1837, Otto passed a royal decree protecting Byzantine monuments as Greek archaeologists were happily destroying them in their enthusiasm for the classical antiquities that lay beneath. Greek archaeology, however, was firmly launched on a classicist agenda, and that agenda culminated in 1889 with the completion of the National Museum, an imposing Greek Revival structure designed to display the national heritage in suitable classical grandeur.

../images/Greece1.jpg

The western end of the Acropolis in Athens as seen from the pediment of the Parthenon ca. 1801. The Frankish tower stands in the center. Drawing by Sir William Gell.

(British Museum)

The Foreign Missions

The Greek state and the growth of the Greek Archaeological Service did not, of course, mean an end to foreign participation in archaeology in Greece. As archaeological methods improved during the nineteenth century, teams from Germany, Great Britain, the United States, France, and elsewhere were keen to excavate major classical and prehistoric sites. The difference was that foreign projects were now carefully controlled and they were entirely at the mercy of the Greek government, which often gained considerable prestige and power from the situation.

A good example of the need for control was Heinrich Schliemann’s work at Mycenae in 1874. He brought with him from his excavations at Troy in northwestern Anatolia a reputation for smuggling gold artifacts out of the country without the knowledge of the Ottoman authorities and generally for trying to get round his permit in any way possible. The Greek government had actually given the permit to excavate at Mycenae to the Greek Archaeological Society, but as often happened, it was short of funds and asked Schliemann to excavate on its behalf and at his expense.

The government was decidedly wary of Schliemann but finally agreed to his excavation on condition that he was supervised by Panayiotis Stamatakis, on behalf of both the society and the government, and that all the finds would belong to Greece. The gold masks and jewelry that Schliemann’s excavations uncovered in the sixteenth-century b.c. shaft graves are well known. Less well known are the briefness of Schliemann’s visits to the site, his impatience with the classical and Roman material that interfered with his search for Agamemnon, and the constant difficulties of Stamatakis, who was actually running the excavation but with every obstruction put in his way by Schliemann and his Greek wife, Sophia.

It was clearly easier for the Greek government to deal with respected foreign institutions such as universities and museums. It was also easier for the foreigners to have representatives of their countries permanently in Athens to carry on the often complex negotiations with the government. The first foreign school of