Victor Place
Victor (Thomas) Place (born July 18, 1818 in Corbeil , † January 10, 1875 in Tungujei, Iași near Yassy ( Romania )) was a French consul and archaeologist .
Place studied law in Paris . During his examination for the consular service, he stood out for his mathematical knowledge and especially for the fact that he could draw plans. This started his interest in architecture . After that, Place worked in various positions at consulates abroad (1843-1851).
After the revolution of 1848/49 , Jules Mohl supported the reopening of the French consulate in Mosul in 1851. A new excavation team was supposed to initiate the scientific archaeological material processing and the architectural reconstruction. Even now, the career and personality of the new consul Victor Place did not foreshadow the archaeological skills he would later display.
The order
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres feared that France would be overtaken by England in Assyria . In 1851 the National Assembly approved 8,000 francs for the continuation of the excavations carried out by Paul-Émile Botta from 1843 to 1844 in Dur Šarrukin (Assyria), today Khorsabad. For this work, Victor Place was appointed Consul of Mosul, who was supported by the Académie des Inscriptions. This was entrusted with the archaeological task by the Minister of the Interior, Léon Faucher (decree of August 22, 1851).
Shortly afterwards, at the suggestion of the Interior Minister, the National Assembly approved 70,000 francs for another expedition led by Fulgence Fresnel , previously consul in Dscheddah (now Saudi Arabia). On October 9, 1851, Jules Oppert , teacher of German at the Reims Lyceum , and Félix Thomas , an architect and painter, moved from Marseille to Babylonia. They reached Hillah on July 7, 1852.
Place wanted to document itself precisely and have the results of the previous excavation at hand. So he took the huge five volumes of PE Botta and Flandin's Monument de Ninive , which were supposed to be decisive for the excavation strategy .
Place's relationship with the English was difficult. With Henry Creswicke Rawlinson he reached an agreement in 1852 that secured the north side of Kujundschik ( Nineveh ) for him. Since Hormuzd Rassam had already carried out excavations here, Rawlinson ceded some sculptures from the palace of Assurbanipal to France as well as the reliefs from Nimrud , which were duplicated.
Place is the first to use photography
In a letter to the Minister of the Interior dated September 5, 1851, Place explained why he wanted to take a photographer with him: For the costs arising from this, one could save himself the sending of a draftsman, since the reproduction of the pictures was both accurate and artistic. It is also possible to make an indefinite number of prints from a negative. As the work progresses, photos of the palace, the reliefs and sculptures can be made and the progress of the excavation can be followed. The physiognomy can also be better recorded. To do this, he needs a number of chemical substances and a considerable amount of paper for the duration of his task. It is much cheaper to make these expenses once than to have them come back from France when necessary.
Place took his friend, the engineer and photographer Gabriel Tranchard, with him to Khorsabad, who unfortunately died there. 51 Tranchard photographs have been preserved and are stored in the National Archives in Paris.
Place uses the term “ daguerreotype ” for the photographs , although Gabriel Tranchard used the negative-positive process with paper prints. Despite ignorance of the language, for Victor Place, a newcomer to this field, photography was of the utmost importance for the science of archeology, as numerous passages in his correspondence and reports prove.
- “The images of the daguerreotype are the exact representation of the different people (reliefs of the kings of Maltai), as they are hardly dirty on the rock. The sight has little of a relief, but I prefer this to a drawing so that the academy can be absolutely certain that nothing has been added or left out. "
Place omitted the description of the ornaments, clothes and hairstyles and wrote:
- "The attached photos replace the illustration better than a description."
or
- “I regret not being able to attach photos of these people ( Bavian grounds ) to this report , but during the two days that I was there with Messrs. Tranchand and de Longueville, the rain did not allow us to go out for a moment. Despite the bad weather, these characters are so interesting that we stayed and waited for better weather. But the amount of water made the river that flows at the foot of the mountain so high that it was impossible for us to cross it and take photos. "
Place and Félix Thomas
In March 1853, Félix Thomas (1815–1875) suddenly appeared in Mosul. Place is said to have said “a gift from heaven” . Thomas was on his way back to France after suffering a personal and physical crisis at F. Fresnel's excavation in Babylon. Now this architect and painter from Nantes decided to stay in Khorsabad and support the work of Victor Place and Gabriel Tranchard. He stayed until May 1853. Thomas had studied architecture and in 1845 won the “ Prix de Rome ”. His stay in Khorsabad, albeit a short one, was a great support for Place.
The tablets of Cooper (Layard excavation) and Flandin (Botta excavation) and the data of Place that the latter had obtained from his excavation, Thomas combined with his own experience in historical architecture and monuments so that he could suggest interpretations and restorations that further than those of Flandin, as they completed the elevations of the walls. In addition to the general plans of the city and the palace, on the pages dedicated to each sector, Thomas drew the preserved elevation of the structure - as it appeared after the rubble had been removed - and the hypothetical elevation above. He referred to these panels as “essais de restauration” - attempts at reconstruction.
From 1855 Thomas devoted himself almost exclusively to painting and visited Charles Gleyre's studio. Inspired by his travels, he specialized in topics from the Orient and especially from Assyria. In 1863 he exhibited a painting from The Visit of the Pacha of Mossoul to the Excavations at Khorsabad, formerly Niniveh , in the Paris Salon . This is said to have acquired the department of Antiquités Orientales in the Louvre. His work Vue de l'Arc de Constantin, à Rome is in the graphics department of the Louvre .
Excavations in Khorsabad
In the summer of 1853 the Crimean War began . The workers already employed by Botta for the excavations belonged to the tribe of the Taris, who were Nestorian Christians. They were stuck in their mountains because the Kurds rebelled. The Kurds were known for their disobedience and looting. Therefore, Place had to employ Turks, Arabs and Yazidis who were enemies with one another as workers. In addition, the Muslims believed that the French were allied with the Russians, and therefore massacred the Christians. To protect his excavations, Place won a number of tribes in the neighborhood, for a fee, of course. Always in need of money, Place asked in Paris for financial support. A cruel hand had written "NO" on the edge of his letters to the Ministry.
From 1852 to 1854 Place in Khorsabad, the old Dur Šarrukin , uncovered 186 rooms in the palace of Sargon II . He found the ziggurat (which he called the observatory) and in the south of the palace an ensemble of sanctuaries which he called the "harem". He excavated the city wall with its monumental gates.
He called a somewhat isolated complex of rooms, which Place discovered in the south-west corner of the palace, “Harem”. The excavations of the Oriental Institute showed that this area contained six sanctuaries with the associated rooms, which were grouped around three courtyards. The three largest sanctuaries were assigned to the deities Sin, Shamash, and Ningal, the three smaller ones Ea, Adad, and Ninurta. There was a ziggurat nearby, which, according to Place, was approx. 43 × 43 m in size and could be reached via a surrounding staircase. Place also reports that each step of the ziggurat was six feet high and painted in different colors. The four preserved levels were white, black, reddish and bluish. As is known today, the city walls that surrounded Dur Sharrukin were built of adobe bricks on a stone base. It was approx. 14 m wide and 12 m high and enclosed an area of approx. 1,800 × 1,700 m - approx. 300 hectares. Seven huge city gates provided entry into the city. Each gate was named after a deity.
The excavations remained on Place until 1929, when the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago sent an expedition under Edward Chiera to Khorsabad.
Description of the palace
On an artificial terrace (a) 14 m high, 314 m wide and 344 m long, the building stood to the northwest, surrounded by a 3 m thick wall (B). About 210 halls and chambers surrounded the 30 courtyards. The main portal A leads to a large courtyard B, which is bordered by the harem C on the left and the farm buildings D on the right. The back was formed by the actual palace G, to which the main entrance led through portal E via courtyard F. The entrances were decorated with giant figures.
A step pyramid once rose above H in seven paragraphs; the remote Building I is considered to be the throne room. © is an outside staircase, d) a ramp for riders and wagons.
Loading and transport on the Tigris
In 1855, Place repeated the transport like Botta with wagons and keleks . However, he refused to cut up the bulls. Thus, chunks of up to 30 tons had to be moved. In addition, the transport on the Tigris was attacked by insurgent sheiks. On May 21, a raft sank at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates. The insubordinate Bedouins of Korna were immediately there. The looting was spectacular: the men of the escort were robbed to the bare skin. Of the 149 boxes destined for the Louvre, 26 were saved, as well as a winged bull and a "great genius". The rest was in the mud of the Shatt-el-Arab.
The only relief from Sargon's palace that reached Paris
Description of the Louvre:
Guardian gods are supernatural beings who watch over people or buildings and drive away evil spirits. This winged genius guarded the city gates of Khorsabad together with someone opposite. They blessed everyone who passed by with water from a pine cone.
A protective and blessing genius or genius (guardian spirit or guardian angel)
This monumental winged guardian angel in frontal view was placed inside in the passage of one of the city gates. Another was right across the street. Both stood directly behind the pair of winged human-headed bulls guarding the gate. Like other geniuses posted at certain entrances to the palace, this one has a protective role. However, it also had a blessing function: the pine cone, which could be shaken, sprinkled a liquid from the small bucket onto the passage and onto those who passed it.
A monumental sculpture 4.09 m high and 2.36 m wide
This colossal figure, worked in high relief, shows a winged genius with a beard from the front up to the waist and from there downwards in profile. He is holding a pine cone in one right hand and a small metal vessel in his left hand.
The face, framed by a curly beard, is surmounted by a tiara with two pairs of horns. A fringed cloak hangs over the figure's short tunic, covering his right shoulder and left leg. Two pairs of wings appear from behind and spread symmetrically on each side of the body. His arms and upper arms are adorned with rings and bracelets. He wears sandals that cover his heels.
A tic-tac-toe game is carved into the base of this sculpture , probably by a guard who used it to kill his time while on duty at the gate.
Genii: between the human and the divine?
Genii, depicted as bulls with human heads, men with bird heads or with wings, play an important role in Assyrian mythology. They are beings endowed with higher powers than humans, yet they are not great deities, although they are sometimes represented with their attributes, e.g. the horned tiara here. These unearthly beings had the power to ward off evil spirits. The genius here had an important protective role, he defended the walls of the city. Nevertheless, he was also a blessing genius who held the holy water and sprinkled it over the visitors with a pine cone.
Genii are often depicted in Assyrian art; especially in ceremonial scenes they are shown pollinating (fertilizing) the sacred palm.
Consul again
After his return, Place went to the consulate in Moldova in 1855 and to Adrianople (Turkey - now Edirne ) in 1863 . With his departure from Paris he prepared the publication of his work.
In 1867 he became consul general in Calcutta and in 1870 in New York.
The scientific precision that Victor Place showed in his archaeological work - despite the understandable interpretation errors - can be found again in his 3 splendid volumes Ninive et l'Assyrie (1867–1870) with the photographic documentation by the engineer Gabriel Tranchard and the drawings by the architect by painter Felix Thomas. Thomas also published an article about the reconstruction in it. 300 copies were made by the Ministère de la Maison de l'Empereur et des Beaux-Arts, of which only 100 were intended for sale.
The end of his career is painful. Place left France to go to Romania (into exile) in 1873. Two years later he died there, completely ruined.
gallery
1. Drawing carriage. 2. the loaded wagon. 3. Felling the monolith and loading the car. 4. Land transportation.
Land Transport - Place 1857 engraving after Thomas
1 + 2: Transport on Keleks . Bas-reliefs from Layard "Monument of Niniveh". 4–6: Details of the construction of the rafts.
Winged deities. Left Nimrud (Layard), right Khorsabad (Place).
Motifs by Layard and Botta to support attempts at reconstruction
Sargon Palace. Facade southeast with gate M. Reconstruction Thomas and Place
Sargon's palace. Reconstruction of Southeast Thomas and Place
Fonts
- Victor Place, Félix Thomas: Ninive et l'Assyrie . 3 volumes, Imprimerie Impériale, Paris, 1867–1870.
literature
- B. André Salvini: In: Erich Ebeling, Bruno Meissner, Dietz Otto Edzard (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Aräologie . Tenth volume, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003-2005, ISBN 3-11-018535-0 , p. 588.
- Maurice L. Pillet: Khorsabad. Les découvertes de V. Place en Assyrie, etc. Paris 1918.
Web links
- NYPL Digital Gallery - Ninive et l'Assyrie, par Victor Place
- See original: Louvre ( Memento from February 13, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Académie des inscriptions & belles-lettres (France): Comptes rendus des séances , Volume 1917, p. 329 ( online ).
- ^ National Archives Paris, F21 546.
- ↑ PDF at www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr
- ↑ Report of April 20, 1852, pp. 39–40.
- ↑ Report of April 20, 1852, p. 45.
- ↑ [1] .
- ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ].
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ Stavrides Yves: Les consuls du levant in the newspaper l'Express of May 25, 1994.
- ↑ Khorsabad . In: Eric M. Meyers, Grant Frame (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archeology in the Near East . Oxford Biblical Studies Online, accessed June 16, 2010.
- ↑ Description (Johannes Emmer 1901) .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Place, Victor |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Place, Victor Thomas (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French consul and archaeologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 18, 1818 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Corbeil |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 10, 1875 |
| Place of death | Tungujei, Iași near Yassy ( Romania ) |