GAZİANTEP ZEUGMA MOZAİK MÜZESİ

Archaeology’s greatest achievement
The Museum owned a great number of amazing pieces.
However, the foundations for an extensive collection of
sculpture began to be laid in the early 19 th century, with
Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts. An ancient
Egyptian stele inscribed with a decree issued in 196 BC
on behalf of King Ptolemy V, discovered in 1799 near
the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta by a
French soldier during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt,
led to a major breakthrough in archaeology. The
Rosetta Stone, an ancient Egyptian stele inscribed in
three scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic
script (popular language in Ancient Egypt), and Ancient
Greek, proved to be a most valuable tool for the
deciphering of hieroglyphs. Because it presents
essentially the same text in all three scripts, it provided
the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian
hieroglyphs. The Rosetta Stone, a 114 centimetres high,
72 cm wide, and 28 cm thick stone of black granite,
paved the way to the inception of Egyptology as a
science. Meanwhile, British troops defeated the French
in Egypt in 1801, and the original stone came into
British possession under the Capitulation of Alexandria.
Transported to London, it has been on public
display at the British Museum since 1802. It is the
most-visited object in the British Museum.
Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British Consul
General in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of
Ramesses II the Great in 1818, laid the foundations of
the collection of Egyptian Monumental Sculpture.
Weighing 7 tons, this fragment of his statue was cut
from a single block of two-coloured granite. He is
shown wearing the striped nemes head-dress surmounted
by a cobra diadem. It was retrieved from the
mortuary temple of Ramesses at Thebes (the ‘Ramesseum’)
in 1816. The arrival of the head in England in
1818 not only aroused widespread interest by the
public and the scientific community, but inspired poets
like Percy Bysshe Shelley to write poetry glorifying
Ancient Egypt.
Ottoman lands were next
The interest manifested towards Ancient Egyptian art,
prompted the British to expedite their archaeological
activity in the East. The plundering started in Greece
spread out to other parts of the Ottoman Empire. In
1806, Lord Thomas Bruce, 7 th Earl of Elgin, Ambassador
to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 removed the
large collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon
on the Acropolis in Athens and transferred them to
the UK. In 1816 these masterpieces of western art, were
acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament
and deposited in the museum thereafter at the Duveen
Gallery built especially for the Elgin Marbles. With the
progressive extension of collections, the construction
of new wings became indispensable. The famous
circular Reading Room was designed and built by
neoclassical architect Sir Sydney Smirke from a sketch
drawn by Sir Anthony Panizzi, Chief Librarian at the
British Museum Library opened in 1857. In 1840 the
Museum became involved in its first overseas excavations
with Charles Fellows’s expedition to the Antique
settlement of Xanthos near Antalya Kınık in Turkey.
Fellow removed and transferred to London historic
treasures from the tombs of the rulers of ancient Lycia,
Daniel Berehulak