Chapter 22 Four Unpublished Inscriptions (and One Neglected Collector) from the World ,

Peter Liddel and Polly Low

Introduction1

In this essay, we present four Greek inscriptions which are in the possession of the , Liverpool (UK). They have been held in this collec- tion since 1890, but have not yet been systematically studied or previously ­published.2 The 17 documents in the city of Liverpool form (by our current esti- mate) the fourth largest collection of Greek inscriptions on stone in the United Kingdom.3 About half of them (which are part of the Ince Blundell collection) have a history that fits well into the conventional narrative of British antiquity- collecting: that is, a pursuit indulged in by actual or aspiring members of the aristocratic elite, who found in ancient marbles an outlet (or a channel) for their various anxieties about status, prestige, and the conspicuous display of

1 We owe a great deal of thanks to the former and current curators of antiquities at the Liverpool Museum, Gina Muskett and Chrissy Partheni. For discussions on these texts we are grateful to Dan Dana, Madelina Dana, Stephen Mitchell, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, Charlotte Roueché, Peter Thonemann, and those who offered helpful advice at the 2nd NACGLE meet- ing and the Liverpool research seminar. All images courtesy National Liverpool (World Museum). 2 The only previous published reference to the inscriptions appears in the 1891 Annual Report of the Committee of the Free Public Library, Museum, and the of the City of Liverpool, 38: 26–27. Vermeule and von Bothmer do not appear to have seen any of them on their visit to the William Brown St. Museum in June 1956 (Vermeule and von Bothmer 1959: 161, noting bomb damage to the collection). No. 4 was, however, according to the Museum Register and the 1891 Annual Report of the Committee of the Free Public Library, known— perhaps by way of personal communication—to A. Michaelis (author of Michaelis 1882). The Guard Book of the Museum preserves rubbings of this inscription which demonstrate that it was studied at some point, probably in the late nineteenth century. 3 See Liddel and Low 2015, publishing a hitherto unknown decree of the Phrikyladai, an oth- erwise unattested private organisation from Erythrae; the inscription was once in the collec- tion of one of Liverpool’s prominent ship-owning families, the MacIvers.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004382886_024 FOUR UNPUBLISHED INSCRIPTIONS FROM THE WORLD MUSEUM 409 both wealth and learning.4 But the four inscriptions we publish here reflect a rather different form of antiquarianism. According to the Museum Register, these four inscriptions were collected ‘on the site of the ancient town of Cyzicus’ and were donated to the Liverpool Museum in January 1890 by a certain Captain Ferguson (along with a small group of other, non-inscribed, antiquities).5 An employee of the Cunard Line, Ferguson was from 1885 to 1890 the commander of the S.S. Aleppo; on this ship he made numerous trips from Liverpool to the Eastern Mediterranean. Which of those journeys provided the opportunity for him to collect these inscrip- tions is unknown, but it appears that his donation to the Liverpool Museum coincided with a change in the focus of his career: in May 1890, Ferguson made his last voyage on the S.S. Aleppo, and was promoted to Cunard’s North Atlantic routes.6 We might speculate, then, either that on one of his final voy- ages to the region he took the opportunity to go on a souvenir-hunt among the ruins of Cyzicus,7 or that the donation represented the culmination of a gradual process of collection over the previous half decade. In either case, we suggest that these four inscriptions shed new light on a non-elite and rather neglected strand of British antiquity collecting in the nineteenth century, one which deserves further exploration.8

4 On the Ince Blundell collection, see Vaughan 1989, Southworth 1991 and Bartman 2017: 2–23. On the antiquity-collecting habits of the British aristocracy more generally, see Guilding 2014. 5 These are listed in the museum Register as the following: a piece of Roman mosaic; a face from the head of a figure; and ‘part of a standing female figure in white marble, at the feet of which is seated a sow’. 6 Captain John Ferguson (1838–1900): achieved Certificate of Competency, 1872; promoted to rank of Captain, 1882; Captain of S.S. Aleppo, 1885–90; last recorded voyage, 1899. (Lloyds ‘Captains Registers,’ Metropolitan Archives, MS 18567). He was reported to have been ‘one of the most well-liked commanders of the Cunard fleet’ (Liverpool Mercury, ‘Nautical Jottings,’ 16th July 1892). 7 For the ruinous condition of Cyzicus from the eighteenth century onwards, see Hasluck 1910: 56; Greenhalgh 2013: 115; Meyer 2014; for the larger and grander collection of Cyzicene in- scriptions at the Louvre, see Laugier 2014. 8 On middle-class culture in nineteenth-century Liverpool, see Wilson 1999. Particularly im- portant in shaping this culture were two societies: the Royal Institution (founded in 1814; on its history and activities, see Ormerod 1953) and the Literary and Philosophical Society (founded in 1812). Both societies had interests in Classical Antiquity, and in the study of ­inscriptions: the Royal Institution’s collection of antiquities included two Greek inscriptions (TAM II 261, CIG 2655; both now in the Garstang Museum, ); for an example of the Literary and Philosophical Society’s epigraphic interests, see Yates 1855. Capt. Ferguson was elected as a Corresponding Member of the Society in 1890 (the same year as his donation to the Liverpool Museum).