IOR/L/PS/10/845

This volume comprises: correspondence; India Office Political and Secret Department Minutes and Draft Papers; covering letters of the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the Under-Secretary of State for India (with enclosures); and reports.

The file relates to British involvement in attempts to recover, either for the ‘temporary’ custody of the British Museum or for return to Mesopotamia [Iraq], of Mesopotamian (Babylonian and Assyrian) antiquities that were situated at Lisbon since being disembarked from the German ship Cheruskia which had been interned by the Portuguese authorities during the War [First World War]. The file notably covers and includes:

• The ‘mission’ (non-official but supported by the British Government), of Dr A S [Abraham Shalom] Yahuda, Professor of the University, Madrid, to Lisbon in March 1920 in an effort to persuade the Portuguese Government to relinquish the objects (originally acquired by German explorers and allegedly illegally exported prior to the War with the connivance of ‘bribed’ Turkish officials) in return for monetary ‘compensation’ which would be provided by the British Government
• The views of the Foreign Office, India Office and the Treasury on the prospects of Dr Yahuda’s ‘mission’ and how it should be financed
• A report prepared for the Secretary of State for India, by Dr Yahuda, dated 20 April 1920, providing details of his Lisbon visit and meetings, information on the antiquities and their current storage, and his conclusion on what further steps should be taken (ff 84-106)
• Minutes of a ‘conference’ held at the India Office, 10 May 1920, attended by representatives of the India Office, Foreign Office, Treasury, (ff 40-42), and British Museum, and Dr Yahuda, concluding that HM Minister in Lisbon should make representations to the Portuguese Government asking for the return of the objects as ‘stolen property’ and suggesting the Government of Mesopotamia would gift to the Portuguese either some of the objects not selected or make a ‘cash present’
• Correspondence, November 1920-February 1921, in which the HM’s Minister in Lisbon confirms the Portuguese Government’s initial decision to keep the antiquities for ‘study in Portugal and subsequently to sell them’ (consequent to which the India Office hopes to influence the Portuguese to give the Mesopotamian Government first refusal).

The file also includes copies of a letter from Walter Andrae of Hemmenhofen, Germany, 31 January 1920, to Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell, Office of the Civil Commissioner, Baghdad, in which he expresses the hope that she might use her ‘influence’ to expedite the objects’ journey to Berlin, and her unaccommodating reply, 12 March 1920.

The volume includes a divider which gives the subject number, the year the subject file was opened, the subject heading, and a list of correspondence references by year. This is placed at the end of the correspondence (front of the volume).