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  • Bringing Carthage Home, The Excavations of Nathan Davis, 1856–1859 by Joann Freed
  • Eve MacDonald
Joann Freed. Bringing Carthage Home, The Excavations of Nathan Davis, 1856–1859. University of British Columbia Studies in the Ancient World 2. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011. Pp. 264. CDN $100.39. ISBN 9781842179925.

In the late 1850s the rediscovery of ancient Carthage was in its infancy. The site was largely abandoned and the topography of the ancient city virtually unknown. The kingdom of Tunis was ruled by the Husainid dynasty under Mohammed Bey (1855–1859) and archaeological excavations were allowed, or not, through his privilege. When the English clergyman/adventurer Nathan Davis, a personal friend of Mohammed Bey, secured funding and access, he began excavations on an extensive scale and would spend almost three years at Carthage.

Joanne Freed’s book examines this era in detail focusing on the work of Davis, a much-maligned pioneer of Carthaginian archaeology. By looking closely at the archival evidence, including letters to and from British Museum representatives and the British consul at Tunis, as well as Davis’ own publications, the book recreates a sense of the nineteenth-century antiquarianism that thrived at Carthage. Davis was an extraordinary individual, “a Jewish convert to Christianity, former Protestant missionary at Tunis, an expert on Tunisia with complete fluency in Arabic and a personal friend of the Bey” (11). Freed opens with a taste of Davis’ equally extraordinary time at Carthage; a dinner hosted on the shores of the sea near Gammarth, attended by, among others, Gustav Flaubert who was in Carthage to research Salammbô and Lady Jane Franklin, the widow of the Artic explorer Sir John Franklin. Orientalist romance and adventure permeated the evening.

The first chapter is devoted to Davis’ life at Carthage. The background to his personal involvement with the Bey, the British Consul, the British Museum and his excavations are carefully tied together. Davis published his book on the excavations, Carthage and Her Remains, in 1861. The book was, with justification, heavily criticised as unscholarly and muddled by both [End Page 267] contemporary and later archaeologists and historians. Freed emphasises the competitive nature of the Anglo-French rivalry at Carthage in the nineteenth century and implies that this has affected the assessment of Davis’ work. There can, however, be little argument about the fact that Davis’ publication is disorganized and obscured by much useless information, even by contemporary standards. While acknowledging its faults, Freed argues that hidden away in Davis’ work are some intriguingly accurate details, and her careful research works to revive, as far as possible, his reputation.

The second chapter casts a wider net in terms of the social and political scene at Tunis in the mid-nineteenth century. Tunis was a large and multi-cultural city in the 1850s with a population of about 90,000. Described by a contemporary as “a queenly city uniting Africa, Europe and the Orient” (27), the population was mixed with large Jewish and Christian minorities. Freed creates a picture of Davis’ Carthage, a world full of foreign consuls, European intellectuals, antiquarians, adventurers and Christian missionaries. Davis’ friend and patron, the amiable Mohammed Bey, was neither highly educated nor terribly interested in power. He was content to leave the important decisions to his courtiers and ministers, to whom access was essential for permission to excavate. Mid nineteenth-century archaeology at Carthage took place in this environment: dinners with Flaubert, rivalry among the English and French working at the site, and a Bey disinterested in the process of government.

A detailed examination of the site of Carthage and the background to its rediscovery are covered in Chapters 3 and 4. The ground-breaking work on the topography of Carthage, carried out by the Danish consul Christian Falbe in the 1830s, gave the archaeologists of the 1850s some foundation for their research. The organization of the Roman city had been identified and mapped, as far as possible, by Falbe and in Davis’ time the Falbe map had created a framework for archaeologists to begin a systematic exploration.

Much of Davis’ research was motivated by the search for artefacts to sell on to the British Museum and other collectors. His discoveries...

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