robbers traded these objects,” Galanakis said. “Surrounded by thousands of ancient objects, I became obsessed with the excavation and trade of antiquities.”

The first antiquities law in Greece was passed in 1834 and barred the unauthorized trade of antiquities out of Greece. However, private collections were allowed, as were private digs on privately held land. The state had the first right to buy any object for sale, but the owner was allowed to sell the object to the highest bidder, who was often a representative of a foreign museum or a rich local collector. The Greek government was in a weakened state after the murkiness of property rights shortly after independence from the Ottoman Empire. As a result, it was easy to illegally take antiquities out of the country, a process aided by corruption, bribing and the careless attitudes of many officials.

A key figure discussed in the lecture was a university professor named Rhousopoulos, the holder of the largest collection of antiquities in Greece, and possibly in the world, in the mid-nineteenth century. A guidebook from the time describes Rhousopoulos as a “University Professor [and] Antiquities Looter.” Many objects found at museums in Great Britain and Germany in particular were sourced or come directly from Rhousopoulus’s network.

Rhousopoulos was considered more of a connoisseur than an archaeologist, but some Greek archaeologists took a different stance. They believed that Greek antiquities should be used for the education of the Greek people, not European foreigners. They believed that the Greek national heritage should stay where it began. There were three predominant schools of thought among the archaeologists and the connoisseurs, as Galanakis pointed out. Some wanted to ban the antiquities trade. Others believed these objects were owned by and should stay in Greece. Others still favored international antiquities trade and believed the finds should be sold and used to promote Greece abroad.

The hierarchy of illegal antiquities trade was complex, beginning with the local diggers and robbers and moving up to the local dealers, the private dealers, the major dealers and collectors in Athens like Rhousopoulos and then finally with the European museums and their agents in Greece.

Charles Merlin, a British representative in Greece for most of his life, was a major connection for the British Museum’s acquisition of antiquities in the nineteenth century. He viewed antiquities as an investment, and because he made a comfortable living as the consul to Greece, he was able to continue his trade even with its low profit margins.

When asked whether illegal looting and trade still happens in a much more stable Greece today, Galanakis said that there are still people in the government that trade antiquities illegally or who look the other way. He also said that while it’s hard to prove, politicians are still involved and corruption still exists, although it is far from the levels seen during the nineteenth century.

“The lecture was thought-provoking, especially given contemporary debates in the antiquity market today,” Laura Hutchison, a graduate student in the Classics Department, said in reaction to the lecture.

Hutchison said that during her time in Greece this past summer, her taxi driver told her of ancient statues he found underwater while diving off the coast. Instead of reporting the find to the authorities at the antiquities office, the driver was going to sell the statues for personal gain, a practice illegal in Greece today.

While better regulated in these more recent centuries, the antiquities trade in Greece is still full of gray zones and corruption today.

The speaker series continues on Oct. 24 with a talk given by Martin Feldman, a member of the faculty of the University on “The Displacement of Luxury Arts in the Iron Age Near East and Eastern Mediterranean.”

Amy Sowder Koch of Towson University will follow on Nov. 4. Her talk, the Dorothy Kent Hill lecture, is titled “Looking Up: Ceilings and Structures in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace.”