Academic jealousy, egos and archaeological photos

On Thursday night Nadel gave a talk and met with her fans at the famous Pera Palace Hotel. Founded in 1892, this doyenne of İstanbul hotels resonates with the elegance of a bygone era. Of course only one room at the hotel was appropriate for her to stay in -- number 411. Agatha Christie stayed in the hotel on more than one occasion, but room 411 is believed to be where she wrote her famous thriller “Murder on the Orient Express.”

I couldn’t help but let my imagination roam to conceive what type of conversation would pass between Nadel and the ghost of Christie, if she were to visit the room that night. Perhaps they would discuss the differences between the İstanbul of the 1930s and today. Perhaps they would compare and contrast Hercule Poirot and İkmen. Perhaps they would plan another storyline together.

But, I guess, if Christie did visit Tepebaşı on Thursday night, she would also be tempted to waft across the road to see an amazing exhibition currently at the Pera Museum. The second husband of the most famous murder writer in the world was a leading archeologist, specializing in the country we now call Iraq, and Christie would often accompany him on his travels to Mesopotamia. The old joke that an archeologist is the best kind of husband to have, because the older you get the more he is interested in you, is often credited to Christie.

It is impossible to visit the “Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans” Exhibition at the Pera Museum without thinking of the archeological scenes from an Agatha Christie film. For here, on loan from various universities and also the İstanbul Archeological Museum, is a fascinating history of the start of modern archeology in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.

Ostensibly, the exhibition tells the story of three men: American photographer and archeologist John Henry Haynes, Turkish painter and archeologist Osman Hamdi Bey and German/American archeologist Hermann Voltrath Hilprecht. It also tells the story of the development of photography in archeological work, of how Turkey took control of its own antiquities and stopped foreign expeditions from transporting all finds abroad, and finally the story of academic jealousy and plagiarism.

To coincide with the exhibition, its curator, Robert G. Ousterhout from the University of Pennsylvania, has published a book re-introducing the work of John Henry Haynes to the world. From this book we get a deeper insight into the skill of the photographer, the stories behind some of the most striking images displayed in the exhibition, and even catch the whiff of intrigue that could have had as deadly consequences as an Agatha Christie plot.

“John Henry Haynes -- a Photographer and Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire 1881-1900” is published by Cornucopia. As readers of this most glossy magazine about Turkish life, arts and culture would expect, the book is beautifully produced. Containing page after page of reproductions of Haynes’ work, it comes very close to being an excellent catalogue to the exhibition.

Flicking through the first few pictures gives the Turkey-lover a flavor of the many sites that Haynes visited and photographed. We see ruins at Aslantaş in southeast Anatolia, a colonnade at Eflatunpınar near Beyşehir, the tall columns at Assos, ruined churches at Binbirkilise and fairy chimneys in Cappadocia.

Ousterhout claims that “every picture tells a story, sometimes more than one,” and he proceeds as a historian to open up the subject to us with fascinating insights into not just the facts as shown in the pictures, but the story behind the camera as well as in front of it.

Haynes’ images are evocative of a bygone era. They are documentary in that they record the work of archeologists a little over a century ago. They are melancholic, in sepia with few people, recording long-lost civilizations. But above all they are visual poetry. Haynes chose an angle to best capture his subject. He would place a villager, or an archeologist, in the picture for emphasis. He used humor: In one famous image he situated the heads from three statues as if they were having a conversation with each other. In Assos he placed clay figures sitting on the edge of a book -- with one masterstroke giving a sense of size and proportion.

While few of us, today, could name a modern archeologist, at the end of the 19th century a major find could make the discoverer into a household name. So the stakes were high, both for academic prestige and for fame and fortune. Ousterhout opens the window onto a world that we may have thought was gentile and ponderous, but in actual fact was ruthless.

Hamdi comes out of the story in a reasonable light. Taking control of what had previously been a free-for-all for Europeans to grab what they could from archeological sites in the Ottoman Empire, he crafted a law that meant expeditions had to have permits, and finds would be shared between the foreigners and his newly established Archeological Museum in İstanbul. As his signature was essential for any work to proceed, he became a very important figure.

Less attractive a character is Hilprecht. Receiving a permit from Hamdi, the Americans from Pennsylvania University began to dig at Nippur, a Sumerian site in the swamps of southern Iraq. The hard, tedious work of the dig was pretty much totally supervised by Haynes -- who was described by his colleagues as “faithful, honest, loyal, self-sacrificing, knows how to manage the Turks and caravans, and how to photograph.”

Hilprecht preferred to stay in Constantinople, leaving Haynes to do all the work. When he did visit the site, infrequently, he complained bitterly about everything, mostly his colleagues. But then, after years of hard, patient digging, the breakthrough came. The team found a horde of tablets which have taught us nearly all we know about Sumerian writing. They thought it was a library, although it actually was a scribes’ training school.

Sensing an imminent public relations triumph, Hilprecht swept in, returning after an 11-year absence to take charge for just 10 weeks, and to take all the credit. He returned home famous. The papers were full of stories of his heroism in leading a dangerous expedition, and the University of Pennsylvania gave him a medal. Haynes, on the other hand, died “broken in body and spirit.”

Who would have thought that the old world of archeology could produce a tale of passion and spite of such proportions? I guess Christie gained plenty of raw material for her greatest mysteries just by observing the ambition and guile of the foreigners at an archeological site.

Hilprecht’s egomania and academic treachery was exposed by history, after he clashed with another colleague. The truth about Nippur came out, and he resigned, accused of negligence. An ending to a story that would be cheered by anyone who has had a boss or a senior colleague pass off their work as their own.

Finally, in the shape of Ousterhout’s lavishly illustrated biography, Haynes’ tale is there for all the world to know the truth about a patient, observant man, who brought the past to life.

“John Henry Haynes, a Photographer and Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire,” by Robert G. Ousterhout, published by Cornucopia Books (2011) 20 pounds in paperback ISBN: 978-60562490-8