Archaeological Expedition
According to Charles Meryon, she came into possession of a medieval Italian manuscript copied from the records of a monastery somewhere in Syria. According to this document, a great treasure was hidden under the ruins of a mosque at the port city of Ashkelon which had been lying in ruins for 600 years. In 1815, on the strength of this map, she traveled to the ruins of Ashkelon on the Mediterranean coast north of Gaza, and persuaded the Ottoman authorities to allow her to excavate the site. The governor of Jaffa, Abu Nabbut (Father of the Cudgel) was ordered to accompany her. This resulted in the first archaeological excavation in Palestine. While she did not find the hoard of three million gold coins reportedly buried there, the excavators unearthed a seven-foot headless marble statue. She ordered the statue to be smashed into "a thousand pieces" and thrown into the sea.
Read more about this topic: Lady Hester Stanhope
Famous quotes containing the word expedition:
“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”
—Janet Frame (b. 1924)