Sumeromania: The History of the British Museum’s Girsu Collection

Sumeromania uncovers the dramatic and complex story behind one of the British Museum’s most important holdings: its vast collection of objects from the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu (modern Tello, Iraq). From statues of rulers to thousands of cuneiform tablets, these artifacts entered the museum during a period of fierce competition among empires, archaeologists, and dealers. Drawing on an extraordinary archive of correspondence, reports, and trustees’ minutes, the book reconstructs how these objects were excavated, looted, purchased, and transported between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

It reveals the entanglements of Ottoman authorities, French excavators, British officials, and an international network of antiquities dealers, while also tracing the museum’s evolving accession practices. By linking archival documents with objects in the collection, Sumeromania not only provides a reassessment of provenance but also resituates these materials within their archaeological and geopolitical contexts. In doing so, the book offers a major contribution to the study of the history of archaeology, museum collecting, and imperialism.

It reconfigures our understanding of how modern institutions came to shape—and distort—the material record of ancient Mesopotamia. Specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies, Assyriology, and archaeology will find new insights into Girsu’s recovery, while scholars of museum studies, the history of collecting, and British imperial history will discover a case study rich in archival detail and contemporary resonance.