ITP Diary 1st September 2014: Fatih Yucel

The Most Exciting Day at the British Museum

Today was the most exciting and most sought for day of our programme. We were to exhibit our personal researches and objects. The day began in our departments; I was in the library of the Greece and Rome Department. This department has an amazing library and the staff of the department is quite interesting as well.

We had been working for this day since the beginning of August. I was going to exhibit an imperial permission given to John Turtle Wood, enabling him to excavate in Ayasulug, modern day Selçuk where the ancient city of Ephesus is located.

John Turtle Wood was an architect and engineer in the construction of the Izmir-Denizli railroad in the west of the Turkey during 1860’s and he was passionate about archaeology.

He was one of the members of the Dilettanti Society who were amateur archaeologists who founded the modern archaeology.

John T. Wood wanted to find a very famous but lost monument of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemision. For realizing his excavations, he needed a permit from the Ottoman Government every year.

In the library of the Greece and Rome department, next to the portrait of John T. Wood, hung a permission granted him for his excavations.

My exhibition was based on this document. So we prepared our texts, and labels, Celeste, Dirk and Ian were very helpful with us during our preparations.

We took our items and texts to the Clore East Foyer in the afternoon and started to place them on our tables.

Each table was full of exciting and colourful object.

The guests started to arrive by around half past five. Everybody was excited about the displays, we took many photos and the director of the museum Neal McGregor gave a nice goodbye speech.

At the end we were all proud, very tired and sad because our days in the museum were coming to the end.

 

Fatih Yucel / Turkey