History of the collection
Introduction
The Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities was formed in
1860. It is home to objects which come from Greece, Italy, Turkey
and other lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and which date
from around 3000 BC to AD 300.
Development
When it was founded in 1753 the British Museum resembled, even
by the standards of the day, a rather old fashioned cabinet of
curiosities. Natural history specimens loomed large in the founding
collection of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), while his antiquities
were generally small and, except for the collection of coins and
medals, rather undistinguished.
Although Greek and Latin literature were the basis of education,
there was no concept of Classical archaeology at this time. Objects
were classified as either ‘natural’ or ‘artificial rarities’. The
‘artificial’ could be subdivided by material - bronze, pottery,
stone and so on - and also by culture as in, for example, an
Etruscan vase or Egyptian mummy.
The growth of the collection over the next half century
eventually led to the creation of a Department of Antiquities in
1807 with the coin specialist Taylor Combe as its first keeper. His
major task was to oversee the installation of the Egyptian
sculptures, acquired as spoils of the Napoleonic wars in 1801, and
the Townley Marbles, purchased in 1805, in a new suite of rooms
collectively called the Townley Gallery.
As the collection grew, however, it became clear that Old
Montague House, the original home of the Museum, was too small for
its purpose, and so in 1823 the architect Robert Smirke was
commissioned to draw up plans for an entirely new building, which
he did in the then fashionable Greek Revival style. The old
Jacobean mansion and its Palladian-style Townley Gallery were
pulled down and gradually replaced with grand rooms arranged over
two floors around a central courtyard. Antiquities were to be
accommodated on the west side with sculpture on the ground floor
and portable objects, such as vases and bronzes, at the upper
level.
As the new building grew, so did the collection. Such was its
volume by 1860 that not only had Smirke’s original plan for the
Museum been greatly extended by additional galleries on the west
side, but also overspill had to be accommodated in unsightly sheds
erected within the grand and formal colonnades of the south front.
These were mainly needed to house finds made by Charles Newton
(1816-1894), who conducted excavations at various sites in
south-west Turkey between 1856 and 1859, including his rediscovery
of the fabled Mausoleum of Halikarnassos.
Such increases, not to mention major additions from other
ancient cultures, made the old Department of Antiquities too large
to be managed by a single individual. Since the premature death of
Taylor Combe in 1826, it had been led by the formidable and now
venerable Edward Hawkins. With his retirement in 1860, the
department was divided up and Newton was appointed the first keeper
of the newly formed Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
Collection and acquisition
The collection of Greek and Roman antiquities has been assembled
in three main ways: by gift or purchase of individual items; by the
acquisition of private collections in part or as a whole; and by
excavation. The second-century BC bronze head of a Greek poet is an
early example of the first category.
Found at Smyrna, modern Izmir, in western Turkey, the head had
been in the collection of the Earl of Arundel (1585-1646) and
afterwards in the collection of the royal physician and
contemporary of Sloane, Dr Richard Mead (1673-1754). It was
presented to the Museum in 1760 by the Earl of Exeter. Having been
part of distinguished private collections gives such treasures
extra interest.
There are many objects of similar importance still in private
hands and, occasionally, they come up for sale. This gives the
Museum with an opportunity to make an important acquisition without
going against its policy of not acquiring objects which have been
recently or illegally exported from their country of origin.
The acquisition of complete collections, or even parts of them,
accounts for by far the greatest number of objects in the
department. One of the earliest and most significant private
collections was purchased from Sir William Hamilton in 1772.
For many years Hamilton was British ambassador to the Bourbon
court of Naples, during which time he had plenty of opportunity to
collect antiquities from Roman towns and villas buried by the
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and from tombs in the
countryside of southern Italy and Sicily. From these, especially,
Hamilton put together a collection of painted Greek vases. This
marked the beginnings of the modern study of Greek vases as well as
their influence on the decorative arts.
Purchase of the Hamilton collection transformed the Museum’s
antiquities collection. It set the Museum on a course that turned
it from being primarily about books, manuscripts and natural
history and made it the great collection of art and antiquity that
it has become.
Not least in this story of the making of the modern Museum is
the exceptional quantity and quality of architectural sculpture
from Greece and Turkey. The first to come were the sculptures from
the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae in 1814 and, most
famously, the Parthenon sculptures purchased in 1816.
The third means of acquisition was excavations, either carried
out directly by the Museum itself or by agents acting on its
behalf. Controlled excavation was only fully developed in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Charles Newton was a pioneer
and the first Museum archaeologist to employ systematic record
keeping and photography.
Excavation became especially important in the discovery and
understanding of then little known or understood prehistoric phases
of Greek civilisation, such as that of the Minoans and
Mycenaeans.
In recent decades the pace of acquisition by the Greek and Roman
Department has slowed down considerably due to cost, lack of
opportunity and, above all, the strict acquisitions policy of the
Museum. Current staff members concentrate less on acquiring new
collections and more on processing and promoting public
understanding of those already in the Museum. Sometimes this may
involve returning to places previously excavated.
The Return to Cnidus project is a successful partnership between
the Museum and Turkish colleagues from the Selçuk University of
Konya that seeks a better understanding of sites in this important
Karian city in south-west Turkey. It was first explored by Newton,
and many important objects in the Museum come from there.
This is just one of many instances in the work of the curators
of the British Museum, where two histories run in parallel. The
first is that of the ancient civilisations themselves, while the
second is that of previous curators, whose industry has made the
British Museum’s collection so rich a source of first hand
knowledge.