Franz Cumont’s Syrian Tour. A Belgian Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

Franz Cumont’s Syrian Tour. A Belgian Archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire. This paper highlights the Western scientific traveller as an intermediary between Orient and Occident around the turn of the nineteenth century by presenting a case study on the Belgian archaeologist and historian of religions, Franz Cumont (1868-1947), and the dossier of the journey he undertook in Northern Syria, May 1907. After a discussion of this classicist’s relation to the Orient, I give an account of Cumont’s Syrian tour, based on three different writing contexts : the academic output of the expedition in Northern Syria, Cumont’s private travel notes, and both his active and passive correspondence. Still focusing on the case of Franz Cumont and the dossier of his archaeological journey in 1907, in a third and fourth section I examine two ways in which the Orient was brought to the Occident by the scientific traveller. Firstly, by the acquisition and transfer of archaeological material from the Orient to the Occident, providing Western institutions with Eastern artefacts. Secondly, by the transfer of ideas and images : how did the Occidental scientific traveller, the archaeologist, convey his experiences with the “ real” Orient to the European readership ? I will disclose how Franz Cumont expressed his evaluation of the ancient Orient, which he studied, and the contemporary Orient, which he experienced during his travels.