volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

304 An Action for Slander.
his employers, all the plums should have gone to them.
Mr. Budge made what most persons would have considered
an ample apology, but this was not* enough
for Mr. Rassam or for his counsellors. Sir Henry Layard
and Mr. Renouf gave evidence on behalf o^ Mr. Rassam,
and the trial was, in some respects, a sort of antiquarian
festival. These distinguished persons have not been
in the intimacy of Assur-bani-pal for nothing. Their
measures of time are not as our measures : otherwise,
the better part of a week would hardly have been
devoted to the settlement of such a case."
The wider bearings of the case were afterwards
discussed in Nature (August loth, 1893, p. 343), and I
reprint^ the article here as it treats the subject from
another point of view.
The Thieving of Assyrian Antiquities.
" So much interest is now taken in the archaeological
researches made in Egypt and Assyria that it behoves
a journal of science to chronicle a case of considerable
importance that has recently been before the Law Courts.
The case is noteworthy, because it is concerned with the
excavation and disposal of the wonderful tablets, the
decipherment of which has added so much to our knowledge
of the early history of mankind.
" We have not referred to the case earlier as we had
hoped that some action in the public interest would have
been taken by the Trustees of the British Museum,
which would have carried the matter a stage further.
For this action, howev.er, we have waited in vain.
" Although the real question at issue is the spending
of many thousands of public money, the case in the
newspapers has taken the form of an action for libel..
The plaintiff in the case was Mr. H. Rassam, formerly
1 The article is reproduced here by the courtesy of Messrs. Macmillan
& Co., Ltd., who in their letter of July 3rd, 1918, gave me permission
to reprint verbatim both the article and the two letters of Mr. Rassam
which followed it on September 21st and October 5th.