Lady Hester Stanhope’s life was the stuff of legend—a tableau of defiance against the stifling norms of her time, painted against the sweeping landscapes of the Middle East. She left a mark on history not only as an intrepid explorer and one of the first to apply a methodological approach to archaeology but also as a figure of controversy when she destroyed a seven-foot tall Greco-Roman statue in a statement of loyalty to the Ottoman authorities.
Born into British aristocracy, Hester Stanhope was the niece of former Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and a woman of formidable intellect and beauty. Following a series of personal disappointments, including the death of her uncle and a lost love, she embarked on a grand voyage to the Middle East that would redefine her life’s trajectory.
While many European travelers of the era plundered historical sites for treasures, Lady Hester’s intentions in the Levant were strikingly different. In 1815, she conducted what many consider the first modern archaeological excavation at Ashkelon, then part of Ottoman Palestine.
Unearthing a headless 2.1-metre (7 ft) headless marble statue, Lady Hester faced a quandary. At a time when her compatriots were eagerly shipping home relics from historical sites, she was determined to prove her integrity and loyalty to the Ottoman Empire. Her solution was as dramatic as it was destructive: she ordered the statue to be smashed into “a thousand pieces” and thrown into the sea. This act, seemingly counter to the spirit of preservation and study, was her way of demonstrating that she was not in the region for imperialistic plunder but to enrich the land she had come to view as home.
This decision, described by contemporaries and by Lady Hester herself in correspondence, was not made lightly. “Malicious people might say I came to look for statues for my countrymen, and not for treasures for the Sublime Porte,” she reasoned, using the term for the Ottoman Sultan’s court. In her eyes, it was a necessary sacrifice to maintain the trust of the local rulers and distance herself from the rapacious treasure hunters of the era.
Lady Hester settled near Sidon, a town on the Mediterranean coast in what is now Lebanon, about halfway between Tyre and Beirut, after her travels. There, she lived in monastic seclusion, embracing her newfound sovereignty over the local populace, earning the moniker “Queen of the Desert.” Lady Hester died in her sleep in 1839. She died destitute; Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M’Cheyne, who visited the region a few weeks’ later, reported that after her death, “not a para of money was found in the house.”
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– Lady Hester Stanhope， Mar 23, 2019