volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Native Dealers. 327
me, and I acquired many valuable historical objects for
the Museum.
My success in dealing with the natives displeased
several of my friends among the European collectors, and
there were not wanting among them some who explained
it to their own satisfaction by saying that I financed some
of the excavations which the natives made under an
arrangement with the Service of Antiquities. They
further said that I treated the natives unfairly by
seizing (for the Trustees) all the best of the objects found
by them, and that I made a large profit personally
on my transactions with them. This was most uncomplimentary
to the natives, who, as is very well known
by everyone who has had dealings with them, are
exceedingly clever in protecting their own interests.
The truth of the matter is that the natives tried to
treat me as they treated everyone else, and when they
found that it did not pay, they altered their plans and
began to trust me. Many of my early negotiations
with them broke down, and I often failed to secure valuable
objects which they had in their possession because
the prices which I offered were not sufficiently high
to induce them to sell. In such cases I knew well that
they were acting foolishly in refusing my offers, which
were always reasonable, and I was often very angry
when I spent time and money in vain. But it seemed to
me that they had a perfect right to get the highest
prices they could for their antiquities, so I stifled my
wrath and held my peace. I did not go back to Cairo
and denounce so and so to the officials of the Service
of Antiquities, and tell them what I had seen, and urge
them to set in motion the laws which concerned illegal
possession of antiquities, and help them to confiscate
the goods. But this is exactly what certain agents
for European Museums did, and then the Service of
Antiquities set the telegraph to work, and the local
police would swoop down on the shop or house of the
dealer whose name had been reported, and seize everything
in the nature of antiquities which they found
there, and take them to Cairo forthwith, where they