Archaeological excavations 19th century

Originally posted by Styrbiorn One of the most important things to consider is that 200 years ago nobody cared about old pots and other artefacts (excepting those made of gold, most of which had been long since looted anyway), and people were more than happy to get paid for those useless old things. At that time the western archaeologists were considered excentric; it's only relatively recently people have been starting to scream about "theft" and "cultural genocides".

What happened was that in particular the Ottoman and Egyptian governments began caring as these "Gentleman adventurers" started turning up in ever increasing numbers.

Originally you dealt with the local authorities, province governors etc., to get admission to excavate and remove stuff. Local authorities DID take an interest, not least because the might make a nice cash profit/bribe.
But the of course these Westerners weren't particularly fussy about the legitimacy of things regardless and tended to remove whatever they liked they could find.
What there wasn't, which was the big problem, was anything like national antiquarian policies, with administrative functionaries to regulate things in the Middle East.

But they eventually were instituted. In the case of Egypt what happened was that there was this private expedition from Bordeaux led by a self-styled archaeologist named Auguste Mariette, who around 1850 started excavating the grave field at Saqqara in Egypt.
He didn't exactly have his papers in order, found a bunch of stuff and brought them out of Egypt and back to France. In his case however the Khedival government of Egypt had a brain-wave, and since Mariette had proved to them that they would have to protect the antiquities of Egypt, they decided to "set a thief to catch a thief", and offered Mariette the job of organising and heading The Egyptian Antiquities Service. These days Zahi Hawass has the job Mariette originally got.

And Mariette was a burly 6'3" red-headed giant who could handle himself in a scrap, which was actually necessary in the early days of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. He at one point attacked and boarded the steamer of a local governor who was trying to spirit antiquities out of Egypt without an export licence.

Mariette was succeeded by his assistant Gaston Maspero, and the French dominated the organisation through both the monarchies and British colonial period to the extent that the director was always a Frenchman. Right up to the Egyptian nationalist revolution in the 1950's, from since the directors have always been recruited among Egyptians.

So since the mid 1850's anyone wanting to dig in Egypt and bring out objects would have to make a deal with the Antiquities Service. Standard deals included persmission to dig on the condition that objects found would typically be split 50/50. The wrangling over the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin to this day is over the allegation that the German archaeologists in Amarna hid it among a lot of rubbish before presenting the finds to the Antiquities Service people, who missed it when divvying things up.

Afaik the Ottomans got a similar arrangement going somewhat later than Egypt. The attitude of Western powers also mattered quite a bit. The German Empire in particular was very conscientious about getting exactly regulatied digging concessions and dealing what they considered fairly with Ottomans, Egyptians etc.
That was of course done partly to spite the British and French, who having politically controlled colonies of their own as a matter of course assumed responsibility and control of the archaeological matters there and could eventually to pretty much as they liked in directly controlled areas of India, Indochina, the Middle East and Africa.