THE ETHICS OF ARCHAEOLOGY
[Sidenote: Individual rights.]
At first sight, ethics might not seem to have more to do with
archaeology than with chemistry or astronomy. Yet even in those
subjects an entire monopoly of some useful material, or the destruction
of the only records of irreplaceable observations, would bring in
serious questions of individual right. It is notorious what a large
element of conduct is involved in biology, where species are being
destroyed every year, where the rabbit and the thistle have been
wantonly made the curse of a continent, and where a mixture is taking
place which will efface the results of ages of segregation. In
archaeology there is perhaps a greater range of ethical questions,
of the individual _versus_ the community, than in any other science.
And the results of action are the more serious as the material is
very limited, and perhaps no other chance of observation may ever
occur. In most sciences the opportunity of experiment and observation
is unlimited. If an alloy is spoiled it can be remade at once, if a
star is not examined to-night it may be next night, if a plant is not
grown this year it may be next year. But Theodoric’s gold armour
once melted, we shall never know what it was like; the heads of the
Parthenon statues once burnt to lime, are gone for ever; or the Turin
papyrus once broken up, we can hardly hope ever to recover all the
history it contained.
[Sidenote: Destruction.]
The destruction that has gone on, and is now going on continuously,
seems as if it could leave scarcely anything for the information of
future ages. Every year sees wiped out the remains which have lasted
for thousands of years past. Now, in our own day, the antiquities of
South Africa and of Central and South America have been destroyed as
rapidly as they can be found. Elsewhere, engineers of every nation
use up buildings as quarries or wreck them for the sake of temporary
profit, or for more legitimate purposes as in the submersion of
Philae and Nubia. Speculators, native and European, tear to pieces
every tomb they can find in the East, and sell the few showy proceeds
that have thus lost their meaning and their history. Governments set
commissioners to look after things, who leave the antiquities to
be plundered while they are living in useless ease. And the casual
discoveries that are made perish in a ghastly manner. The Saxon
regalia of Harold, the treasures of Thomas à Becket’s shrine, the
burial of Alfred, the burial of Theodoric, and the summer palace
of Pekin, have within modern memory all gone the same way as the
wonders that perished in the French sack of Rome or the Greek sack
of Persia. However we may deplore this, our present consideration is
destruction by archaeologists, and what their responsibilities are in
difficult situations. In all ages there has been destruction for gold
and valuables, and in the Renascence a ruthless seizure of marbles
and stone work. To that succeeded destruction for the sake of art,
excavations in which everything was wrecked for the chance of finding
a beautiful statue. Then in the last generation or two, inscriptions
became valued, and temple sites in Greece and in Egypt, and palaces in
Babylonia, have been turned over, and nothing saved except a stone or a
tablet which was inscribed. At last a few people are beginning to see
that history is far wider than any one of these former aims, and that,
if ever we are to understand the past, every fragment from it must be
studied and made to tell all it can.
But still there continues the plundering of sites in the interest
of show museums, where display is thought of before knowledge, as
is unhappily the case in many national collections. To secure an
attractive specimen, a tomb will be wrecked, a wall destroyed, a temple
dragged to pieces and its history lost, a cemetery cleared out with no
record of its burials. And when carefully authenticated and recorded
specimens reach museums, their fate is not yet a safe one, especially
in local museums. Stones will be built into walls, and ruined by the
damp bringing salt out; objects are left to drop to pieces from lack of
chemical knowledge, or from the official dread of the responsibility
of doing right instead of allowing wrong. Information is deliberately
destroyed; labels are thrown away or heaped together out of the way
in a glass case where the objects are artistically displayed, with no
more history than if they had come from a dealer. Groups of things,
whose whole value consists in their collocation as they were found, are
scattered up and down a museum as if they had no meaning. Or priceless
antiquities will be left out for years of exposure to weather, as
certain sculptures were in London, until at last they received worthy
safeguarding in defiance of the Treasury. Unhappily far too many of
those who are responsible for keeping the things which have at last
reached a haven, need educating in the elements of their profession.
[Sidenote: Restoration.]
This leads to another difficult question, that of restoration. The
horrible destruction which has gone on under that term is now somewhat
recognised, after much, or most, of the original buildings of our
ancestors have disappeared beneath scraping and recutting, so that
we only possess a copy of what has been. And in museums till within
the last few years, statues were so elaborately built up out of what
was--or was not--to be had, that it is often a difficult preliminary
study to set aside the shams. In the Louvre there is the honesty of
stating how much has been added to the original; and the list is
sometimes so long that it is hard to make out what gave the first
idea to the restorer for building up his work. Yet in many cases some
mere supports are needful, and the best museums now make such helps
as distinct as possible from the original. The only full solution of
the matter is the great extension of the use of casts; and the ideal
museum of sculpture would have the originals untouched on one side of a
gallery, and the full restoration of casts of the same things on the
other side.
[Sidenote: Sacrifices.]
When we stand face to face with a problem like that, of the Forum at
Rome there rise a multitude of questions which have intricate and
far-reaching solutions. The removal of the latest of the pavements of
the Forum has been bitterly resented. The Sacred Way is gone, and what
is there for sentiment to dwell on! Yet who would reasonably prefer the
Lower Empire to the Twelve Caesars? And then is not the Republic still
more interesting and less known? And then the Kings hold a prerogative
of glamour to every schoolboy; and what was Rome before the Kings?
We see the inevitable result of such a crowd of interests, in the
honeycomb of pits and planks and tunnels and iron girders which now
bewilder the visitor, where formerly he walked down the Sacred Way and
blessed his soul in romantic peace.
Now this elaborate treatment is most desirable, but is scarcely
attainable unless there is a strong public interest, and a government
willing to carry out proper conservation. Let us turn to a different
set of conditions, as at the temple of Osiris at Abydos. There were
more than a dozen different levels of building; all the lower ones
only of mud brick; the whole of the lower levels under the high Nile,
and certain to be a mud swamp so soon as the Nile rose next summer. To
treat such a place like the Forum would have involved enormous iron
substructure layer under layer, and a wide drying area for hundreds
of yards around, at a cost of certainly five figures. No one would be
likely to give a hundredth of the cost to attain that end. If any
part were left without clearing to the bottom, the next high Nile
would make entire pudding of it. And so the permanent preservation of
such a site was impossible. All that could be done whenever it was
begun, was to dig it in as dry a season as possible, when the water
was at its lowest; to clear it entirely to water level; and to make
plans, levelling, and records, of every wall and every detail, removing
everything that stood in the way of going lower. Henceforward that
temple site, instead of existing in unseen layers of solid earth,
exists only on paper.
[Sidenote: Responsibility.]
Now here is a great responsibility. Whatever is not done in such an
excavation can never be done. The site is gone for ever; and who knows
what further interests and new points of research may be thought of
in future, which ought to have received attention. Are we justified
morally in thus destroying a temple site, a cemetery, a town, while we
may feel certain that others would see more in it in future? If a site
would continue untouched, and always equally open to research, it would
be wrong to exhaust such places. But what are the conditions? In Egypt
sites are continually passing under cultivation, and once cultivated
no one would ever know more about them. They are being continually dug
away for earth to spread on the fields, and all that lies in them is
scattered and lost. The stonework is continually the prey of engineers
and lime-burners. The Nile is always rising, so that every few
centuries makes ground inaccessible that was previously out of water.
And the probable movement of invention and appliances will most likely
bring under cultivation in future most of the cemetery sites which are
now bare desert. In the last few years most of the cemetery and temple
sites of Nubia have been blotted out by the new lake for irrigation.
Further, on any site of cemetery, temple, or town which is known to
contain anything, the native will dig by night if he cannot do so by
day, and will leave nothing but a wreck behind. It is sadly unlikely
that there will be anything left to excavate in Egypt a century
hence; all the known sites will be exhausted in twenty years more at
the present rate. A thousand years hence--a trifle in the history of
Egypt--people will look back on these present generations as the golden
days when discoveries came thickly year by year, and when there was
always something to be found. And therefore the best thing that can be
done under all these conditions is to work with the fullest care and
detail in recording, to publish everything fully, and to then trust the
history of Egypt to a few hundred copies of books instead of to solid
walls and hidden cemeteries. The destruction which is needful to attain
knowledge is justified if the fullest knowledge is obtained by it, and
if that is so safely recorded that it will not again be lost. The only
test of right is the procuring the greatest amount of knowledge now and
in future.
[Sidenote: Rights of the future.]
Here we are landed in a question on which very different positions
are taken. What are the rights of the future? Why should we limit our
action, or our immediate benefit or interest, for the sake of the
future? If ever this question comes into practical dealings, it does
so in historical work. Any one who is above the immediate consideration
of food and starvation, does consider the future. Our public buildings
are preserved for the use of coming generations; our libraries and
museums are largely for the benefit of those yet unborn. Was not the
future of England the great charge, the inspiring aim of Alfred, of
Edward I, of William III? Do we not even now spend ungrudgingly for the
great future of our colonies? In every direction we unquestioningly
assume that the future has its rights; that distant generations of our
own flesh and blood are far more to us than present millions of other
races; that the knowledge, the possessions, the aims, that we have
inherited are but a trust to be passed on to the nation yet to be.
And to those who live not only in the present but also in past ages by
insight and association, the transitory stewardship of things becomes
the only view possible. In this generation I possess a gem, a scarab,
a carving: it is almost indestructible, it may be lost for a time but
will reappear again a thousand, five thousand, twenty thousand years
hence in some one else’s hands, and be again a delight and a revelation
of past thought, as it is to-day. We have no right to destroy or
suppress what happens just for the present to be in our power. To do so
is to take the position of a Vandal in the sack of Rome.
[Sidenote: Rights of the past.]
The past also has its rights, though statues may be misappropriated
and churches be “restored.” A work that has cost days, weeks, or
years of toil has a right to existence. To murder a man a week before
his time we call a crime; what are we to call the murder of years
of his labour? Or, without touching life, what difference is there
between putting a man in prison for a year so that he cannot work, and
destroying a year’s work when it is done? If anything, the balance is
in favour of preventing rather than destroying his work. Every monument
we see has been lovingly intended, carefully carved, piously erected,
in hopes that it would last. And who are we to defeat all that thought
and labour? Every tablet, every little scarab, is a portion of life
solidified;--so much will, so much labour, so much living reality. When
we look closely into the work we seem almost to watch the hand that did
it; this stone is a day, a week, of the life of some living man. I know
his mind, his feeling, by what he has thought and done on this stone.
I live with him in looking into his work, and admiring, and valuing
it. Shall I then turn on him like a wild beast and kill so much of his
life? Surely if we would draw back from wiping out a few years of the
life of some man with whom we have no sympathies, far more should we
shrink from even hurting the beautiful and cherished result of the life
of a man whose mind we admire and honour in his work. I give my life
to do so much work in it, and if I were to know that every night the
work of the day would be annihilated, I had rather be relieved of the
trouble of living. In all worth, in all realness, the life of past men
preserved to us has rights as veritably as the life of present men.
The work of the archaeologist is to save lives; to go to some senseless
mound of earth, some hidden cemetery, and thence bring into the
comradeship of man some portions of the lives of this sculptor, of
that artist, of the other scribe; to make their labour familiar to us
as a friend; to resuscitate them again, and make them to live in the
thoughts, the imaginations, the longing, of living men and women; to
place so much of their living personality current side by side with our
own labours and our own thoughts. And has not the past its rights, as
well as the present and the future?
What care then, what conscience, must be put into the work of
preserving as much as possible of the past lives which those about
us are wishing to know and to share in. The mummy of Rameses or of
Thothmes, the portrait of the builder of the great pyramid (Fig.
65), or of the Pharaoh of the Exodus (Fig. 66) is a permanent mental
possession of all cultivated mankind, as long as our literature shall
last. The knowledge of the growth of the great civilisation of Egypt,
from the days of men clad in goat-skins to the height of its power, has
all been reconstructed in the past ten years, and will be part of the
common stock of our knowledge of man, so long as civilisation continues.
[Illustration: Fig. 65. The Builder of the Great Pyramid.]
[Illustration: Fig. 66. The Pharaoh of the Exodus.]
[Sidenote: Duties.]
With the responsibilities before us of saving and caring for this past
life of mankind, what must be our ethical view of the rights and duties
of an archaeologist? Conservation must be his first duty, and where
needful even destruction of the less important in order to conserve
the more important. To uncover a monument, and leave it to perish
by exposure or by plundering, to destroy thus what has lasted for
thousands of years and might last for thousands to come, is a crime.
Yet it is the incessant failing of the thoughtless amateur, who
knows nothing of the business; and far too often also the inexcusable
malpractice of those who know better. To wantonly destroy a monument
by cutting pieces out, whether to put them in a museum or to hide
them in a pile of curiosities, is unjustifiable if the whole can be
preserved entire. In the case of only fragments remaining, a selection
often must be chosen; yet even then copies of the whole of the material
should be made and published all together. To unearth whole tombs or
chambers full of objects, whether in an Egyptian cemetery or a Roman
camp, and neglect to record and publish the facts of the position or
groups of the objects, should debar the inefficient explorer from ever
touching such places again. To remove things without ascertaining all
that is possible about their age, meaning, and connections, is as
inexcusable as it is easy. To undertake excavating, and so take the
responsibilities for preserving a multitude of delicate and valuable
things, unless one is prepared to deal with them efficiently, both
mechanically and chemically, is like undertaking a surgical operation
in ignorance of anatomy. To turn over a site without making any plans,
or recording the positions and relations of things, may be plundering,
but it is not archaeology. To remove and preserve only the pretty and
interesting pieces, and leave the rest behind unnoticed, and separated
from what gave them a value and a meaning, proves the spirit of a
dealer and not that of a scholar. To leave a site merely plundered,
without any attempt to work out its history, to see the meaning of the
remains found, or to publish what may serve future students of the
place or the subject, is to throw away the opportunities which have
been snatched from those who might hate used them property.
To suppose that excavating--one of the affairs which needs the widest
knowledge--can be taken up by persons who are ignorant of most or all
of the technical requirements, is a fatuity which has led, and still
leads, to the most miserable catastrophes. Far better let things lie
a few centuries longer under the ground, if they can be let alone,
than repeat the vandalisms of past ages without the excuse of being a
barbarian.
[Sidenote: Future of Museums.]
We must always have regard to what may be the condition of sites and
of knowledge five hundred or five thousand years hence. For if you
will deal with thousands of years you must take thousands of years
into account. If a site is certain to be destroyed by natural causes,
or the cupidity of man, then an imperfect examination and a defective
record of it is better than none. But to ensure the fullest knowledge,
and the most complete preservation of things, in the long run, should
be the real aim. To raid the whole of past ages, and put all that we
think effective into museums, is only to ensure that such things will
perish in course of time. A museum is only a temporary place. There is
not one storehouse in the world that has lasted a couple of thousand
years. Only two or three bronze statues have come down to us from
classical times preserved by each generation. A few pieces of gold work
have been treasured for a little over a thousand years, but only in
North Italy. And the whole of our present active clearance of things,
that have hitherto lasted safe underground for six thousand years or
more, practically ensures that they shall not last one thousand longer.
The gold work will be the first thing to disappear, as it is even now
disappearing every few years from museums into the melting-pot. And it
is a serious question whether we are morally justified in thus ensuring
its destruction by exposure. As a counsel of perfection I should like
to see twenty electrotypes made of every bit of ancient gold and
silver work, and these dispersed over all countries. It might then be
considered whether it would not be a noble act to bury the whole of the
gold where it would cost a national undertaking to recover it, say in a
hundred fathoms of water, and so preserve it for future ages, when only
a few wrecks of the electrotypes would have survived. The future of the
rest of museum treasures cannot so certainly be anticipated. Bronze is
sure to disappear in warfare sooner or later, especially as metals grow
scarcer owing to exhaustion of mines. Ivories will probably vanish,
like most fragile things, by mechanical damage. Pottery and vases will
go the same way as the museum of Kertch, which was bashed to pieces
by a disappointed European soldiery. Stone carving has a promise of
longer life, especially if it is reused in buildings, and so saved from
exposure and wear; for instance, whenever the Baptistry of Pisa may
fall to pieces, a mine of Latin inscriptions will come to light. But,
broadly speaking, there is no likelihood that the majority of things
now in museums will yet be preserved anything like as long as they
have already lasted. The hordes of anarchy and of Asia have never left
Europe alone for more than a few centuries.
[Sidenote: Publications.]
It is then to the written record, and the published illustrations,
that the future will have mainly to look. Our books will probably not
last more than a few hundred years; and it will be reprints of the
most valued, and summaries of the others that will be the sources of
knowledge in the future thousands. The wide spread of publications in
different countries, which are never likely to all undergo eclipses
simultaneously, is the best guarantee for the permanence of knowledge.
But by the time the First Dynasty has doubled its age, we cannot
expect, that the greater part of our record of it will still be
known. Certainly the inefficient and inconclusive books will vanish
first; and the more compact and generally used a work is, the longer
are its chances of life. We must always remember therefore that in
archaeological work we are removing what would be as solid proof
to future ages as it is now to us; and we are trusting all future
knowledge of the facts to inflammable paper, and the goodwill of
successive generations, many of whom may have very different interests.
Had any past age of civilisation dug up and removed every trace of the
earlier times, and committed all the results to their literature, we
should not be able to learn anything but some brief summary, nor glean
but a few trifling fragments, which would have lost their meaning and
connection.
[Sidenote: State Claims.]
And here we come against another large ethical question of the rights
of the individual against the community, in the claim made by the state
to interfere with property in antiquities, in ways in which it does
not interfere with any other property. From past ages the English law
has claimed for the Crown all treasure accidentally discovered. Such a
law is the best way to ensure that no such discoveries are made known,
and to drive the finder to put all such treasures in the melting pot.
The actual gain to the Crown is ignorably trivial, certainly not an
average of a thousand pounds a year; yet, in order to grab this trifle,
the law drove all such treasures to destruction. At last an improvement
was made by the Crown only demanding specimens needed for the national
collection, and paying intrinsic value for them. Even some old
candlesticks, the proceeds of an XVIIIth century burglary, were claimed
when accidentally found.
And when the state does not claim, the landlord or tenant makes a
claim, which is just as bad, as such claims lead workmen always to
conceal and sell surreptitiously the antiquities which are continually
found in all working in old towns. The only law which could act for
the full preservation of antiquities would be the grant of the entire
rights to the finder if he proclaims his find, but no rights in what
he does not proclaim. The actual average gains of an average landlord
_per annum_ by discoveries of antiquities are at present incalculably
small, probably not a farthing in the pound on the rental or anything
near that. Hence there would be no perceptible loss by granting finds
to the finder; and everything would be saved and preserved as it was
found. At least a beginning could be made by landlords and public
bodies offering full intrinsic value for any gold and silver found on
their premises; they could not lose by that, and they might gain large
profits in the archaeological value of things. To suppose that (without
great precautions) they can get the whole value of finds by simply
claiming them, is fatuous.
This same fatuous idea pervades many governments. It is thought that
by simply making a law, digging can be prevented, or antiquities can
be kept in a country. Such laws merely enforce an extensive illicit
system, through which valuable and important things can readily be
removed in defiance of law, whenever they are found. There is not a
country from which any antiquity could not be removed by sufficient
care in smuggling. Every national museum has its underground feeders,
knows how to defeat the laws of other countries, and incessantly grows
in spite of laws. To seize property without paying its real value
is seldom a profitable proceeding in the long run, and that is what
every government tries to do with antiquities. The Italian government
has confiscated a large part of the values of private collections, by
forbidding the exportation of any important picture or statue. And yet
such things can and do leave Italy. The Greek government, as well as
the Turkish, forbid the exportation of any and every kind of antiquity;
yet fine things from both lands continually come over to the West.
[Sidenote: State Rights.]
These confiscatory laws, these claims on private property on behalf
of the state, are more or less illogical nibblings on a wide claim
which no state has ventured yet to formulate,--namely, that all
objects of past generations are public property. This means, if
fully carried out, that no person can own any object of antiquity as
private property. No private collections would be possible in such a
condition, all would belong to the state. Of course there is a huge
amount of material which is duplicate, and not needed in a national
collection; but the state claims would be maintained if all collections
must be placed in a public building, (such as a local museum) where
they could be seen. The energy of collectors, the transfer of specimens
from one to another, would not be stopped, only the objects would be
compulsorily visible in a public place. And everything wanted for a
national collection would be transferred. This condition of things is
slowly being reached by the state buying important objects continually,
when they are sold on changing hands. But the logical outcome of the
present laws and present tendency would be this nationalisation of all
antiquities. Whether such a result would be satisfactory at all points
may be doubted; but it is clearly a position to which all changes at
present tend. If fully and honourably carried out by the state paying
the finder full value for all it took, and giving up confiscation of
all sorts, the result would probably be the best that could happen for
archaeology.
One great result of defining the position thus, would be to prevent any
ancient buildings being destroyed or altered without state consent. If
every structure, say, over five hundred years old, needed three months’
notice to an inspector before it could be pulled down or dealt with,
there would be a great check on the present changes. Every cathedral
and church, every castle and manor-house, would need special licence
for changes in all parts older than the prescribed limit. A notice of
one week might be required for the destruction of structures as yet not
known, which were unearthed in course of digging. Such a protection of
monuments would not affect vested interests or property values nearly
as much as an ordinary railway bill that passes through Parliament
without a protest; and it seems not too much to hope that such a
protection of all monuments of historic interest might be carried out.
The legal position might take the form of pronouncing all ancient
buildings, stone circles, and earthworks the ultimate property of the
Crown, with the existing owners having full powers as trustees for the
Crown to preserve, use, and enjoy such property, and to sell or devise
such trusteeship in every way as if the property was not beyond the age
limit of private property. Only the right of destruction and alteration
would be reserved.
A state register of works of art is desired by Professor Ernest
Gardner, who proposes that (1) the ownership of works of ancient art
and sculptures and pictures by great masters should be entered on a
register in charge of a public registrar; (2) the registrar should have
a right to see to the safety of such objects; (3) any fairly qualified
scholar may apply to be entered on a register of students kept by the
registrar; (4) owners of registered works must fix times for exhibition
to students or to the public, or else a registered student must be
allowed to see any work within a reasonable period; (5) the owner, if
absent, must appoint some one to preserve and exhibit such works; (6)
in case of sale of a work to a foreign country, the government shall
have the option of retaining it at the price fixed for the sale.
[Sidenote: Excavating Laws.]
The attitude of foreign governments regarding scientific excavating has
not been happy. Too often the prohibitions have been used not in the
interests of archaeology, but for promoting plundering. Because it is
easy to drop on an open excavation, all regular excavations have been
fenced with severe difficulties and costs; while in Greece and Turkey
none of the proceeds have been allowed to the finder. On the other
hand, it is difficult to always drop on a surreptitious native, and the
sympathy of the courts--in Egypt at least--is openly on the side of
the plundering native, who is seldom punished for anything. Hence the
curious situation is that the whole values of the property have been
solely created by the labours and study of the archaeologist; yet he is
almost debarred from using the material which an ignorant peasant may
dig and destroy as he pleases.
The form of law which is wanted is (1) the punishment of all
destruction or removal of antiquities, by a special court, independent
of local sympathies or favouring of the plunderer; (2) the rigid
requirement of technical knowledge and ability in those who excavate,
with the condition that everything is published promptly, and that
nothing found can be sold or pass except into a public museum; (3)
the right of the government of each country to such objects as are
necessary to the national collection, on reimbursing whatever may have
been given as bakhshish to the finder, and some proportion of the costs
according to the case.