In 2022 the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (DAFA) celebrated its centenary with a number of events. The final celebration was organised by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, at the Institut de France, Paris, on 2 December 2022. As we are both currently working, together with Susan Whitfield, on Aurel Stein’s correspondence with French scholars, we proposed a paper comparing the media coverage of archaeology in Afghanistan in the French and British press.1 This paper is an English summary of our finds.
Our aim was to consider how archaeological work in Afghanistan, mainly by the French,2 from the founding of DAFA in 1922 to the Soviet invasion in December 1979, was reported to the general public in France and Britain. Drawing on The Times Digital Archive and the British Newspaper Archive on the British side, and Gallica and Retronews on the French side, we searched for news and feature articles intended for the general reader rather than the specialist – an approach that has yielded interesting perspectives in other projects (Fenet 2010, 2015; Wang 2004, 2022). In total, we found well over 200 relevant articles in the four digital repositories. Of course, the information and the manner in which it was released largely depended on the directors of DAFA during this period: Alfred Foucher (officially ‘chief of the Delegation’ 1922–1945), Joseph Hackin (‘chief of mission’ on the Afghan field 1934–1941), Roman Girshman (1941–1942), Daniel Schlumberger (1946–1964), and Paul Bernard (1965–1980). Similarly, the amount of attention given to French archaeology in Afghanistan also depended on the priorities of the newspaper editors. In this short paper, we will give an overview of the press during the 19th and 20th century, and present a few themes that stood out – in particular the public presentation of the French archaeological hegemony in Afghanistan, British disdain versus French scientific pride, the shift in Franco-British relations on the eve of WW2 and during the Cold War, the charismatic Schlumberger, the relative lack of attention to Aï Khanoum in the British press, and attitudes to ‘vulgarisation’.
We had initially hoped to consider reports in the Indian and Afghan press as Fenet’s previous works (Fenet 2015: 153–154; Fenet 2020) had shown the value of examining reports in the Asian press.3 Unfortunately, we were unable to pursue that line of enquiry owing to limited access to printed collections of the Afghan and Indian press in London and Paris, with most titles still to be digitised. However, correspondence, at least in the early days of DAFA, indicates that Indian colleagues and students who were in touch with French scholars, did indeed write articles, news and reviews for newspapers such as The Indian Daily Mail and The Bombay Chronicle. These were in addition to pieces from London repeated in the colonial press. An expanded survey would give a more comprehensive view of the press coverage, and present more diverse perspectives on archaeological work by Europeans in Asia4 and on how the foreign missions and the discoveries were perceived by the local people.5
An overview of the press, mid-19th century to 1979
Our survey offered an overview of the press organs between 1922 and 1979: the major national and international newspapers, the syndicated press, and special interest publications aimed at the general reader. These were often far-reaching, for example, The Times was read in Kabul, at least in the British legation in the 1920s (Fenet 2010: 237), as well as Le Temps,6 and the Afghan court read L’Illustration and The Illustrated London News. Founded in 1843, L’Illustration had grown during the First World War, and by the 1920s and 1930s was practically an institution (Bellanger et alii 1972: 387, 597–598) – there were 237 subscribers in Afghanistan alone, including the Emir (L’Illustration 1928/1: 55–58; Fenet 2010: 305, 369). We also surveyed publications that were strong in the arts or archaeology but written for the general reader rather than the specialist. Similarly, we excluded journals restricted to well-defined groups, such as learned societies, whose publications were distributed only to members, such as the Bulletin de la Société française des fouilles archéologiques, those of des Amis de l’Orient, and The Antiquaries Journal.
After the Second World War, there were changes in the press on both sides of the Channel. Some titles died and new titles were born. The Second World War impacted on the life of newspapers in much the same way as the First World War had sounded the death knell for the great period of the French travel and exploration press, as embodied in the magazine Le Tour du Monde between 1860 and 1914.
Generally speaking, during the nineteenth century and before the establishment of DAFA, the press on both sides of the Channel reported on the political, military and geographical issues of Afghanistan rather than its archaeological heritage. Bamiyan, mentioned for the first time in L’Illustration on 25 July 1885 and the identical advertisements that appeared in many British newspapers (e.g. The Morning Herald, 14 June 1842; The Sun, 4 June 1842; The Globe, 13 June 1842) for Charles Masson’s three-volume Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Panjab (1842) were exceptions.
The French Monopoly
For much of the nineteenth century, Afghanistan had been under the direct influence of the British. Thus, it came as a shock to the British that following Afghanistan’s independence in 1919, France should have exclusivity in archaeological excavations in Afghanistan (see Fenet 2010: 125–127, 130, 287–289). A first article about Afghanistan in The Times on 24 April 1922 noted Foucher’s arrival there “with special authorisation.” But when a longer article about the French monopoly and the Franco-Afghan division of finds was reported in The Times on 16 May 1923, it provoked an immediate response from Sir Hercules Read (1857–1929), President of the Society of Antiquaries in London. No fewer than nine pieces appeared on this topic in The Times between mid-May and the end of 1923. Read compared France to “a dog in the manger” (The Times, 17 May 1923), an expression which the renowned French archaeologist Salomon Reinach (1858–1932) repeated in his summary article “Nouvelles archéologiques et correspondance. Les fouilles françaises en Afghanistan” (Revue archéologique 1923, 2, p. 172–173). A further note from the Reuters agency on this subject the following summer was reproduced in the Indian press (The Civil & Military Gazette, 24 July 1923).
The diplomatic sting would be felt for years. The monopoly was referred to in every article published in English during the 1920s (e.g. a “privilege of considerable interest”, The Times, 16 May 1927) and continued to be mentioned regularly until the Second World War. The French press repeated the national monopoly with scientific pride.
Differences appear to have been put aside during Emir Amanullah’s tour of Europe in 1928 (Fenet 2015: 151–158 and 300–301). His movements were followed very closely by journalists, although no mention was made of the archaeological situation. However, while Amanullah was in Paris, the British press did make vague references to Franco-Afghan relations, particularly in the field of culture (e.g. The Daily News, 26 Jan 1928, pp. 7–8).
On the eve of the Second World War the situation changed. As the froideur melted, there was even some praise for the French work in the British press, and in 1939 Alfred Foucher was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. After the War, the negative comments were gone – an article in The Times on 7 Feb 1950 simply noted that Schlumberger was director of DAFA and Director of Afghan Antiquities according to an “agreement” in 1922 that gave the post to the French for 30 years.
Coverage of work at the major sites, 1920s to 1950s
Early work by DAFA was covered by both the French and British press with richly illustrated articles in L’Illustration (e.g. 29 Nov 1924) and The Illustrated London News, the latter translating the French source (e.g. “Immemorial Afghanistan. Pioneer work in a new field of archaeological discovery”, 13 Dec 1924). But the lack of spectacular results, particularly in Bactra/Balkh was disappointing, especially when compared with the magnificence of Tutankhamun’s tomb, discovered by Howard Carter (1874–1939) in 1922. The British press continued to post archaeological news from Afghanistan, mainly in the form of summaries of meetings of the Académie des Inscriptions, in Paris (e.g. The Times, 16 May 1927). French newspapers also published reports of those meetings, with some taking a particular interest in the need for funding for DAFA in order to honour the commitment that had been made with Afghanistan. At that time, the key person keeping DAFA in the French press was Victor Bérard (1864–1931), a former student of the École Normale Supérieure and of the École française d’Athènes (EFA), and member of the Senate, where he chaired the Commissions des Affaires étrangères et de l’Enseignement [Foreign Affairs and Education Commissions]. In 1923 Bérard argued in favour of creating an embassy in Kabul to support French archaeological activity in Afghanistan (Fenet 2011b).
Another important element in the visibility of DAFA’s work was the display of France’s share of the finds from Afghanistan in exhibitions at the Musée Guimet. These exhibitions explain both the regularity of articles in the French press and the journalists’ focus on art history, aesthetics and the potential inspiration to contemporary artists. This is apparent in the first presentation of the Bamiyan frescoes in the press, where the journalist quoted freely, and reproduced sketches, from the exhibition catalogue Exposition de récentes découvertes et de travaux récents archéologiques en Afghanistan et en Chine (Musée Guimet, 14 Mar 1925).
The finds from Hadda were well communicated and illustrated, on both sides of the Channel, by the excavator Jules Barthoux himself (1881–1965) (e.g. The Illustrated London News, 23 Feb 1929: 300–301). In France, the Hadda finds provided journalists with a welcome opportunity to enliven their writing, add a little mystery, and create some sensationalist archaeology. For example, in 1929 (Comœdia, 23 Jan 1929), we read about the excavations at Hadda: “Les missions de nos savants sont peut-être pour eux des parties de plaisir, puisque leur plus grande joie est celle de la découverte. Elles les conduisent en tout cas en des lieux où ils ne risquent pas de rencontrer les habitués des tables de Deauville, de Monaco ou autres dieux du même genre. Hadda n’a rien de commun avec la prison de la Santé.” [“Our learned friends appear to revel in these missions, as their greatest joy is to find things. Indeed, it is the joy of discovery that leads them to places where there is no risk of meeting the regulars [casino players] of Deauville and Monaco, and gods of that ilk. Hadda has nothing in common with La Santé prison.”]
In 1932, the Hadda sculptures were again brought to the fore, this time by the British press, thanks to an exhibition at the Musée Guimet of finds excavated by Barthoux, and a provocatively titled article “When Afghanistan was Greek” (The Sphere, 13 Aug 1932), which included photographs of an “Antinous” (God with Flowers), a figure comparable with a “Mary Magdalene at the foot of the cross, and a pre-Gothic grotesque” – aesthetic comparisons with medieval art already suggested by the French archaeologists in 1929–1930 (Fenet 2023: 274–275).
Hackin chose a completely different way of disseminating information about Begram, which he explored from 1936. For example, he readily added extracts from his travel diary of 1936–37 to his article “Recherches archéologiques en Afghanistan” (Revue de Paris 1938: 895–912), but reserved the latest news of discoveries for the Académie des Inscriptions, which he knew the broadsheets of the era would subsequently relay to the public: for example, his lecture on Begram to the Académie was reported in Le Figaro (19 Feb 1938).
After the Second World War, DAFA turned its attention to Islamic antiquities, a development that pleased the British press. The Times published two articles on Lashkari Bazar in two successive issues, 7–8 February 1950, followed six weeks later, on 25 March, with stunning images (two views of the palace and an aerial photo). The first article covered the site and the material finds, the second focussed on Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030), made legendary by the poet Ferdowsi in the Shahnahmeh, or Book of Kings, and included a small map. These two articles were immediately reprinted by the Indian press (The Civil & Military Gazette, 12 Feb and 4 Mar 1950). Schlumberger himself wrote two articles on Lashkari Bazar for The Illustrated London News, fifteen months apart (25 Mar 1950 and 16 Jun 1951). The first made the front page; the second included a photo of the site by Schlumberger. Nine years later, the Minaret of Jam would star in the same newspaper (10 Jan 1959).
The prehistory and protohistory of Afghanistan also caught attention in Britain, largely owing to work on the Indus civilisation, which had been carried out since the 1920s by the Archaeological Survey of India under the direction of John Marshall (1876–1958). The news that French archaeologists (led by Jean-Marie Casal, 1905–1977, though this was not noted) had uncovered another “buried city” – Mundigak, near Kandahar – located further to the northwest naturally aroused curiosity in Britain (eg. The Birmingham Post, 29 Apr 1954; The Yorkshire Observer, 29 Apr 1954). In fact, the discovery was first mentioned in The Edinburgh Evening News on on 28 April 1954, betraying the confidences of an engineer who revealed the amount of money that had been spent. The Times published a feature article and photos of Mundigak eighteen months later, on 30 December 1955. The site was well known enough in Britain to appear in a Christmas quiz in the Illustrated London News on 24 December 1966.
Schlumberger and Aï Khanoum in the British press
Of all the French archaeologists, it was Daniel Schlumberger who made the biggest mark on the British press after the Second World War. The British loved Schlumberger’s natural elegance and perfect English, which he spoke with a slight accent. The “distinguished French archaeologist” is featured in a long article in The Times on 25 October 1972, in which the unnamed author recalled Schlumberger’s exploratory work at the site of Bactra and his excavation of the Ghaznavid palace at Lashkari Bazar covered in frescoes, but believed that the sites of Surkh Kotal and Aï Khanoum would prove to be Schlumberger’s most important discoveries. The article highlighted the inscriptions written in the Bactrian language in Greek script that Schlumberger had found. Mentioned in this paper, the famous bilingual inscription of Ashoka, unearthed in 1958, was also the focus of another, shorter article in the Bristol Evening Post, 11 September 1958.7
Apart from the long article referred to above, there is conspicuously little mention of Aï Khanoum in the British press. Its (re)discovery was noted in The Times on 8 February 1965, after Schlumberger’s lecture about the site at the Institut de France the day before. Two and a half years later, on 3 July 1967, The Times reported on another lecture given by Schlumberger, this time to the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, in London, on the clearing of the ancient city. In fact, the report contained more praise for Schlumberger than details of the excavation of the site by his successor, Paul Bernard. In 1981, Aï Khanoum was mentioned in passing three times in The Times: in Philip Howard’s review of Robin Lane Fox’s book on Alexander the Great (12 Feb 1981), in an article on the excavations in Kandahar, mentioned above (22 Apr 1981), and in an article on Russian excavations at Takht-i-Sanghin, Tadjikistan (4 May 1982). The Times next mentioned Aï Khanoum on 12 May 1983, this time focussing on the inscribed Delphic pillar, without naming the excavator or giving further details. To put it bluntly, the British press showed little interest in the sites being worked on by DAFA during this period. Much later, in 2001, Aï Khanoum was only mentioned in the context of rebels and soldiers “in the footsteps of Alexander” articles by Anthony Lloyd and Ben McIntyre, The Times, 27 Sept 2001). Undoubtedly, a number of reasons may have contributed to the British lack of interest in the archaeological site, the excavation of which was the subject of lengthy annual reports by Paul Bernard to the Academy.8 Among them, we could suggest, by way of hypothesis: the director’s concentration on the progress of the work, to the detriment of communication with the international public at large; the importance of scientific exchanges between French archaeologists and their Russian colleagues, perhaps poorly perceived at the time; the reduced interest of English readers (and editors) in Hellenic antiquities, during those decades; on the part of journalists, the effects of the decline of the French language.
Evolution of the illustrated magazines in the 1960s and 1970s
If the press had been relatively stable before the Second World War, the post-War press was a different environment. In France, some titles disappeared, and others were born. The mainstream press appeared, at least for a while, to have lost interest in archaeology, as special interest magazines came into being. Most of the new magazines looked to the American way of life and focussed on consumables: fashion, cars, etc. Weekly magazines like Le Monde illustré and L’Illustration came to an end. It would take almost two decades for a journal specialising in international archaeology to appear. Founded in 1964, Archeologia contained precious little about Afghanistan: only four articles in its first two decades – one of which was about the collections in the Musée Guimet and the history of art, including (in no. 46, May 1972) Francine Tissot on the arts of Asia. The other two focussed on the sites of Mundigak (no. 13, Nov 1966) and Shortughai excavated under the direction of Henri-Paul Francfort between 1976 and 1979 (no. 227, Sept 1987). Work at Aï Khanoum was presented in another publication, Dossiers de l’archéologie, in a long article “Aux confins de l’Orient barbare. Aï Khanoum, ville coloniale grecque” by Paul Bernard in August 1974, and in a shorter article “Aï Khanoum, cité fondée par Alexandre le Grand” by Frantz Grenet in December 1987.9 Dossiers de l’archéologie was another monthly, published by the editor of Archeologia, with a different theme for each issue, and no doubt not so popular with the general public.
Across the Channel, The Illustrated London News continued to publish articles about archaeology, although these tended to be reviews of exhibitions and publications on the history of art. For example, in 1967–68, during the “Ancient Art from Afghanistan” exhibition at the Royal Academy, The Times (15 Dec 1967) and The Illustrated London News (23 Dec 1967) published material from Begram, Hadda and other Afghan sites in the collection of the Kabul Museum. Those commenting on the artistry and aesthetics of these pieces said nothing about their context and who created them, but celebrated their eternal beauty, their crossing of cultures and their modernity, even going as far as comparing them with pieces by Picasso! (Guy Brett, The Times, 15 Dec 1967).
Other archaeological missions in Afghanistan
Even before the end of the French monopoly in the 1960s, there were other collaborations and foreign researchers digging in Afghan soil. If the British expedition to Swat and Afghanistan, by Evert Barger (1910–1975), Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Bristol, and Philip Wright, of the Indian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, was absent in the French press, it was very present in the British press. Reports of their expedition made the national and local press: for example, the Western Daily Press and Bristol Mirror (1 Dec 1938, 31 Aug 1940) reported on their presentation to the Royal Society of Arts on 30 November 1938. The Illustrated London News ran two articles on their work, the first by Wright on Swat (24 Dec 1938) and the second by Barger on Balkh and Bactria (22 Apr 1939). In India, The Civil and Military Gazette (10 Nov 1938) noted the boxes of material that Barger brought back with him, as well as the “warm welcome received from the Afghan government and the director [Hackin] of the French Archaeological Delegation, which has held the concession since 1922.” A few months later, in the spring of 1939, their finds were displayed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which prompted at least one article in The Times (25 Apr 1939) and an almost identical report in Nature (143/713, 29 Apr 1939). Emphasis was placed on the discovery of Greek-style columns in Afghanistan, for the very first time. Self-promotion and a certain spirit of revenge (against the notorious monopoly) probably partly explain this strong media presence.
During the war, the name of Kenneth de Burgh Codrington (1899–1986), of the University of London, appeared several times in the national British press in 1943, about his proposed visit to Afghanistan. The journal Nature (151/105, 23 Jan 1943) noted his work with Joseph Hackin before the latter was called up by De Gaulle thanks to his work on the botany and zoology of Afghanistan. Codrington’s studies of Afghan medieval citadels at Shar-e-Zohak, near Bamiyan, and in Shikari valley were reported in The Times (3 Dec 1951), although his obituary in The Times (8 Jan 1986) simply says he worked with Hackin and DAFA and spent two years digging in and around Kabul.
From the late 1960s, archaeological missions to Afghanistan expanded. Exploratory work by the British at Sangar tepe, in Helmand, in the Afghan part of Seistan, was reported in the Illustrated London News (11 Feb 1967). DAFA was mentioned indirectly, when the chronology was compared with that already established at the site of Mundigak.
The Smithsonian Institute began excavating at Shar-i-Gholghola in 1971, and The Illustrated London News devoted several well-illustrated pages to this site on 1 Dec 1975.
By this time, The Times had appointed Norman Hammond as its archaeology correspondent. On 1 November 1974, Hammond wrote about the excavations at Kandahar, led by David Whitehouse (1941–2013), director of the British Institute of Afghan Studies (BIAS). Soundings carried out in the ramparts made it possible to establish chronological comparisons with Mundigak at this site.
Russian archaeologists are seldom mentioned. We found only one article (The Guardian 28 Apr 1971) of news from the Tass Agency, about the discovery of a 3,500 year-old fortress in northern Afghanistan.
“British excavations in Afghanistan interrupted by political instability and then by the Soviet invasion” began Hammond’s article in The Times on 22 April 1981. Hammond noted that Svend Helms had taken over as director of BIAS in 1974, until the Russian invasion in December 1979 brought their work to an end. A more detailed article by Helms himself appeared in The Illustrated London News on 1 August 1985.
The authors of the articles
The authors of news articles in the general press were not always credited. Even when they were named, they were not always specialists in the subject they were writing about. Before the 1950s, and especially when they had no access to a specialist or direct witness, French and English newspapers often published extracts from publications by archaeologists (e.g. in 1925 – see above – the extracts about Bamiyan from the catalogue of the exhibition at the Musée Guimet, or reported on lectures and reports to societies or academic institutions. Occasionally a journalist would solicit an interview and spice it up a little – at least this was the case in France (Comoedia 22 July 1927, reproduced in Fenet 2010: 563–565, no. 321).
Archives and archival resources (see, for example, Fenet 2010: 90 and 131) show that in the early days of DAFA the French archaeologists in Afghanistan were spied on, as hinted at in the expression “private letters” in an article about Foucher’s departure from Ghazni (The Times 20 July 1923), suggesting that either letters were being opened or that someone was leaking information about the movements of the French.
In the British press, “correspondent” referred to a reporter on the ground or with a particular expertise in a subject. Thus, in 1923 Arthur Moore, “the first non-official British visitor to the Afghan capital” wrote of the Fouchers’ arrival and movements in Afghanistan, noting that “The Professor’s friend and rival Sir Aurel Stein hopes shortly to enter from the East” (The Times, 24 Apr 1922). The Times “archaeology correspondent” of the 1980s, Norman Hammond, mentioned above, is an archaeologist specialising in Mayan research. Following the pattern of earlier reporters, he relied on the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society and other special interest publications as reliable sources. Across the press, most reports of archaeology in Afghanistan since the Second World War repeated the same information, which was essentially the contents of dispatches from news agencies.
In all cases, the illustrations were provided by DAFA, as in the article of 1927 (Comœdia, 20 Aug 1927). However, relations between archaeologists and the press were rather tense at that time. On the French side, popularisation (French: “vulgarisation”) continued to have a pejorative nuance. Some scholars did not want to write for newspapers and magazines, believing that they had better things to do with their time. From the examples cited above, it seems this was not such a problem for the generation born in the 1880s (Godard, Hackin, Barthoux). Indeed, their correspondence indicates that this kind of publicity was encouraged by the scholar Émile Senart (1847–1938). However, it was not always straight-forward. In a letter to André Citroen in 1932, Hackin wrote that the person in charge of la Croisière Jaune [The Yellow Expedition, the French trans-Asian project to promote Citroen’s track vehicles], in which the archaeologist had participated, had pointed out errors in L’Illustration, notably problems of the images not matching the text.10
Hackin wrote: “Je ne veux pas vous importuner plus longtemps par ces questions de détails; je tenais simplement à vous signaler que le bon renom de la mission exige que rien ne soit traité par “à peu près” même quand il ne s’agit que d’illustrer des articles de vulgarisation. (…)” [“I do not wish to take up your time with details, I simply want to point out that the reputation of the mission necessitates that nothing be treated ‘approximately’, including illustrations in popular articles.”]
This requirement no doubt explains the absence of articles on Begram in L’Illustration. It probably also explains the reluctance of French archaeologists to let others write about their excavations. The Illustrated London News, which, since the 1920s had sought articles from European excavators, let them choose their images and translated their texts, which resulted in beautiful pages on the French discoveries. Even so, it is curious that Surkh Kotal did not appear there. Could the change in heart be due to the portrait that Schlumberger saw in The Illustrated London News in 1953 (26 Dec), perhaps published without his knowledge? Gérard Fussman, in his obituary of Schlumberger (BEFEO 1973: 411–422), noted Schlumberger’s wish that articles published in French and foreign newspapers, such as The Illustrated London News, should not be included in his bibliography.
There are remarkably few dissonant voices in the texts we have come across. That of the journalist and novelist Jules Véran (1868–1960) is an exception: “Dans l’un des articles qui ont paru sur ces collections, j’ai lu que les premières sculptures bouddhiques exhumées par M. Barthoux furent détruites par la population ‘dans une crise de fanatisme religieux’” [“In one of the articles that appeared on these collections, I read that the first Buddhist sculptures exhumed by M. Barthoux were destroyed by the population ‘in a crisis of religious fanaticism’.”] Véran continued, “Fanatisme religieux? C’est possible, mais bien excusable. En tous cas, il s’agissait de gens attachés à leurs traditions, qui ne voulaient pas laisser emporter hors de chez eux des reliques qu’ils avaient quelque raison de considérer comme leur appartenant. Mais il est entendu que nous avons le droit, quand nous entrons dans un pays qui ne peut guère se défendre de piller les richesses qui nous plaisent. Ainsi firent, il n’y a pas très longtemps, les Anglais en Grèce, opération qui a pris le nom d’ “elginisme” du nom du principal auteur des déprédations et des rapts, lord Elgin. Nous n’avons pas changé. (…) Les mêmes procédés continuent. Les peuples se dérobent des statues, des sculptures, des tableaux comme les gosses se chipent des billes.” [“Religious fanaticism? It’s possible, and also excusable. In any case, these were people attached to their traditions, who did not want to let relics that they had some reason to consider as belonging to them be taken away from them. But it is understood that we have the right, when we enter a country that can barely defend itself, to plunder whatever riches we like. This is what the British did in Greece, not so long ago, in what has become known as ‘Elginism’ after the main perpetrator of those depradations and raids, Lord Elgin. We haven’t changed. … The same processes continue. People from different countries take away statues, sculptures and paintings like kids stealing marbles.”] (Comoedia, 26 Jan 1929).
Véran was referring to a piece penned by a colleague in the same newspaper a few days earlier, addressing the finds by DAFA that had just gone on display at the Musée Guimet (Comœdia, 23 Jan 1929). From a Franco-English perspective, it is interesting to find this reference to the Parthenon marbles in Véran’s criticism.
Gender issues: men, couples, women and archaeology in Afghanistan
Another difference we noted between the accounts in the French and British press was that the British press seldom quoted or gave personal details about the French archaeologists. The two exceptions were Schlumberger (see above), and Hackin, whose rallying wartime visits to London were widely publicised in brief articles that labelled him (not always accurately) as the “Head of the DAFA” or “archaeologist” – thus, the headline “An archaeologist joins De Gaulle” in The Scotsman on 31 August 1940. Hackin’s death was the subject of eulogistic portraits, with and without reference to his discoveries in field (e.g. The Times 8 Apr 1941).
However, in the 1920s the British press did mention the presence of the French wives in Afghanistan: for example, Alfred Foucher and his wife Ena (Eugénie ‘Ena’ Bazin, 1889–1952) (Fenet 2011a) and their arrival in Afghanistan (Arthur Moore, The Times, 24 Apr 1922), and André Godard (1881–1965) and his wife Yedda (née Reuilly, 1889–1976) (Vitoux 1978) and their journey to Charkri Manar (The Civil & Military Gazette, 17 May 1923). By contrast, the French newspapers (e.g. Excelsior, 7 May 1923) noted only the “valiant association” of Ena on her husband’s travels, and nothing about Yedda, future author of beautiful copies of the Bamiyan paintings. Overall, the part played by the spouses of the archaeologists in the Afghan archaeological field – including Ria Hackin (née Marie Parmentier, 1905–1941) (De l’Asie à la France libre 2018) – was very little discussed. Rather than highlighting the support and commitment of these women, the British and French press preferred to insist on the modernity of the Afghan queen Soraya.
Nonetheless, these women spent considerable amounts of time at the archaeological sites, and their activities merit further investigation. It would be interesting to compare them with, say, Agatha Christie (1890–1976) and Tania Ghirshman (1900–1984, born Antoinette Levienne), their contemporaries, whose contribution to science was significantly more than accompanying their archaeologist-husbands Max Mallowan (1904–1978) (Trümpler 2001) and Roman Ghirshman (1895–1979) (Ghirshman 1970), and other women of their time (Hassett et alii 2017).11
In this way, finally, we should also mention Sylvia Matheson (née Terry-Smith, subsequently Schofield, 1916–2006). Originally from Angmering in Sussex, Matheson worked part-time for an advertising agency. After reading the article about Mundigak in The Illustrated London News (7 May 1955: 832–834) she longed to go and work with DAFA. Jean-Marie Casal invited her to join the expedition, in which his wife Geneviève (née Bell, 1909–2002) was also participating. The story of Sylvia Matheson, and her book Time Off To Dig (Matheson 1961), were the subject of many articles in the general British press, for example, a review in The Belfast Telegraph on 21 September 1961. The reviewer points out that the book “gives us a lot of information about the work of the Delegation”. Indeed, she gives warm and vivid descriptions of everyday life in the field, of her DAFA colleagues and the local people. Matheson had been to Pakistan some years before, had met Mortimer Wheeler and had some experience of archaeological fieldwork. Since childhood, she had read a lot about Afghanistan, but, in her opinion, “books give only a small idea of Afghanistan today. The best books were written in the 19th century.”
Conclusion
Our review of the French and British press suggests that once the British had swallowed their pride and accepted the French monopoly on archaeology in Afghanistan, over time and definitely after the two countries had been allies in wartime, the reporting tended to be fair and factual, or otherwise silentious by indifference (e.g. the lack of British reporting on Aï Khanoum). Given the chance, journalists and their readers became rather fond of the French scholars and admired their work. It is striking how quickly the same news appeared in the press on either side of the Channel. The Second World War changed how news was reported, not least in the nature of the publications presenting the news. From the outset, some of the French scholars disliked the popularisation of the British press, and took steps to maintain the accuracy of the articles and to preserve their academic reputations. It is somewhat ironic then that perhaps the most vivid account of DAFA in the field was written in English by a British woman, who was not a trained archaeologist or academic, but someone who had been inspired by reading about Afghanistan.
Notes
[1] https://aibl.fr/seances/centenaire-de-la-delegation-archeologique-francaise-en-afghanistan-dafa/ We would like to express our gratitude to Henri-Paul Francfort (Institut de France) and Philippe Marquis (DAFA) for inviting us to participate in this event, and for funding Helen Wang’s visit to Paris.
[2] For a survey of DAFA’s work from 1922 to the 1980s see Bernard 2002, Olivier-Utard 1997, Fenet 2021, and Afghanistan, ombres et légendes 2022.
[3] These papers highlight the non-figuration of the Bamiyan Buddha in a magazine in the 1930s. and how the excavation of the so-called stupa of Kanishka was known as far afield as French Indochina.
[4] We found one example that allows comparison: The Times (25 Mar 1938) reported very briefly on a lecture on “Indian ivories” at Begram, while a long report “by our correspondent” at The Civil & Military Gazette (8 Apr 1938) described the event more fully, mentioning the film projection and thunderous applause.
[5] The longer the project, the better the results. For example, since 1990, the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO) and the Collège de France have been publishing a very useful review of the Egyptian press in the Bulletin d’information archéologique (BIA) (see http://www.egyptologues.net/archeologie/bia.htm). The project, under the aegis of Nicolas Grimal, consists of day-to-day scanning of the Egyptian press and translation of articles.
[6] Le Temps was a daily newspaper, founded in 1861. Protestant-oriented, without illustrations and sober in appearance, it was renowned for its seriousness. Censored during WW2, it ceased publication on 29 Nov 1942 and was succeeded by Le Monde from 29 Dec 1944.
[7] News communicated to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres by Louis Robert on 20 June 1958 (CRAI 1958: 189–191).
[8] These were published promptly in the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et belles-Lettres (CRAI), 1965–1980; and have now been brought together in a single volume (Bernard 2022, vol. I).
[9] The journal was created in 1973, and its title was not entirely consistent: Dossiers de l’archéologie and Dossiers d’archéologie.
[10] Archives of the Guimet Museum, Correspondence Hackin, draft letter to Citroen, Tokyo, 6 Jun 1932. In this draft, Hackin refers to no. 4652, 30 Apr 1932, about the journey between Urumqi and Peking.
[11] Several research programmes on the role and place (past, present and future) of women in archaeology are underway, on both sides of the Channel and around the world. See also e.g. https://trowelblazers.com/.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.