Articles with the theme: Collections

From Pylos to Karpathos: Archaeology now and then

Slaughter as high art. The Pylos Combat Agate, c. 1450-1500 BCE, length: 3.6 cm, Pylos Archaeological Museum (Wikipedia).

Celebrity-explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent didn’t excavate in the Greek Peloponnese in the 1880s – they would never have been given permits.

The recent state-of-the-art excavations and discoveries at the ‘Griffin Warrior’ tomb, Pylos, Peloponnese, and the present (June 2026) exhibition of its spectacular finds in Athens, give a chance to reflect on the methods employed elsewhere in the Aegean by the Bents in the 1880s: the island of Karpathos (Dodecanese), for instance (and professional archaeologists might like to look away at this point).

The Aegean: Vroukountas, Karpathos, indicated (ToposText).

The Bents were on Karpathos after 5 March until before 21 April 1885, some seven weeks, arriving from Tilos (where they found little, camping, ironically, in the old monastery that now acts as bulwark to the new museum, on whose information panels they, inexplicably, go unmentioned).

The couple ride far and wide over Karpathos, before reaching the distant north-western tip and the once notable city of Vrykous (modern Vroukountas (various spellings) [35.80167678950954, 27.16483337973251]). A site busy with people from neolithic times to the 19th century CE, it was one of the island’s important centres in antiquity (see, e.g., Nigel McGilchrist’s imaginative treatment, in McGilchrist’s Greek Islands #16: Southern Dodecanese: Astypalaia, Tilos, Karpathos, Kasos, Kastellorizo (London, 2011).

Βρυκο͂ς – Brykous, polis near Ag. Marina, north of Avlona, Karpathos, Dodecanese (ToposText).

Arriving from Olympos, via today’s Avlona, the Bent party camped at Vroukountas between 30 March and 2 April 1885, pitching a tent, typically topped with a ‘Union Jack’ it seems, in the level area directly in front of what is now referred to as the cave-church of St John – a strange sight for modern August festival-goers to contemplate no doubt: the Bents washed themselves in the cave’s stone basins and struggled with an unruly tent; their long-suffering dragoman, Mathew Simos from Anafi (in the Cyclades, not very far away to the west) slept outside…

Unaware of these campers, McGilchrist (see above) describes the setting: “At the northern extremity of the promontory, steps lead down into a spacious natural cave deep within the headland… To the left was the spring which served the settlement in antiquity; it is possible that the sanctuary of the Nymphs was here, from which a relief showing Hermes and the Nymphs, formerly immured in the forecourt of the Church of the Koimisis in Olympos, once came. The cave is now organised as the shrine of Aghios Ioannis Theologos, whose screen, font and altar are all composed of various ancient spolia.”

“Proceeding along the cliff we found tombs of every possible description, single chambers, double chambers, tombs one over the other, tombs with steps above them cut in the rock, as if for ornamentation, but the most frequent and those which we found the least disturbed were those constructed like this plan…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 237. Bent would have sketched the plan in his site log, now lost).

Forty-two years after Ludwig Ross (Ross 1845) had visited the island, without reaching Vroukountas due to bad weather, Bent wrote a lengthy article on his researches for The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1885, Vol. VI: 233-242) and sets the scene: “Brykountios was apparently the most considerable town during both the earlier and later occupations, and as it was situated at the extreme north of Karpathos, about two hours distant from the Elympos, and several days’ journey from the Konak, we were able to pitch our tent there and excavate unmolested… The chief interest connected with the pottery I brought back is that it is the first to come from Karpathos and from these rock-cut tombs. But the tombs themselves were extremely interesting, and the great variety of periods of pottery found in close juxtaposition would suggest that the graves had been used again and again, just as the graves of the Karpathiotes [are] now…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 236, 237) (Bent kept notebooks of his researches but unfortunately they all seem to have been lost apart from those of his final journey to Socotra and Aden in 1897.)

(Two further interesting characters besides Ross can be introduced here: the swashbuckling Charles Thomas Newton (see later below), who never visited but acquired important Roman antiquities from Karpathos now in the British Museum; and the aristocratic William Roger Paton, Bent’s friend, who did explore the island’s southern region a year or so after the Bents and acquired fine Mycenaean wares there, also now in the BM (Paton 1887; 1889)

Mabel Bent’s account of their stay at Vroukountas, before Easter 1885

Mabel Bent devotes several pages in her ‘Chronicles’ to what was clearly a happy stay at this campsite, which included Theodore’s 33rd birthday, some notable finds, a few memorable meals, and the arrival of family letters (with belated news of the death of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum on 26 January 1885).

Mabel begins her account:

“You must excuse these smudges as I am sitting cross-legged on Theodore’s bed in our tent and was just interrupted by a man who came for two candles Theodore had sent for that he may explore a cave.

We are encamped for four days at Vourgounda. We came here yesterday [30 March 1885] with two mules and two workmen to make excavations on the site of an ancient city. We only took our medicines, without which we never move, necessaries of clothing, and books for four days, food and bedding; but I had so much to sit on that I had to hold with both hands all the way. As I did not fall off I was pronounced an excellent rider by the men.

There is a long rocky point jutting into the sea on the west of Karpathos, far north, near Tristomo and covered with ruins. Here everyone lunched at noon and then Theodore set the men to work and I went to the end of the point and had the tent pitched by a high rock, which shelters us from south winds. As Sunday night was the only rainless one we have had this long time, the ground was dry and by great good luck we have a level, gravelly floor.

At camp on Socotra: Theodore, Ammar, Manthaios and Ernest Bennett. From the Bents' Southern Arabia (1900). Image © The Bent Archive
“’We always travel with green fly tents with double flaps, the whole made of Willesden canvas, which does not get mouldy when folded up wet.’ – Theodore Bent, Esq., in the ‘Album’. Beware of imitations. Samples and prices from Willesden Paper and Canvas Works, Willesden Junction, N.W.” (‘Field’, Saturday, 10 April 1897). Twenty years after Karpathos, Mathew Simos (standing right) at camp on Socotra, by then fully familiar with tents (Bent, M.V.A. 1900: 365; archive.org).

Neither Mathew nor the other two men had ever seen a tent before, so beginning with turning right side out I had to lead by example and prompt and instruct them in everything; all in Greek too. Do not think I had only to cause the pegs to be driven into the ground and put the eyes or guys, or whatever you call the ropes, over, no, only one peg is done like that. No two ropes are the same, either as to length or the angle from the tent: some are under rocks, some are round rocks, some are over rocks, and one had to be strung through a hole in a rock… I was tired enough in my tongue and limbs when, after hoisting the Union Jack, I sat down to survey the tent, and, really, the ropes all dancing have a very funny effect. The sun was hot outside but it was hotter still setting up the beds inside, ‘tromero sesti’ as they said.

After that I went to the workmen, who had discovered the pavement of a Byzantine church. We turn up our noses at anything ‘tis Vizantines epoches’, so Theodore took them elsewhere.

Soon after our arrival, a messenger came and brought us two letters, the first we have had for more than five weeks and our first news of poor General Gordon’s death. As soon as we had joyfully read them we began to lament the many more that had been lost, but two or three hours later another man came with 23, and two newspapers, February 7 being the latest, and March 9 the latest letter.

“A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash…” The cave-church of St John, Vroukountas, scene of a three-day festival over 29 August (St John the Baptist/Agios Ioannis Prodromos) (karpathostravel.com).

When the sun set we scrambled home. Next to our tent is a little hut built against the wall as a kitchen for pilgrims who come to a little chapel in the cave beneath. A very steep path leads to the small round entrance and several flights of steps lead down into a large cave. The holy place is shut in by a low wall and some pillars which do not touch the roof. Holy water drips into two little stone troughs and thither we hie with our sponges and towels to wash. The workmen sleep among the rocks; there are plenty of caves about. When it got dark we went to the kitchen to dine. It was Theodore’s birthday.

The sacks of my bed and the tent were laid as a tablecloth on the soft wet earthen floor. We sat on two stones. Theodore leaning against the middle post supporting a lambskin full of water, and I, as I found afterwards, very few inches from the lamb of the period. Mathew built a table and seats next day. All the rocks and stones around were full of food and pots and a candle stuck by its own wax to one of them shed a dim light, except once when it tumbled down and went out.

We had a soup of lamb’s head and a lot of herbs picked by the wayside, onions, and a handful of peas someone had given to Theodore to eat raw. Then the brains and tongue boiled. Then the liver fried; a bowl of sheep’s cream and sugar. Some wine from Samos and coffee. We then strolled on the rocks by moonlight and complained to each other that we did not feel at all excited at the idea of our first night in a tent – indeed, I think all we felt was satisfaction at the idea of a clean, dry shelter.

Mathew spread his bed on brushwood in the kitchen. I undressed outside that I might bring in no fleas. As I had spread all our bedding in the sun, for once it was dry and our clothes in the morning were quite dry too. It rained in the night and Theodore had to go out about two to loosen the guys, and the north wind came on in the morning, so they had to be tightened again.

It is a cold dark day and the sea wild and black. We breakfasted outside. Theodore has gone to dig graves today and I am remaining at home enjoying great peace, nooked in where no one can stare. I am just going to have another read of the letters.

“But the best thing is quite perfect, a bowl shaped like a pineapple about 4 or 5 inches across…” (BM 1886,0310.6: Megarian bowl, black ware. Hellenistic, 3rd c. BCE – 1st c. BCE; © Trustees of the British Museum).

In the afternoon, or rather about 10, I went and with difficulty found the diggers, as they were in catacombs whose openings were quite invisible from above. They had already begun to find things, though many of the graves had evidently been opened in the Byzantine times. Most things were broken but still there were many whole and during the whole time we became possessed of many earthen plates (20 in one grave), the remains of copper mirrors and boxes, some glass things broken, and some broken but very pretty vases, etc. But the best thing is quite perfect – a bowl shaped like a pineapple about 4 or 5 inches across. Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold. The prettiest lamp, quite perfect, has a word on the bottom and Theodore copied some inscriptions painted on the stucco of the vaults. We are altogether very much pleased with our success, and if we do not find things on Saría may return…

On Thursday morning (March 31st, I mean April 2nd), I did not go at all to the digging. To get there one must climb up, down, or over 17 walls, and as I did this three times the day before, besides wandering in search of tombs, I am sure I had a good deal of climbing. I was not much use as the men preferred grouping themselves round me when Theodore’s back was turned, talking to me, looking at my eyeglass, scissors, gloves, never before seen in Karpathos I am sure, and asking innumerable questions. In vain I suggest they should work but when the ‘aphentiko’, as they address Theodore, comes it is different.

“Besides this, three round boxes and two lids made of lead, we think, a sort of button with a hanging ring, but we know not what metal, and some little twisted bits that seem to be gold…” (From Mabel Bent’s notebook “her chronicle in the Sporades &c., 1885”, p. 78, archive of The Hellenic Society, London, CC).

Besides there was much to do in cleaning out the earth from the pots with very little water. I had to mind the camp while Mathew went to seek a meal in the sea. I had a visit from five women and girls who, without any ceremony, called me nothing but Verghinía. This is the first time I have not been called Kyria Verghinía, but I suppose these people really never have seen anyone superior to themselves and their only idea of a ‘Kyria’ must be the Blessed Virgin. They said ‘come with us Verghinía and we’ll give you cream’, but they terrified me by playing with the pots and I gave them no encouragement to remain and was glad when they left.

I packed our personal possessions and the more delicate ‘finds’ and after luncheon Theodore went off again and I broke up the camp with Mathew, though Theodore had sent me a man, which I told him was quite unnecessary. The man was busy all the time turning a lamb into food, which I fortunately did not find out till he was dead. By the by, Mathew had not slept a 2nd night in the kitchen, which was really as airtight as a nutmeg grater, but taken refuge in a cave about 30 feet above our heads.

We had three mules as we had two huge baskets of pots and seaweeds. About 4 pm, Theodore and his men came and everything was carried about three-quarters of a mile and they and I were loaded on the mules and we reached Elymbo by dark. Sunny day.

Good Friday was a fine sunny day and we unpacked the panniers, for we were quite too tired to look at anything on our arrival. It is very exciting work digging – first finding something, then is it whole? Then have we all the pieces? The men grind the edges trying to fit them, and any metal they cut with their knife. Fortunately they never saw the little boxes. Theodore found and pocketed them.

We cleaned as much as our limited means would allow (a milk jug and a Russian wooden bowl such as grocers have with 2 lbs of tea). We packed the pots into three boxes, all except a very large earthenware jug, two of which were found whole and one of which Theodore gave away. It is to be carried loose all the way home and now we empty our bowl into it. These two days before Easter are employed making bread and cakes with red eggs stuck into them and every oven is smoking…” (Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)

(We leave the Bents here; they now return to Olympos for the Easter celebrations…)

The Bents’ collections from Karpathos

BM 1886,0310.2: lekythos, white ground. Corinthian, ca. 500 BCE – 450 BCE. Unspecified site, Vroukountas (© Trustees of the British Museum).

Restrictions on the unauthorised removal of antiquities from Greece were already in force when the Bents were active in the Aegean (1880s). The position for Turkish areas was arguably more fluid, but from Mabel Bent’s notes in her diaries it is clear that had their ‘finds’ from Vourgounda been inspected on the waterfront, contemporary warehouses can still be seen at Pigadia, they would have been confiscated immediately. Just a few years later, the couple had considerable difficulties along the Turkish littoral, exiling them to distant regions (Africa, Arabia) under ‘British Protection’ where they could excavate freely.

The many crates, cartons and sacks containing the Bents’ acquisitions from Karpathos (including some very important village embroideries) left with the couple on the steamer Roúmeli on 21 April 1885. Mabel records in her diary: “The next excitement was getting the things at Pegadhia. I decided to remain on board and became a perfect queen-bee. I gave up moving at last for I was always followed. I eagerly watched the proceedings on shore. Mathew set off to run to the house where was a very hideous statue, more than the size of a baby, half a mile off. Theodore and the Turks sat down at the café… We mean to deposit it in bond at the customhouse of Syra with all the cases and things we do not want.”

Fierce storms forced the Roúmeli to seek shelter (as St Paul is said to have done) at Kali Limenes, southern Crete, before continuing via Kythera to Syra: “At Kythera a ‘manifesto’ was made and signed by the captain, saying he had picked us, and our cases, up in Turkey, and by the Kythera customs people to say we had not started from there… And now Thursday [23 April 1885] we are at Syra, all the things are in the customhouse, the great jars tied up to the wall.”

With, according to Mabel, all their acquisitions and paraphernalia (via Messina and Malta): “We reached home via Millwall Dock in safety with our 24 pieces of the most varied luggage, and I am more convinced than ever that there is no place like it.” Unfortunately she does not add a date, but it will have been around the middle of May 1885 – too late for them to attend the Hellenic Society meeting of 7 May, but Theodore did speak about the Karpathos finds at the Annual Meeting on 25 June (Bent, J.T. 1885: xlv). (For all Mabel Bent’s diary entries, see Bent, M.V.A. 2006: 99-125)

From Vroukountas Grave 1, Karpathos, BM 1886,0310.15: squat lekythos, red-figured ware. Attic, 430-400 BCE, purchased 1886 from Theodore Bent (© Trustees of the British Museum).

From Syra, Bent wrote a candid letter dated 24 April 1885 to Sir Charles Newton (see an earlier reference to him above), at that time Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. The use of the word ‘plunder’ is jarring : ‘We returned from Karpathos yesterday and had hoped to catch a steamer which would have brought us and our things straight to England. Unfortunately we shall have to wait a week at least, and as we have so much plunder we cannot take the Marseilles route… We were fairly successful in Karpathos, finding a large number of rock cut graves unopened which have produced pottery, etc., which, if not of the highest order, offer a good deal which I believe to be of a new character. I have likewise got a good-sized statue of one of those quaint figures which I got at Antiparos last year; it is of stone and nearly a yard long. It is decidedly uglier than any which have yet come to hand. Of quaint manners and customs I have got a fine collection, also of old Karpathiote dresses and jewelry… We had rather a rough time of it, Karpathos being very far behind the world in comforts, and decidedly we enjoyed ourselves best when living in our own tent. Mrs. Bent survives and is well and begs her kind regards. Yours very truly, J. Theodore Bent” (Archive of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum)

Items from Vroukountas purchased by the British Museum from Theodore Bent in 1886 (* = on display at the BM as of June 2026)

‘Grave 1’

‘Grave 2’

‘Grave 3’

‘Grave 4’

Unspecified graves

(The Bents returned to London from Karpathos in May 1885, i.e. suggesting a period of deliberation and negotiation by both parties. Many finds referred to by Mabel in her diaries, and Theodore in his article for the Hellenic Society, i.e. the mysterious ’20 plates’, the large pithoi, etc., did not go to the BM and are presumably in various other collections today, unprovenanced. Over the centuries, how many other adventurers have come and gone among such islands, removing similar artefacts?) 

Items from Vroukountas donated by Mabel Bent to the British Museum in 1926

Mabel Bent’s sister, Ethel Bagenal (1848-1930), to whom she left her estate on her death in July 1929, in turn, Ethel’s daughters were responsible for their aunt’s collections (The Bent Archive).

The Bents leased a fine townhouse near Marble Arch, London, at 13 Great Cumberland Place; Mabel continued to live there until her death in 1929. It was a veritable museum, if not a treasure chest, of decades of collecting and inherited items and clearly she wanted to hold on to certain souvenirs of her travels with Theodore, or items that were particularly decorative – including some discoveries from Vroukountas made during that obviously happy spring of 1885. Towards the end of her life she was inevitably thinking of what was to happen to her collections (alas, creating some sort of permanent home for them does not seem to have been considered). In her will, everything was left to her surviving sister, Ethel Bagenal (or effectively her two daughters, i.e. Mabel’s nieces). However in 1926 Mabel presented to the British Museum a large number of artefacts from all the regions they had travelled to, including the following Vroukountas pieces (they lack specific grave numbers):

  • 1926,0410.42: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
  • 1926,0410.41: kantharos, black-glazed ware. Attic, ca. 4th BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.
  • 1926,0410.40: salt-cellar, black-glazed ware. Hellenistic, ca. 3rd c. BCE. No grave specified, donated 1926 by MVAB.

(For an overview of the Bents’ collections see this summary) 

The ‘Karpathos Lady’

‘The Karpathos Lady’, acquired there by the Bents in 1885. BM 1886,0310.1: Limestone female figure, Neolithic, 4500-3200 BCE, purchased 1886 (© Trustees of the British Museum).

“[At] Pegadia or ‘wells’ … there are evidences of pre-historic inhabitants, the graves of whom I was unfortunately unable to open owing to the presence of the Turkish authorities, but I was able to obtain a large stone figure of a female idol, similar to the smaller ones I found at Antiparos…” (Bent, J.T. 1885: 235)

This is the most bizarre of all the Bents’ acquisitions from any of their travels – an enigmatic stone figurine, still without a known parallel. The British Museum’s data record its findspot  as Vroukountas, but the Bents purchased it from the Pigadia area; it left Karpathos whole, clandestinely in a blanket, but now is shown mended (in two parts).

Not currently exhibited (June 2026), it is a much travelled object, having featured in loan exhibitions to the Far East. (How Bent can think it resembled one of the marble figurines he recovered from Antiparos in 1884 is hard to explain.)

Bibliography

Bent, M.V.A. (1885) Her Chronicle in the Sporades &c., 1885, Archive of The Hellenic Society, London.
Bent, M.V.A. (1900) Southern Arabia, London.
Bent, M.V.A (2006) The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford: 99-125.
Bent, J.T. (1885) ‘The Islands of Telos and Karpathos’. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. VI: 233-242.
Paton, W.R. (1887) Vases from Calymnos and Carpathos. Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 8: 446-460.
Paton, W.R. (1889) Mycenaean tombs in Carpathos. The Classical Review, Vol. 3: 333.
Ross, L. (1845) Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln des agäischen Meeres, Vol. 3, Stuttgart: 50-69.

Further reading

Bent was very much taken with elements of Karpathian life and wrote several articles:

There are several (June 2026) spectacular videos of the location on YouTube, e.g.:

 

Two watercolours by Theodore Bent: The Old Town, Rhodes (1885) and the Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Istanbul (1886)

Theodore Bent as artist: recent acquisitions by the Bent Archive (June 2026)

Two watercolours by Theodore Bent. Left: A view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes, 1885 (46 x 30 cm); Right: The Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection).

Left: Facing eastwards, a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes, 1885 (46 x 30 cm)

Theodore and Mabel Bent were on Rhodes from 6 – 20 February 1885, arriving from Alexandria, before moving on to the islands of Nisyros, Tilos, and Karpathos to look for antiquities and traditional artefacts, including embroideries and ceramics. As ‘Franks’ they were not permitted to stay overnight in the famous walled Old Town and took a pension in ‘Niochori’ (the new district) not far from where the casino is today. Mabel clearly feels she cannot do justice to the wonders of the Old Town; leaving descriptions for the guidebooks, she writes in her diary: “It is quite a little walk to the town where no one but Jew or Turk may remain after sunset. The town is very interesting and full of coats of arms and bits of carving and other traces of the Knights, but see Murray” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, p. 69). Theodore Bent publishes later an account of the social dimensions of their fortnight on the island (‘Rhodian Society’, Macmillan’s Magazine, Vol. 52, 1885 May/Oct, pp. 297-303) – he finds the Old Town’s famous hammam open: “Another easy method of studying this conglomerate society is afforded by the bath. Every Rhodian, of whatever nationality, indulges in the Turkish bath on some day or another in the week, from the lowest menial to the exiled pashas, and everyone pays according to his rank”.

Theodore Bent’s watercolour (1885) of a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes (46 x 30 cm) (Bent Archive Collection).

A keen watercolourist and sketcher ever since his schooldays, Bent illustrated most of his 20 years of travel with his wife (E. Med, Africa, Arabia), of course he couldn’t resist the multi-period charms of Rhodes’  Old Town. His scene, facing eastwards, from an elevated position, at first difficult to locate, is explained for us by a resident historian of today: “I think the sea on the horizon is the key detail here. Bent is clearly looking from an elevated point across the city towards the sea, not inland ‘uphill’. The perspective actually fits the topography of Rhodes quite well: the line of today’s Sokratous Street descending on the right side helps orient the scene, and the two principal mosques can be identified fairly convincingly – [firstly] the tall minaret of the Süleymaniye Mosque and, further back/right, the Ibrahim Pasha Mosque. That makes the composition much less imaginary than it first appears.

Detail from Fr. Bedford’s 1862 panoramic photo of Rhodes taken from the (now demolished) Naillac Tower. The eastwards-pointing arrow gives an idea of Bent’s line of view for his 1885 watercolour, from above and behind the Süleymaniye Mosque (public domain).

The windmill also makes more sense in that context: rather than the Omirou/Pythagora mill, it is probably one of the mills associated with the commercial harbour area, visible beyond the Ottoman skyline. In fact, excavations carried out around 2000 in the commercial harbour uncovered the foundations of several mills, showing that there was once a whole cluster of them there. Today only the first mill survives, restored, while the others have disappeared. So Bent was likely recording a real feature of the late Ottoman harbour landscape. Overall, the painting seems to represent a genuine seaward panorama of Ottoman Rhodes” (personal communication, Apostolos Papageorgiou, May 2026).

Detail of Theodore Bent’s watercolour (1885) of a view inside the Old Town, the Island of Rhodes (46 x 30 cm). The muezzin can just be seen on the minaret of  the Süleymaniye Mosque (Bent Archive Collection).

The line, colouring, foliage, and detail of his watercolour are typical of Bent’s naïve ‘style’, influenced, inter alia, by the work of Edward Lear (who was aware of Bent and owned a copy of his popular book on the Cyclades). One of Bent’s characteristic figures is represented by the muezzin seen calling the faithful to prayer, perched high on the Süleymaniye Mosque’s minaret. Rhodes remained in Ottoman hands until the Italian invasion of 1912. For more on the Old Town’s mosques, see  Giorgos Ntellas & Katerina Manousou-Ntella, ‘The Ottoman Mosques of the Medieval City of Rhodes’, in The Ottoman Monuments In Greece Revisited: A Tribute In The Memory Of Machiel Kiel, Athens, 2025, pp. 467 ff.

Right: The Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection)

Theodore Bent, the Çandarlı Halil Pasha Tower, Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul, 1886 (46 x 30 cm) (the Bent Archive collection).

The Bents’ first stay of any length in Constantinople, based at the Hôtel de Byzance, was from 23 January until 17 February 1886. Although they did visit the region in the spring of 1883, disembarking  at Smyrna, Mabel makes no reference to sailing into the Bosporus then; later business took them to Constantinople several times during the months they spent in Turkey in 1888. In 1886 the couple were en route for various islands off the Turkish coast, including Chios, Samos, and Patmos, looking for antiquities.

Mabel’s diary does not give the actual date of their excursion to the Roumeli Hissar Fortress on the Bosphorus, but she refers to it: “We went to Roumeli Hissar and to Bouyoukder and got to know that part of the Bosphoros pretty well and really on the whole we had very fine weather, but the inhabitants were desiring snow” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, p. 135).

Rumelihisarı (Boğazkesen Fortress), Bosphorus, Istanbul (Wikipedia).

Skilful engineers designed the fortress complex to roll up and down over the hilly contours of the landward Bosphorus here. Linked by its walls, the great features of the defences are its three massive bastions: the cylindrical Saruca Pasha tower to the north; the Zaganos Pasha tower (also cylindrical); and the Halil Pasha tower on the waterfront, with its 12 sides – originally bristling with guns to help control the strait. It is this latter tower that attracts Theodore Bent on their day out, taking a position that enables him to include the eastern (Asian) shores of this historic waterway in the distance. The tower, seeming to tilt slightly, is the obvious eye-catcher, Bent emphasising its power by the bulk and width; pleasingly, the structure is echoed by one on the far bank, two finger-pines adding elevation. Most of the tower’s adjacent structures visible to Bent have been removed and the area is undergoing extensive restoration (2026). (Mabel also mentions going to see the ‘Bouyoukder’ (Büyükdere) area, the smart quarter with fine Turkish mansions, then much favoured by diplomats and other elites.)

Bent’s articles on the immediate vicinity include:

Talks by Ann French on Greek embroideries – with references to the Bents’ collections – 2026 and 2014

1) “Embroideries and Archives: A Research Journey”, The Annual Bader Archive Lecture at the British School at Athens, 11 May 2026.

“Embroidered tunic and skirt of linen crepe with square sleeves, embroidered in tent and long cross stitches with various repeating patterns of debased floral and other forms arranged geometrically.” Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (no: 346-1886; from Karpathos in the Dodecanese, acquired from the Bents (in 1886) after their visit to the island in early 1885). Similar ‘frocks’ purchased by the Bents on Karpathos are now in the Benaki Museum, Athens (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

In the early twentieth century, a group of BSA students put together significant collections of Greek domestic embroidery.   Many of which are now in museum collections across the UK, in particular the V&A and National Museums Liverpool.  The primary collectors were R.M. Dawkins and A.J.B. Wace.  As the granddaughter of Wace and as a textile conservator, Ann French has been researching how these collections were compiled, studied, exhibited and promoted by them and their colleagues and friends. During her talk (at mins 33-35) we are introduced to some ‘frocks’ bought by the Bents while on Karpathos in 1885, and their slow, circular journey back to Greece (Athens) in the early 1930s. (The tale is also brilliantly told in the scholarly journal of the Benaki Museum, 2015-2016-2017, pp. 75-90. French includes very rare photographs, essential bibliography and notes.)

2) “Greek Dress at the Hellenic Centre, London – 4 February until 2 March 2014” – The Bents’ acquisitions and their stories!

Although Theodore and Mabel Bent lived not so far away, Marylebone, in Central London, might seem an unlikely place for an exhibition of Greek costume, but it is the home of the Hellenic Centre, a focus for philhellenes and London’s Greek community. From 4 February until 2 March 2014, there was a rare opportunity to see an impressive range of Greek dress outside its native land. As part of the event (on Friday 28 February, 7.15 pm), Ann French, Textile Conservator at the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester, used selected embroideries from the 1914 pioneering  embroidery exhibition (click for the online catalogue) at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London, to trace their individual collecting histories and reveal the different contexts, interpretations and values placed on them within UK based collections and museums.  This exhibition, which drew on the leading collections of the day, primarily from the collection of Theodore and Mabel Bent and the archaeologists R M Dawkins & A J B Wace, of Greek Embroideries displayed, for the first time in the UK, historic Greek Embroideries as an art form. There is a short, but wonderful, promotional video on YouTube (April 2021).

The exhibition features several  of the Bent’s finest costumes and pieces, and Ann refers to them in the last five minutes or so of her talk in a fascinating account of how, on Mabel’s death, one of her Karpathos frocks found its way back to Greece! (One other is in store at the V & A, and two more from Nisyros are untraced – if you have them, let us know!)

Another of the dresses acquired by the Bents on Karpathos in 1885. After a long journey, this exquisite cotton costume of the 18th century returned to Greece and is now in the Benaki Museum, Athens (EE 923).

 

Click here also for the small collection of ‘Turkish’ embroideries once owned by the Bents and now in the Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, UK, and here for dresses from Anafi in the Cyclades.

(For the Bents in Greece and Turkey, see Mabel Bent’s Chronicles, published by Archaeopress, Oxford, in 3 volumes)

For a 19th-century collection of East Mediterranean costumes, see Les Costumes Populaires…

 

The costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades of Ios in the Cyclades to impress the Bents during their stay, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens (photo = Alan King).

See also the blog ‘Folk Costume and Embroidery‘ and Alan King’s post elsewhere on the costume worn by Ekaterina Lorenziades to impress the Bents during their stay on Ios, now in the National Historical Museum, Athens.

A perch without a bird – the Great Zimbabwe raptor returns home

No. Af1926,0410.1: Fragment of carved soapstone beam from Great Zimbabwe donated to the British Museum by Mabel Bent in 1926. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Celebrity explorer Theodore Bent’s expedition to Great Zimbabwe in 1891 removed eight soapstone birds (six large and two small) from its enigmatic ruins (Bent 1892: 180). They came to London it seems with the rest of his acquisitions and were exhibited in the Bents’ townhouse, near Marble Arch, before Cecil Rhodes (the couple’s great sponsor) had them returned to Cape Town – he had previously bought a specimen from the ranger Willi Posselt and put it on display at his Groote Schuur estate. This item from Rhodes’s mansion (and the others, over the last decades) has recently (April 2026) been rightfully handed back to Zimbabwe with much celebration (including Bent on the BBC!).

What is often overlooked, however, is that these large birds were originally carved on long, soapstone beams (pillars/pedestals/plinths) that decorated a construction Bent referred to as an acropolis/sacred enclosure. Happily, his wife, Mabel Bent, kept one of these for her own collection long after Theodore’s death in 1897, only donating it to the British Museum (Af1926,0410.1), before she, too, died in 1929. This beam has survived, although it is not on display – a perch without a bird.

As it happens, Mabel’s beam (over 2m high) appears in an article coming from an interview she gave to May Crommelin (1901), ‘Lesser Lares’ (From the Collection of Mrs. Theodore Bent). The Connoisseur: an illustrated magazine for collectors. pp. 161-4.

Examples of the iconic soapstone birds the Bents removed from Great Zimbabwe in 1891. From Cape Town they have now been transferred to Zimbabwe (Mabel Bent’s photos reproduced in ‘The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland’ by Theodore Bent, 1892, p.181).

Theodore Bent (1892: 158-161) records that this ‘…tall decorated soapstone pillar 11 feet 6 inches in height, which stood on the platform already alluded to… acted as a centre to a group of monoliths; the base of this pillar we found, the rest had been broken off… It was worked with bands of geometric patterns around it, each different from the other and divided into compartments by circular patterns, one of which is the chevron pattern found on the circular ruin below; it only runs round a portion of the pillar; and may possibly have been used to orient it towards the setting sun.’ (It appears that the remaining portion of the ‘pillar’ found its way to the Cape Town museum.)

Top right, Mabel Bent’s beam from Great Zimbabwe illustrated in May Crommelin’s (1901), ‘Lesser Lares’ (From the Collection of Mrs. Theodore Bent). ‘The Connoisseur: an illustrated magazine for collectors’. pp. 161-4.

In 1930, Mabel’s beam – which had broken in two parts and was taped up (see the illustration from The Connoisseur) – was exhibited at the British Museum as part of the ‘Loan Exhibition of Antiquities from Zimbabwe and other Ancient Sites in Rhodesia’, organised for the British Association for the Advancement of Science and relevant African institutions (The South African Museum, Cape Town; The Rhodesian Museum, Bulawayo; and the Queen Victoria Memorial, Salisbury). A cast was subsequently made and sent to South Africa, Mabel Bent’s original remaining in London. After the event, it seems that the beam was separated into two parts – the base part going to Cape Town, and the top part remaining in the British Museum (No. Af1926,0410.1, see illustration). The base part, we believe, is now (April 2026) also in the process of being repatriated to Zimbabwe from the South Africa Museum (Iziko) Museums. Should not the two parts be rejoined?

No. CRS.73: Plaster cast of soapstone beam with bird, based on the Bents’ acquisition from Great Zimbabwe, 1891. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The British Museum also commissioned a replica cast of a beam (c. 175 cm high) with bird attached, giving an idea of what a complete object would have looked like; it is described as: ‘Cast; sculpture, made of plaster. In form of a bird sitting on top of a pedestal. Set into square base. Painted grey throughout to match original soapstone object. Distinguished by short panel of chevrons at front of chest. Plumage indicated by parallel oblique lines.’

Bent’s African watercolours

The collection of Bent’s contemporary watercolours in the Zimbabwe National Archives (Harare) is still under lock and key and virtually impossible it seems to access, despite several enquiries and approaches by eminent local academics. Although we do not know what condition they are in after so long, hopefully one day this unique and highly important resource can be made available to international researchers.

 

 

 

Bent’s watercolours reproduced in his 1892 book on Great Zimbabwe, now in the the National Archives, Harare (the Bent Archive).

Bibliography

Theodore Bent, The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland. London, 1892.
Mabel Bent, The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2, Africa. Oxford, 2012.

A new and rare photo of Theodore Bent appears (Summer 2025)

The very rare portrait of Theodore Bent from his obituary in ‘St. James’s Budget’, 14 May 1897 (Bent died on 5 May 1897). The studio of J. Russell & Sons, pre 1895. (From the British Library Collection, shelfmark MFM.MLD32, 14/05/1897, page 15, reproduced with permission).

That invaluable resource The British Newspaper Archive regularly adds new and arcane material. Recently (Summer 2025), they included in their collection the St James’s Budget (a weekly digest of the St James’s Gazette, a London evening newspaper for the middle classes), and the issue of 14 May 1897 (p. 15) carried an obituary of Theodore Bent, who had died on 5 May.

The obituary (see our anthology) includes a very rare photograph of Bent, from the studio of J. Russell & Sons, the establishment’s photographer of choice: a photograph that in all likelihood has not been reproduced since 1897.

We don’t know for the moment the date of the photograph, but it probably comes from a session in the Baker Street branch of Russell’s, shot, possibly, as late as the Spring of 1895 – a session that might also have resulted in some other iconic images we have of the Bents, including the one of Theodore – with whip and topee – that Mabel selected for her husband’s obituary in the Illustrated London News of 15 May 1897 (p. 669), which is well known.

Also from the Russell studio (pre 1895), Theodore, with whip and topee, an image Mabel selected for her husband’s obituary in the ‘Illustrated London News’ of 15 May 1897 (p. 669).

Accordingly, we now have four images of the Bents from Russell’s, two of Theodore and two of Mabel, probably taken at the same time. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of a Russell photograph showing the couple together. The Bents’ travel schedule, and commitments in Britain, would have made arranging a studio session complicated.

 

Mabel Bent dressed for travel. (Photo taken (pre 1895) in the studios of society-photographers, J. Russell & Sons).

The fourth Russell image is of Mabel, standing confidently by the side of one of her own cameras – she had become expedition photographer as early as 1885.

Sitters for J. Russell & Sons are well represented in London collections, e.g. The National Portrait Gallery and The Victoria and Albert Museum.

For other photos related to the Bents, see our Gallery

Hamdi Bey and Fl. Vibia Sabina, the Bent’s statue from Thasos (3rd century CE)

Istanbul Archaeological Museum, the Bents’ statue of Vibia Sabina from Thasos (3rd century CE). Photo G. Dallorto (Wikipedia Creative Commons).

Sunday, 20 March 1887: “Yesterday morning we turned over a pedestal and found this inscription: ‘Good Luck. The Elders to the most excellent Archpriestess Floueivia Savia of unblemished ancestry, their own mother, the first who ever enjoyed equal honours with the Elders’.”

Introduction

Among all their other ‘finds’, three distinctive statues stand proud in the Bents’ list of Aegean trophies – all from islands. They could not be more different. The earliest is the bizarre, ostensibly prehistoric, limestone cult figurine (?) from Karpathos in the Dodecanese, now famously known as the ‘Karpathos Lady’; the next, chronologically, is the ‘Bent Kouros’ (6th c. BCE) from Aliki, Thasos. (See below, where both are illustrated  note 1 .) The third, the subject of this short article, and also from Thasos, is the 3rd-century CE local grey marble statue of Fulvia Vibia Sabina (83-136/137 CE) – inter alia, noble Roman empress, priestess, wife, and second cousin once removed of the Emperor Hadrian.

The Greek island of Thasos, c. 17 nautical miles south of Kavala in the northern Aegean. The port of Limenas, the findspot of the Bents’ statue of Vibia Sabina, is on the northeast coast (Google Maps).

Our setting is a central area in the ancient harbour town of Limenas, on the northeast corner of Thasos, an island c. 17 nautical miles south of Kavala, modern Greece, but in Turkish hands when the British celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent visited between early March and early May 1887. The Bents have been busy ‘investigating’ (which seems to have included some blasting!) a complex of Roman remains. They discover a large statue, and it is love at first sight for Mabel, who provides some (sentimental) details in her diary:

Saturday, 19 March 1887: “… we turned over a pedestal and found this inscription: ‘Good Luck. The Elders to the most excellent Archpriestess Floueivia Savia of unblemished ancestry, their own mother, the first who ever enjoyed equal honours with the Elders’… We then became aware that the lady was lying underneath and then, of course, great and careful cleaning of the earth took place, a road cut in the great bank we had thrown up, and, finally, she was revealed; she had fallen headlong on her face, fortunately on sand and was very little broken. Her right hand and the tip of her nose were broken ‘then’, as the workmen say, and are missing. A ship’s captain was called to our aid and with great yells and screams and counter advice, she was hauled safely out. People were addressed as ‘infant’, ‘baby dear’, ‘beloved’, and ‘brother’, including Theodore and [Mustapha] Bey. Poor little man, I have talked so sensibly to him about not letting the holes be filled up and he is so well-meaning that I feel sure he would like to begin a museum with Floueivia. But we want her home…

Mabel Bent’s original ‘Chronicle’ entry for 20 March 1877, referring to the crosses ‘scribbled’ on the statue of Fl. Vibia Sabina (Hellenic Society Archive, London, Creative Commons).

“Today [i.e. Sunday 20 March] we found that children had scribbled crosses with sharp stones on Floueivia so that I sat by her while Theodore fetched the Bey and he desired a zaptich [officer], Vasillikos, to live and sleep by her. It being piercingly cold he was not pleased, but at last it was decided to remove her at once to the ‘konak’ – the Bey’s palace. Accordingly, no wheeled vehicle existing here, a forked tree was formed into a sledge with logs across and the lady tied on and then three yokes of oxen attached and away went Floueivia across a stream first, under the olive trees, with a gaily dressed and very picturesque crowd of various nationalities, and the chief rejoicers following behind.

“With the grey statue on the yellow and orange sledge, the whole scene was one of the prettiest triumphal processions any archaeologist ever beheld. It was so strange and mysterious to know her name and a scrap of her history and not yet to know what her face was like, and she was lying in such a helpless way with her head a little lower than her feet, one wondered why she did not help herself up and she looked so pretty and young and as I sat cross legged on her inscription imploring care for her head, I wonder why she had ever been so honoured and thought how glad she must be to come out after being trodden on and ploughed over for 2000 years – I should have liked to have a good comfortable cry.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 200-202)

Site – The ‘Arch of Caracalla’, Limenas, Thasos

The find-site, the general area of Agora, on Thasos was a complex jumble of large stone blocks discovered by Theodore in a field owned by one Mr Sponti. Further discoveries, including  inscriptions, revealed  that Theodore had actually uncovered a monumental ceremonial arch dedicated to the Emperor Caracalla (ruled 188-217 CE) by grateful Thasians, with the statue of Fulvia Vibia Sabina forming part of it, located by one of the entrances. The local grey limestone could well have provided the figure, or she might perhaps have been commissioned from overseas, judging by the quality of the workshop. Theodore is credited with the unearthing of the remnants of this enormous site, and he later contributed several articles about his discoveries, including his ‘Arch of Caracalla’ and the statue of Fulvia. In one of these articles he gives his account of finding the statue:

Limenas, Thasos, reconstruction of the ‘Arch of Caracalla’ discovered by the Bents in 1887. The statue of Vibia Sabina stands in front of the second pier from the right (J.-Y. Marc, ΑΕΜΘ 7 (1993), fig.2 (public domain).

“In front of the northern columns nearest to the city, and consequently in the place of honour, stood a prettily adorned pedestal 6 ft. 9 in. high [2.06m], with an inscription which tells us that the statue which surmounted it was erected by the senate ‘to their mother Phloueibia Sabina, the most worthy archpriestess of incomparable ancestors, the first and only lady who had ever received equal honours to those who were in the senate.’ The statue we found at the foot of the pedestal, luckily preserved by falling into a bed of sand, so that only the tip of the nose and the right hand were missing; the left hand, which hung by her side, is adorned with a large ring, and the whole body is covered by a gracefully hanging robe; the face is that of a young and lovely woman. Although not resembling statues to the same person, it is highly probable it was erected to the honour of the Empress Sabina, wife of Hadrian…” (J.T. Bent, ‘Discoveries in Thasos’. Athenæum, Issue 3113 (Jun), p. 839)

The Inscription

Fulvia’s inscription was found by the Bents on a limestone base, c. 2 m high, and probably 1 m + in width and depth. Investigations are being made to trace it – very likely still in situ or in the newly renovated Thasos Museum.

Theodore and Mabel provide various interpretations of the inscription on the statue’s base. The first we have is from Mabel’s notebook (see illustration above), obviously an on-the-spot translation from the Greek made by the couple:  “Good Luck. The Elders to the most excellent Archpriestess Floueivia Savia of unblemished ancestry, their own mother, the first who ever enjoyed equal honours with the Elders.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 200)

Bent’s account in the Athenæum (as previously mentioned) informs that the statue “was erected by the senate ‘to their mother Phloueibia Sabina, the most worthy archpriestess of incomparable ancestors, the first and only lady who had ever received equal honours to those who were in the senate.'”

A further version is provided by the eminent philologist, and friend of Bent, Edward Lee Hicks (1843-1919), later Bishop of Lincoln (UK). He published many of Bent’s inscriptions from Thasos and elsewhere over a five-year period in the late 1880s, e.g. ‘Inscriptions from Thasos’, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1887,  Vol. 8, 409-438).

This was a joint article with Bent, in which Hicks allocates the number 31 to the inscription. Bent provides some further information on the arch and the statue:

E.L. Hicks’ transliteration of the inscription on the plinth supporting the Bents’ statue of Fl. Vibia Sabina, part of the Arch of Caracalla, discovered in the spring of 1877 in Limenas, Thasos (Bent and Hicks, ‘Inscriptions from Thasos’. ‘The Journal of Hellenic Studies’, 1887, Vol. 8, 426) (archive.org).

“The Roman arch we found in the town occupied a conspicuous position on what appears to have been the central street, the site being only indicated by a stone about three feet out of the ground, the rest being buried in some twelve feet of soil. The arch was 54 feet in length, and rested on four bases—the northern and southern columns being alone perfect—4 feet 8 inches square at the base, 9 feet 5 inches high, and having a small pattern down the outer edge. The two outer entrances were 6 feet 2 inches in width, the central expanse being 20 feet, and the whole structure rested on a raised marble pavement 6 feet 11 inches in width… In front and behind the two central columns of the arch were four pedestals, three with inscriptions… That to the front and to the right was 6 feet 9 inches high [just over 2 m], and had inscription No. 31; just below it lay the statue which had surmounted it, in perfect condition save for the tip of the nose and the right hand. It represented a female figure 6 feet 3 inches high [just under 2 m], enveloped in a long cloak, the left hand by her side being adorned with a large ring; the face was that of a young and graceful lady, and the drapery hung much more gracefully than it did on fragments of the statues which we found close to the other pedestals…” (pp. 437-438)

In a summary of ongoing research in Greece in 1886/7, the eminent archaeologist E.A. Gardner refers to the Bents’ statue (p. 284):

Plan of the ancient capital of Thasos. The Bents’ ‘Arch of Caracalla’, in the general area of the agora, arrowed (Wikipedia).

“Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bent are now exploring in Thasos. They seem not as yet to have come across any of the archaic sculptures or inscriptions for which the island seemed so promising a field. But the agora has been found, and a triumphal arch with an inscription in honour (apparently) of Caracalla… In front of the arch were two bases. One of them held a statue, more than life size, which has been recovered. It is a female portrait, and on the basis is the following very curious inscription, calling Flavia Vibia Sabina μητέρα γερουσίας, and stating that she was the first and only woman from all time that ever shared equally in the privileges of the senators.

᾿Αγαθῇ τύχῃ. ἡ γερουσία Φλ. Οὐειβίαν Σαβεῖ(να)ν τὴν ἀξιολογωτάτην ἀρχιερεῖαν καὶ ἀπὸ προγόνων ἀσύνκριτον, μητέρα ἑαυτὴς, μόνην καὶ πρώτην τῶν ἀπ᾽ αἰῶνος μετασχοῦσαν τῶν ἴσων τειμῶν τοῖς γερουσιάζουσιν.

“Flavia Vibia Sabina seems to have been an ancient and successful champion of the political rights of her sex: and if, as may be hoped, her statue be transported to London, it should not in these times miss its due honour…”

Happily, she is never, however, to travel to the foggy London of the late 19th century, for she is coveted by the mercurial Turkish polymath, and first director of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910)

The Bents’ great nemesis, Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910) (Wikipedia).

At the time the Bents were ‘active’, modern Turkey, like modern Greece, was well aware of its cultural assets and soon placed tight restrictions on amateur, independent excavators – whether the Bents saw themselves as ‘archaeologists’ or not. Rights to dig were, in a way, licensed to the newly formed archaeological institutions in Greece (e.g. The French School at Athens – 1846; German Archaeological Institute at Athens – 1874; American School of Classical Studies at Athens – 1881; British School at Athens – 1886; etc.), and Turkey was about to do the same. In Istanbul, the official overseeing Turkey’s clampdown on illegal handling of cultural assets was Osman Hamdi Bey. Previously, in 1884, this remarkable artist/intellectual oversaw the initiation of regulations prohibiting historical artifacts from being smuggled abroad (‘Asar-ı Atîka Nizamnamesi’). Naturally enough, he soon became an implacable foe of the Bents, who, at last, by 1889, were forced to ‘work’ in lands where any restrictions on their explorations were minimal if non-existent, i.e. Bahrain and other regions where the British Empire held sway.

While on Thasos, the couple undertook their investigations under the watchful and approving eye of a local ‘Bey’, who clearly kept Istanbul informed of Theodore’s major finds. Consequently, he was unable to return to London with anything more then his rolls of paper ‘squeezes’ of the inscriptions he uncovered.

To the Bents’ great regret, Fulvia Vibia Sabina was post haste crated up and despatched to the Turkish capital and its new museum (see Gustave Mendel, Catalogue des Sculptures Grecques, Romaines et Byzantines I, pp. 347-348, no. 137 (Constantinople, 1912), museum inv. no. 375).

On a later trip to Constantinople in February 1888, Mabel paid a visit to Fulvia, obviously still bitter: “We also went to the museum and saw our statues exposed to the weather, planted in mud and really we carefully looked and saw nothing so good of their kind. No wonder Hamdi won’t give them up. He would like a few things out of our own little museum [i.e. the Bents’ London home] for he has some rubbish in his. How angry he’d be if he knew of our digging at Vourgounda in Karpathos! [in 1885]. Well, we hope to be even with him yet for robbing us.” (The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, Oxford, 2006, p. 230)

For an amusing retelling of Theodore’s (almost) love-hate relationship with Osman Hamdi Bey, see the former’s article ‘Hamdi Bey’, first published in the Contemporary Review in 1888 (Vol. 54, 1888 (July/Dec), pp. 724-733).

Those scratches

“Today we found that children had scribbled crosses with sharp stones on Floueivia.” One of the crosses still just visible on the statue today in Istanbul’s archaeological museum.

Mabel was clearly mortified by the crosses she found scratched into ‘her’ statue: “Today we found that children had scribbled crosses with sharp stones on Floueivia…”

How Mabel could be certain that children were to blame she does not say – it could easily have been any Orthodox believer trying to ‘de-paganise’ the Roman archpriestess. The crosses remain just visible on ‘Floueivia’s front today – obviously intended to be seen, and thus, as it were, reclaimed by the Church.

 

 

Note 1: The Bents’ two other remarkable statues

“The Karpathos Lady”. Acquired by the Bents from Karpathos island in 1885 (Trustees of the British Museum).

The other notable statues in the Bents’ trio of statues are the Neolithic (?) limestone cult (?) figurine from Karpathos in the Dodecanese, the ‘Karpathos Lady‘, which the couple were able to spirit off the island in 1885 – they had purchased it from a local and resold it to the British Museum.

 

 

 

The ‘Bent Kouros’ from Aliki, Thasos (see Gustave Mendel, ‘Catalogue des Sculptures Grecques, Romaines et Byzantines’, Vol. II. p.215, inv. no. 517, Constantinople, 1914; image: archive.org).

The other was, like Fl. Vibia Sabina, from Thasos (the site of Aliki), but older, 6th century BC. It is in the form of an iconic kouros, possibly representing Apollo, and now referred to as “the Bent Kouros”. It is also in Istanbul (see Tour 5: 1887 – From Istanbul and into the northern Aegean; Thasos excavations).
Return from Note 1


 

Further reading

Bent’s articles associated with Thasos:

1877: ‘Discoveries in Thasos’. Athenæum, Issue 3113 (Jun), 839. [Reprinted in ‘Archæological News’, by A.L. Frothingham, Jr., The American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts, Dec., 1887, Vol. 3, No. 3/4 (Dec., 1887), 446-455]

1877: ‘Thasiote Tombs’. Classical Review, Vol. 1(7), 210-211

1877: ‘A Thasian Decree’. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol, 8, 401-8. [With E.L. Hicks]

1877: ‘Inscriptions from Thasos’. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 8, 409-38. [With E.L. Hicks]

1888: ‘Hamdi Bey’. Contemporary Review, Vol. 54 (July/Dec), 724-33. [Reprinted in Littell’s Living Age, Vol. 179 (1888), 613ff]

Mabel Bent’s on-the-spot record of Thasos can be found in The Travel Chronicles of Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, Vol. 1, 2006, pp. 198-215. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Other works of interest:

2012: Sheila Dillon, ‘Female Portraiture in the Hellenistic Period’, in S.L. James and S. Dillon (eds) A companion to Women in the Ancient World, pp. 274-275, London: Wiley-Blackwell.

2010: Sheila Dillon, The Female Portrait Statue in the Greek World, pp. 147-149, and p. 278. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1967: George Daux, Guide De Thasos, Paris: French School at Athens.

2000-2025: Twenty-five years of Bent researches – our want list!

Map and title page of Bent’s bestseller on the Cyclades (1885) (archive.org)

2025 brings the 25th anniversary of our researches into the lives and travels of celebrity explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent, studies that began with a reprint (Oxford, 2002) of Bent’s The Cyclades (now 140 years old in 2025).

Over these twenty-five years of following the Bents (five more than they were granted for their travels together) in the Levant, Africa, and Arabia, a number of questions remain unanswered – awaiting the discoveries of future  explorers. Our want list in fact:

No. 1) The Missing Chronicle – Ethiopia 1893?

Mabel Bent’s ‘Chronicles’ in the archives of the Hellenic Society, London. All except for the missing notebook covering the Bents’ trip to ‘Abyssinia’ in 1893  (the Bent Archive).

“When I returned, after inspecting the convent, to my dismay [Mabel] was gone, and what happened she thus tells in her Chronicle…”

Where is Mabel Bent’s missing travel diary (‘Chronicle’) covering the couple’s journey to ‘Abyssinia’ in 1893? We know from Bent that it provided material for his book on the area – The Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1893, see especially pp. 45, 47 for the quote above; and see Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3 (Oxford, 2012, pp. 175-207)). It consists, probably, of a single notebook as the couple’s trip there was curtailed; it is the only one apparently not with the others in the archives of the Hellenic Society, London (presented before or after Mabel’s death (1929) by her niece Violet Ethel folliott (1882-1932)). Its interest to students of the region cannot be overstated, but the chances are as slim as Mabel’s notebooks themselves that it will ever turn up, but who knows?

No. 2) The fabled clay ‘Bethel Seal/Stamp’?

The clay stamp/seal acquired by the Bents in the Wadi Hadramaut in 1894 (Bent Archive).

Where is the fabled clay seal/stamp bought by the Bents in the Wadi Hadramaut in 1894, and which possibly Mabel later concealed at ‘Bethel’ (Beitin, West Bank, 5 km northeast of Ramallah) in the early 1900s in Theodore’s honour? For Mabel, Bethel represented the terminus of one of the frankincense trails from Yemen and Oman, via the Wadi Hadramaut, regions that inspired the couple from 1894 until Bent’s death in 1897. What more appropriate gesture by his grieving widow than to bury the seal (presumably a trader’s mark on a consignment of resin) as a tribute and private memorial (see their Southern Arabia (1900, London, Chapters VI-XXII) and Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 3 (2010, Oxford, pp. 129-237)). Found (or its double), by archaeologists in the 1950s, where is it now?

No. 3) When Mabel met Theodore?

Mabel Bent in her wedding dress, by T. Fall, 9 Baker Street, Portman Square, London. (If the photo predates the August 1877 ceremony, unlikely, she would still be Mabel Virginia Anna Hall-Dare) (Bent Archive).

“Before she was married she travelled in many countries including Spain and Italy, and met her husband in the Arctic region – i.e., Norway; from her earliest years having a wish to see those distant lands where the ordinary traveller fears to tread, ‘And how fortunate that my husband’s tastes should be exactly the same as my own,’ said Mrs. Bent, as we talked of the days when she had no idea her wishes would be so fully gratified.” (The Gentlewoman – The Illustrated Weekly Journal for Gentlewomen, No. 175, Vol. VII, Saturday, 11 November 1893, pp. 621-622)

How, when, and where exactly in Norway did the young Theodore and Mabel meet? They were distant cousins via the Lambarts of Yorkshire and County Meath. No documentation has surfaced, we only have a throwaway line from Mabel saying that’s where they set eyes on each other first. It would have been in the early 1870s, Theodore having come down from Oxford. They were married fairly soon thereafter in the little church of Staplestown, Co. Carlow, Ireland, on 2 August 1877, and began their 20 years of travel together (Levant, Africa, Arabia) with a honeymoon in Italy.

No. 4) Bent’s unpublished watercolours?

‘Kalenzia, Isle of Socotra, 1897’. Watercolour (detail), by Theodore Bent (private collection, reproduced with permission).

How can the known, but unpublished, Bent watercolours (of ‘Mashonaland’, the Greek Islands, Arabia, etc.) be preserved and exhibited? Important historical records, they should be made accessible to the scholar-traveller. They do turn up from time to time. One, of a scene from Socotra, was auctioned recently and is now in a private collection and reproduced with kind permission.

No. 5) Mabel’s photographs?

A unique photograph (1890) taken by Mabel Bent in Cilicia. It was found inside one of her notebooks (The Hellenic Society).

Where are all Mabel’s photographs? Beginning in 1885, Mabel was the expedition photographer on the couple’s adventures. Of the thousands of plates/prints, all that remain are the images reproduced in Bent’s three monographs (1892, 1893, 1900) and some few of his published articles. Mabel’s work did get transferred to lantern slides for Bent’s lectures and they were stored in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, London, before being discarded in the 1950s, being (then) beyond the powers of conservation – a huge loss. Tantalizingly, there is a paper print of a monument from Turkey’s western coastal area, tucked inside one of Mabel’s notebooks.

No. 6) ‘The Bent Turkish Embroidery Bequest’?

Detail from Bent Collection embroideries – PRSMG 1970.4 (Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston).

The Bents were great collectors of costumes, fabrics, and embroideries (to keep or sell). A mystery today is the provenance of the ‘Bent Turkish Embroidery Bequest‘ (more modest than it sounds) in the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (UK). It would be fascinating to discover how the items found their way from the Eastern Mediterranean to Lancashire. (Only 80 km southeast of Preston is the Bents’ country house – Sutton Hall, Sutton; perhaps  an answer lies in this direction.)

No. 7)  Robert McNair Wilson Swan (1858-1904)?

Neolithic stone celt from Perak (Malaysia), donated by Swan to the British Museum after 1900 (Asset number 1613672945, © The Trustees of the British Museum).

Tuesday, 18 December 1883: “Met Mr. Swan who more than fulfilled our warmest hopes.” (Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 1 (p. 21; Oxford, 2006). Is there a photograph anywhere of the Bents’ great friend Robert M.W. Swan? The couple met the latter when he was a mining engineer on the Cycladic island of Antiparos in 1883. In 1891 he joined the travellers for their investigations at Great Zimbabwe, where he undertook surveying duties, contributing a chapter to Bent’s Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) (and see Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent, Vol. 2 (2012, Oxford, pp. 17-175)). A decade later he was working for various mining companies on the Malay Peninsular, only to die of complications following liver surgery in Kuala Lumpur in 1904 (c. 45 years, the same age as Bent on his death coincidentally). No archive seems to have a likeness of this driven, capable Scotsman and we would like very much to see him, or learn of his final resting place.

 

 

The Bents’ ‘Great Zimbabwe’ collection in the British Museum

The famous soapstone bird the Bents discovered at Great Zimbabwe (From “The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland” (1892).

The three major fields of research (between 1880 and 1900) for celebrity British explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent were the Eastern Mediterranean, Arabia, and Africa. We recently asked Mike Tucker, author behind zimfieldguide.com (delivering historic, cultural and wildlife information for Zimbabwe), if he had an angle on the Bents’ 1891 explorations of Great Zimbabwe and other sites, and he very kindly provided the following essay. Thank you Mike.

James Theodore Bent and Mabel Virginia Anna Bent gave many artefacts to the British Museum from Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) collected during and after their excavation at Great Zimbabwe in 1891.

Introduction

A section of Theodore's map in southern Africa (photo: The Bent Archive).
A section of Theodore’s map in southern Africa (The Bent Archive).

The story of the Bents’ excavation at Great Zimbabwe is told in the article ‘The Bent’s archaeological expedition to Great Zimbabwe in 1891 and the prominent part played by Mabel Bent’ under ‘Masvingo Province’ on the www.zimfieldguide.com website. Theodore Bent wrote over 150 articles, papers and lectures, comprehensively listed in the Bibliography section of the website devoted to the couple. Both Theodore and Mabel Bent were prolific authors and their books are also listed on the website. Other information and details of their journey come from Theodore Bent’s book The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892), written very rapidly on their return home to 13 Great Cumberland Place, London – it proved very popular and ran to five editions. Finally, I used facsimile copies of Mabel’s notebooks housed at the Hellenic Society Archive, University College London.

The Bents’ excavations at Great Zimbabwe

In 1877, Theodore Bent married Mabel (née Hall-Dare, 1847-1929) who became his constant companion, photographer, illustrator and diarist on all his travels and from the time of their marriage they went abroad nearly every year.

Peter Garlake (1973) gives a number of quotes that are relevant to these first excavations carried out at Great Zimbabwe and are repeated below. Bent approached the question of Great Zimbabwe believing, like almost everyone, that its origins must lie with a civilised and ancient people from outside Africa and he had in fact been chosen to undertake the project because of his prior archaeological work on the Phoenicians.

But as far as the Phoenicians were concerned the excavations were showing little evidence of their presence. “Now, of course it is a great temptation to talk of Phoenician ruins when there is anything like gold to be found in connection with them, but from my own personal experience of Phoenician ruins I cannot say that [the Great Zimbabwe ruins] bear the slightest resemblance whatsoever” (Garlake 1973: 66). Every local resident they met was keen to perpetuate the Phoenician myth as was their patron, the British South Africa Company, and the Bents soon saw that the archaeological evidence was contrary to this idea, “the names of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba were on everybody’s lips and have become so distasteful to us that we never expect to hear them again without an involuntary shudder”.

In June 1891 their excavation work around the Conical Tower within the Great Enclosure soon disproved the theories that Great Zimbabwe was ancient and of foreign origin. “We found but little depth of soil, very little debris, and indications of a native occupation of the place up to a very recent date” and Bent is quoted by his local guide C.C. Meredith as saying, “I have not much faith in the antiquity of these ruins, I think they are native. Everything we have so far is native.”

Great Zimbabwe – Aerial view of Great Enclosure and Valley Complex, looking west (Wikipedia, with site locations added).

To quote directly from Peter Garlake, “Work in the elliptical building [Great Enclosure] was abandoned within a fortnight and excavations started in the eastern enclosure of the Hill Ruin [Hill Complex] ‘because it occurred to us that a spot situated on the shady side of the hill might possibly be free from native desecration.’ This was not to be. Throughout the deposits there were great numbers of household objects: sherds from hand built vessels, pottery spindle whorls, iron, bronze and copper spearheads, arrowheads, axes, adzes and hoes and gold working equipment such as tuyères and crucibles. Most of these still seemed indistinguishable from contemporary Karanga articles.” (Garlake 1973: 67)

Yet Bent still continued to be focussed on Phoenician origins. In the Great Enclosure were found four birds carved in soapstone on monoliths and flat soapstone dishes with abstract patterns or animals carved around the edges, small carved cylinders that looked like phalli and an ingot mould: objects unique to the site. Had similar objects been found elsewhere? Bent theorised the birds might copy stelae from Assyria, Mycenae, Phoenician Cyprus, Egypt and Sudan: the patterns on some of the objects resembled Phoenician motifs, the mould resembled one found in Cornwall and thought to be Phoenician.

Similarly with the architecture. The shape of the Great Enclosure resembled the temple of Marib in Southern Arabia, the Conical Tower looked like a Phoenician temple on a Byblos coin as well as structures in Assyria, Malta and Sardinia. The birds might symbolize gods or goddesses, the disc patterns indicate sun worship, the soapstone monoliths and phalli were “grosser forms of nature-worship” (Garlake 1973: 68) and so on.

From his above muddled ideas Bent decided there was, “little room for doubt that the builders and workers of the Great Zimbabwe came from the Arabian Peninsula… a prehistoric race built the ruins… which eventually became influenced and perhaps absorbed in the… organisations of the Semite…a northern race coming from Arabia…closely akin to the Phoenician and Egyptian…and eventually developing into the more civilised races of the ancient world.”

His final conclusions, “that the ruins and the things in them are not in any way connected with any known African race” seem extraordinary in view of all the artefacts excavated by the Bents in 1891.

The Collection of Bent artefacts from Great Zimbabwe at the British Museum

The numbers of objects donated below represent only those listed on the British Museum’s online collection, there may well be others in storage and not yet listed.

In all, the British Museum lists on their online collection 583 objects given by Theodore Bent. Those from present-day Zimbabwe number 272 objects (i.e. 47%) the remainder come from their archaeological excavations in Greece, the Turkish coast, Ethiopia, Arabia, etc.

Mabel Bent gave a further 155 objects. Those from present-day Zimbabwe number 26 objects with the remainder from Iran, Yemen, Arabia, Greece, etc. Her final donation to the museum was in 1926, three years before her death, suggesting that the artefacts possessed great sentimental value, reminding her of her twenty years of travel with her husband, who died at the early age of 45 in 1897.

For the purposes of this essay, I have only shown below a representative sample of the objects that the Bents collected or excavated on their 1891 expedition to present-day Zimbabwe.

British Museum objects listed mostly alphabetically and by location area where known. All the images are © The Trustees of the British Museum and appear under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. (The images are not to scale – for dimensions, refer to the Bent Collection pages in the BM online catalogue.)

Plate 1: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).
Plate 2: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).
Plate 3: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).
Plate 4: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).
Plate 5: A selection from the 100s of artefacts acquired by the British Museum from the Bents following their expedition to present-day Zimbabwe in 1891 (The Trustees of the British Museum).

References:
Garlake, Peter S. 1973. Great Zimbabwe. London: Thames and Hudson.
Bent, J. Theodore 1969. The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland. Bulawayo: Books of Rhodesia, Gold Series, Vol. 5 [first edition 1892, Longman, Green & Co., London].

… and one further curio from Mashonaland:

Cane snuff-box with incised line design (Af1892,0714.99) (Trustees of the British Museum).

“After leaving Chipunza’s kraal, and crossing the River Rusapi, a ride of two hours brought us to Makoni’s kraal… Most of the men had very large holes pierced in the lobes of their ears, into which they would insert snuff-boxes of reeds, decorated with black geometric patterns, and other articles” (The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892, pp. 354-5). Bent acquires one and it is now in the British Museum (Af1892,0714.99.a), with its original label from 14 July 1892.