IOR/L/PS/18/B366

This printed memorandum by Sir Leonard Day Wakely (signed L D W), Political Department, India Office, dated 3 February 1921, provides an overview of antiquities in Mesopotamia [Iraq].

The memorandum detail:

• the Ottoman administration of archaeology;
• German archaeological expeditions during the First World War;
• the declaration of a proclamation by the General Officer Commanding, dated 22 May 1917, declaring all antiquities are property of the Administration and questions;
• a request from the British Museum in November 1917 to the War Office to attach an archaeologist to the army in Mesopotamia, with Dr Henry Reginald Holland Hall dispatched in November 1918;
• preservation of certain important monuments, such as the ruins of Ctesiphon;
• Dr Hall and Reginald Campbell Thompson undertaking their own excavations and shipping the resulting collections to the British Museum, and a resulting ban on removing archaeological artefacts from Mesopotamia on 23 May 1919;
• general questions arising from this concerning requests for expeditions from the University of Philadelphia, Professor Stephen Herbert Langdon of the University of Oxford, and Professor James Henry Breasted of the University of Chicago;
• the question of establishing an Archaeological Department and Professor Albert Tobias Clay's suggestion of establishing a School of Archaeological Research in 1920;
• the Archaeological Joint Committee formed in 1918 and chaired by Sir Frederic George Kenyon; and the disposal of Samarra [Sāmarrā’];
• and other German collections stored in Mesopotamia and antiquities (the Lisbon Collection) seized by Portuguese authorities during the War.