Reade and then to Sir Grenville Temple together with Christian Falbe, who
had been the Danish consul-general in Tunisia a few years earlier (Lund
1986). Both Temple and Falbe were members of the so-called Society for
the Exploitation of Carthage, whose aim was ‘to conduct excavations in the
soil of Carthage and to import to France all objects of artistic and scientiWc
value, which were unearthed during the course of the excavations’ (statutes of
the society, in Lund 1986: 11). Objects from this expedition can be found
today in the National Museum of Copenhagen, the Louvre, and the British
Museum (Lund 1986). Temple and Falbe were followed by other explorers,
who continued to excavate Punic remains throughout the nineteenth century.
One of them was the Briton Nathan Davis (1812–82), a friend of the novelist
Gustave Flaubert (1821–80), author ofSalammboˆ(1862), a story of the siege
of Carthage in 240–237bce, in which the town is described as sensual,
luxurious, fascinating, and mysterious, the stereotype for the Oriental world
(Said 1978). The web of relationships that formed the basis of imperial
ideology is hinted at in the friendship between Davis and Flaubert: ideas,
ideologies, and identities were transmitted across space and time, creating a
cultural traYc and forming a mesh of networks.
The main impetus behind archaeological practice changed once North
Africa, starting with Algeria, came under the grip of European imperialism.
Attention then moved from the search for the origins of Western civilization
to a study of the beneWts of imperialism during the Roman Empire in the
territory of the new French colony. The gains to be obtained from analysing
the classical period were considered to go beyond the increase in pure
intellectual knowledge and the acquisition of objects for museums in the
homeland. The task of archaeologists was now to bring to prominence one of
the layers of the historical palimpsest, that of the Roman Empire, to help to
build up a teleological narrative of civilization and settlement. Thus, imme-
diately after the onset of France’s involvement in North Africa, Marshal
Nicolas Soult (1769–1851), the minister of war, wrote to the permanent
secretary of the Acade ́mie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (Academy of
Inscriptions and Fine Arts), proposing that the academics engage in ‘a work
that will interest both science and state’. This work was to establish ‘a good
geography of Mauritania under ancient civilization and a history of Roman
colonization in this area, of the institutions they created and the relationships
they established with the natives’ (in Fre ́maux 1984: 32). Encouraged by the
academy, a commission would be formed in 1833 (Dondin-Payre 1994a:
21 V), and its work resulted in several reports, the earliest ones produced in
1833 and 1837. The research undertaken by the commission would provide
information about the geography and ethnography of the territory as well as
about abandoned areas exploited in the past that may have potential for
Russian Empire and French North Africa 265