“Come Then Ye Classic Thieves of Each Degree”: The Social Context of the Persepolis Diaspora in the Early Nineteenth Century

The diaspora of fragments from the stone structures on the Persepolis terrace in Iran began in earnest in the early nineteenth century. Members of the embassy of Sir Gore Ouseley made the best-known collections in 1811. This paper sets these removals in the context of a broader series of British physical interventions and transactions between 1800 and 1828. Fragments moved within a gift economy operating between detachments of East India Company officers who were deployed in Qajar-ruled Persia in order to control the Persian Gulf and the overland route to Europe. Archival research has enabled the reconstruction of object biographies for three fragments in London and Edinburgh, and for several other fragments whose present location is not known to me. The case study contributes to our knowledge of the overall rate of the dispersal of carved relief from the site. Acquisitions of architectural fragments from the site accelerated significantly in the twentieth century; the patterns of removal in the nineteenth century reflect the difficult and variable prevailing conditions.</p