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classes, and for filling the museums of western Europe.
Without the official permission of the Turkish government Elgin began to assemble what is now know as “the Elgin marbles,” a collection of pedimental sculptures from the Parthenon and from the Athenian temple of Nike Aperos and various antiquities from mainland Greece and Asia Minor. Part of this collection was sent to England and shipwrecked in transit, taking three years and great expense to salvage. Other pieces continued to be smuggled out of Greece from 1803, when Elgin left his position in Constantinople, until at least 1812, when it is recorded that eighty cases of antiquities arrived in England.
Elgin displayed his collection initially in his London residence and later at Burlington House, where its acclaim by artists and scholars tended to overcome any qualms about its provenance. The English nation was gripped with a fervor for Greek art, which was soon to be replaced by a similar one for everything Egyptian, even though this time the French got there first. Initially criticized for the dubious methods of its procurement, the collection was soon deemed to be of such significance that the House of Commons recognized Elgin’s ownership and purchased his marbles, at a greatly undervalued price, for the british museum, where they remain to this day—notwithstanding continued requests by the Greek government that they be repatriated.
Born in Liverpool, England, Emery was apprenticed to a firm of marine engineers when he decided instead to study Egyptology at the Institute of Archaeology in London (1921– 1923). Between 1923 and 1924 he joined the egypt exploration society’s excavations at el amarna. In 1924 he was appointed director of the Liverpool expedition to clear up and restore the New Kingdom tomb of Ramose and the tombs of other nobles in the necropolis at Thebes. It was during this task that Emery was able to visit the tomb of tutankhamun while it was being excavated.
In 1924, once more employed by the Egypt Exploration Society, he participated in the excavation of the Buchis bulls at Armant. In 1928 he was appointed by the Egyptian Antiquities Service to direct the Second Archaeological Survey of nubia. For six years he traveled all over southern Egypt excavating sites. These included the particularly rich site of Ballana near the border with Sudan. Here Emery found the fourth- to sixth-century a.d. royal burial mounds that became a significant part of the collections of the Cairo Museum. From 1935 until 1939 when he enlisted in the army, Emery excavated the 1st to 3rd Dynasty tombs at saqqara for the Egyptian government. He stayed in Egypt for the war, eventually becoming a lieutenant-colonel and director of military intelligence. Excavations at Saqqara resumed in 1945 until 1946, but then halted when he accepted a post as first secretary at the British embassy in Cairo.
In 1951 Emery was elected the Edwards Professor of Egyptology at University College, London, and in 1952 he returned to Saqqara with the Egypt Exploration Society once again, this time to complete the excavation of the tombs of the 1st Dynasty. After the Suez Crisis and in 1956, Emery and the Society began to work in the Sudan, excavating the Middle Kingdom fortress town of Buhen, which dated from 1970 b.c. He advised both the Egyptian and Sudanese Antiquities Services throughout the UNESCO campaign to save the monuments of Nubia and arranged for Buhen to be moved to Khartoum.
In 1964 Emery returned to Saqqara when he excavated the sacred animal necropolis of Memphis and its temple site—a rich hoard of animal mummies, bronze figures, temple furniture, and documents from the sixth to the first centuries b.c. He died in 1971 and is buried in Cairo.
See also
Egypt: Dynastic; Egypt: Predynastic
The Roman town of Colonia Iulia Emona in what is now Ljubljana, the modern capital of slovenia, was founded on the site of a prehistoric settlement and situated on a highly important
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