case the coup de force was clearly won by the foreigners. In 1857, Newton
managed to ignore the attempts made by the Ottoman War Minister who
requested some of theWndings—some sculptures of lions—for the museum
at Constantinople (Jenkins 1992: 183). They wereWnally shipped to the
British Museum. The uneasiness of the Ottoman authorities towards Western
intervention became increasingly apparent in the 1860s and restrictions
continued to grow. In 1863 the permit to remove sculptures from Ephesus
(Efes) obtained by Sir John Turtle Wood (1821–90), a British architect living
in Smyrna and working for the British Railroad Company, was granted only
on the condition that if similar items were found, one should be sent to the
Ottoman government (Cook 1998: 146). The excavation exhumed a large
quantity of material for the British Museum, which arrived there during the
late 1860s and 1870s (Cook 1998: 146–50; Stoneman 1987: 230–6).
In 1871 the permission obtained by the German entrepreneur, Heinrich
Schliemann (1822–90), for the excavation of Troy was even more restrictive:
half of theWnds had to be given to the Ottoman government. The subsequent
events would later be interpreted in the Ottoman Empire as a proof of the
extreme arrogance of the West. Schliemann did not comply with the agree-
ment and decided instead to smuggle the bestWndings of his campaign at
Troy—the Priam’s treasure—out of Turkey in 1873. He claimed that the
reason was ‘instead of yielding theWnds to the government...bykeeping all
to myself, I saved them for the science. All the civilized world will appreciate
what I have done’ (in O ̈zdogan 1998: 115). The ‘Schliemann aVair’ would
have consequences not only for the Ottoman Empire but for Germany as well.
The embarrassment of this diplomatic situation made the authorities in
Berlin determine that, in the future, private individuals would be dissuaded
from excavating abroad (Marchand 1996a: 120) (although Schliemann would
be able to excavate again in Troy in 1878). Imperial archaeology was more
than ever becoming a conscious state enterprise. In Turkey itself the ‘Schlie-
mann scandal’ would have as a consequence the promulgation of the laws of
1874–5, whereby the excavator had the right only to retain one third of what
was unearthed. The implementation of the law, however, had its problems, no
less because it was overlooked by many including the state, for example in a
secret treaty in 1880 between the German and the Ottoman governments
related to Pergamon mentioned below.
The Hamidian period (1876–1909)The Ottoman Empire did not remain unaVected by changes in the character
of nationalism in the 1870s. As with many other nations, it was mainly in this
Europe and the Ottoman Empire 113