Budge Returns for More

Arriving home, Budge was lauded by the Trustees of the British Museum and the Head of his Department. His star was rising as he had just taken his first trip abroad, ever, and as a result the Museum was in possession of twenty-four crates of antiquities that cost them less than £200. Was it possible to do better than that?

They decided to give Budge more slack and sent him out to Bagdad to inspect a Museum “dig.” He was told to stop briefly along the way in Egypt where it was rumored there had been an important “find” of papyri made in Upper Egypt. Little did he know that this would be the most important trip of his life.

He landed in Alexandria in December, 1887, after a rough voyage and immediately made the rounds, looking up important people in the telegraph office, shipping lines, newspapers, antique collectors and the military. By now he realized the importance of having good connections.

But not everyone was happy with his effort to date, Charles Cookson, the British Consul in Alexandria singled him out as a looter. He bluntly told Budge that if he had any idea of taking home any important new “finds” from Luxor to forget it. He was to “...desist wholly from attempting to buy and export antiquities, which was strictly forbidden by the laws of Egypt.”

Budge of course brushed this aside and went on to acquire a collection on his second trip the likes of which were never equaled again until the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. From his arrival on December 16th, until he left on January 21st, within a space of 26 days he purloined three rare documents, hundreds of antiquities, including the Amarna Tablets and, best of all, a copy of the Book of the Dead called the Papyrus of Ani, a 78ft. long roll of papyrus, which he described as, “...the largest, the most perfect, the best preserved, and the best illuminated of all the papyri which date from the second half of the 18th Dynasty (about B.C.1500 to 1400).”

Today the Egyptian Government has mounted an active campaign to retrieve as many of these antiquities as they can. However, museums and collectors claim it would be folly to return such things to Egypt as they do not yet have the facilities or technical staff to cope; they are not “ready” for the responsibility. Yet one look at what has been put in place in Alexandria shows the absurdity of this notion.

I was invited to visit the document restoration lab at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a spectacular new building in glass and white stone, built on the same ground where the Great Library of Alexandria stood in the time of the Ptolemys, in 332 BC, not long after Alexander the Great founded the city.

Located in the Nile Delta, Alexandria was then surrounded by papyrus swamps from which came the raw material for millions of scrolls used worldwide for thousands of years as a source of paper. It was also a plant worshipped by Pharaoh.

The Ptolemys used papyrus from the swamps to fulfill their goal of housing a collection of every known book. In those days that meant scrolls made from papyrus. They intended that Alexandria would become the intellectual center of the world, and in the process they would make money. They kept hundreds of scribes busy, as the Library sent out lists that led to exchanges and more additions and a thriving business flourished in exporting books.

Today the New Library emulates the original as a place of study, a venue for conferences, a site for art and science initiatives and as a cultural showplace for the city. A modern architectural marvel with open stacks and a stream of visitors, and hundreds of thousands of books, and it still has space on its shelves.

While I was there I made the argument that in addition to restoration they should consider an idea put forward by Hassan Ragab, an old friend of mine who passed away in 2004. He suggested that hundreds of scrolls could be reproduced to stock a small section of the New Library. Scroll books of the ancients could be re-created using rolls of modern papyrus paper now produced in Cairo, and this would provide visitors with a feeling of what the Great Library was like in the old days. The star of the show of course would be a 78ft. replica of the Book of the Dead the most valuable item yet stolen by Budge.

I argued that even if you are not a fan of replicas, the idea of a 78ft. illustrated papyrus scroll must excite people, after all Jack Kerouac’s original manuscript of On the Road (a 127ft. scroll) is presently the star of a successful worldwide exhibition.

What makes a 78ft modern papyrus scroll even more attractive is the fact that it would be intact. Budge, after he stole the original in Luxor, cut the 3,500 year old document into 37 pieces for ease of handling!

Next post, On to Cairo!

© Copyright J. Gaudet, 2009, all rights reserved.

On A Sacred Mission

Budge’s first glimpse of Egypt was from the Suez Canal, he did not come through Alexandria until he had finished his first trip and was on his way out. By then he had made his trip up the Nile to Aswan, and in a little more than two months had seen everything he ever wanted to see. He had discovered that the earlier “Rape of the Nile” by Belzoni, Henry Salt and Drovetti had merely scratched the surface. To the practiced eye there was much more to be gained. In his autobiography he describes the wealth of artifacts lying about in Egypt in the 1880’s all being picked over by amateur collectors and Government antiquities agents, but there was a host of wondrous things remaining.

In order to mine this treasure house in a systematic manner, and with an easy conscience, he wrapped himself in a cloak of righteousness, proclaiming it his sacred duty to rescue the lot, leaving the authorities to fester in their own ignorance. Imagine his indignation then when he finally reached Alexandria on his way back to England in February, 1887, and was confronted by the authorities. The effrontery of them! The enjoyment of his visit to Alexandria was “...marred by the attempts made by the Service of Antiquities to prevent the export of my cases...”

He soon recovered his position and was able to fend them off. He had foreseen such difficulties and he had wisely made friends among top military figures in order to prevent such nonsense. If anyone could protect him and his loot it was General de Montmorency, now in charge of the Egyptian Army in Alexandria, who was himself an avid collector and would take Budge’s side against the British Consul-General in Egypt who demanded in writing the return of all antiquities before Budge left.

Budge prevailed, and one day he and the General stood on the quay and were able to watch as his twenty-four cases left the harbor “...under the care of a friendly officer...” bound for England and the British Museum.

The plan of Alexandria resembles a large open umbrella, the top of which is the curved island of Pharos that once held an imposing lighthouse, the seventh wonder of the world. The sides of the umbrella curve east and west providing a harbor on either side, with a a broad bit of land running down the middle, like an umbrella shaft, a causeway dating from the time of Alexander. This is the principle land connection to the mainland. To the left of the shaft is the commercial harbor, vessels enter here after skirting the breakwater and unload at piers near the railway terminus and the entrance to the Mahmoudya Canal. To the right is the picturesque Corniche and the Great Harbor. I can see this from the balcony of my hotel where I am presented with a breathtaking scene. The calm glittering surface of the sea, Mediterranean blue, is framed by the dead white breakwater and reef that continues out from the Corniche and almost encircles the bay. Below I also see wooden fishing boats and small craft many painted blue and white bobbing in the water. I suddenly see why they are the colors of ancient Greece. Some of the boats even look old enough to have been there when Budge loaded his cases of loot onboard a homeward bound vessel.

Until now the chief attractions of the city have been the museum, the Catacombs, the remains of Temple of the Serapium and the temple library, and Pompei’s Piller (in fact, erected in honor of Diocletian). I tour these sights as did Budge and come away with the impression that, as someone once said, “Alexandria is Alexander’s best monument.” The cosmopolitan backwater of Budge’s day with its population of a quarter of a million Europeans, has expanded to five million and has evolved into a young, vibrant modern city, with a new interest in antiquities driven by the recent underwater finds from the harbor.

What did Budge see when he made his tour of the town and the catacombs as I did. First he did his tour under the guidance of an expert, and he included “...several good collections of Alexandrian antiquities in the hands of private collectors.” In other words, he put his time to good use, and in this way he “...learned to know the general characteristics of late Ptolemaic and Roman sculpture, and sepulchral buildings, and the main features of funerary archaeology of the late period.”

Never wasting a minute, Budge came to learn more about what to look for in the way of antiques in Egypt so that when he returned on his next trip he would be primed to clean out the place.


© Copyright J. Gaudet, 2009, all rights reserved.