CLASSICAL ARCHEOLOGY 233 



he might find, leaving the duplicates for the Turkish government ; 

 but in 1872 he reports that the Turks were disposed to grant no more 

 firmans for excavations ; they would do this work themselves. The 

 Germans, however, were allowed to excavate on the site of Pergamon, 

 beginning in 1878, on condition of giving to the Turkish govern- 

 ment one third of the objects discovered, which third they later were 

 allowed to purchase. The Americans were allowed to excavate the 

 site of Assos (1879-1881), giving to the Turks one half of the objects 

 found ; and the Austrians were allowed to remove the sculptures 

 from the Heroon of Gjolbashi, in Eycia (1 881-1883); but these 

 seem to have been the last firmans for excavation in Asia Minor 

 granted by the Turkish government that include the right of ex- 

 porting the objects found, or any considerable number of them. 

 Excavations in the interior of Asia seem to be on a slightly different 

 footing. 



One of the first acts of the newly established Kingdom of Greece 

 in 1834 was to forbid the exportation of antiquities. The Greeks 

 had been humiliated and exasperated by the removal of the ' ' Elgin 

 marbles," which was followed soon by the abstraction of the sculpt- 

 ures from iEgina and Bassse, and their government saw clearly that 

 it would be mischievous to allow to pass freely from their country 

 the memorials of their country's nobler past, and that not only pro- 

 fessional scholars, but also other visitors, might be drawn to Greece 

 for the sake of seeing its antiquities. The law was far in advance 

 of public sentiment, however, and its influence has not been alto- 

 gether beneficial. Men of learning and high position, professors in 

 the University of Athens, not only connived at such smuggling, but 

 were believed themselves to be dealers in antiquities to be delivered 

 to the purchaser outside of Greece. I have myself known a man of 

 distinction to amuse himself with outwitting the Greek custom house 

 officials and conveying antiquities out of the country. Discoveries 

 of antiquities, instead of being announced at once, were generally 

 concealed, that the finds might be the more easily carried or sent 

 from Greece. Thus the circumstances of the discovery, often of 

 greater scientific interest than the object in itself, were concealed or 

 passed unnoticed. Not infrequently also objects too large to trans- 

 port easily in secret, such as statues or stelae, were broken, and the 

 large number of heads of terra cotta figurines without bodies offered 

 for sale has been explained by the disposition of the finder to save 

 only what he could most easily keep for himself. The mass of an- 

 tiquities, large objects as well as small, which have reached the 

 16 



