Who spends five years travelling in the Mediterranean and Middle East, hangs out with Byron in Athens, and gets in trouble for poaching Greco-Roman antiquities? A Cambridge maths graduate called John Lee, that’s who.
This post looks at some key moments in Lee’s five-year tour of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East in 1810–1815. He was then known as John Fiott, but for simplicity’s sake, I refer to him as John Lee.
Embarking
In 1810, Lee had itchy feet. He had been back in England only a few months, after having walked through England, Wales and Ireland for seven months (1806–07) and having spent two years in Scandinavia (1807–09). So, in March 1810, he embarked on his third adventure. Over the next 5 years, he would travel through Gibraltar, Malta, Smyrna, Constantinople, Greece, Egypt, the Levant and the Holy Land.
Lee had studied mathematics and law, but he was also interested in the Greco-Roman archaeology fashionable at the time. As he travelled, he collected antiquities and artefacts that would later form part of his renowned private library and museum at Hartwell, Buckinghamshire. The archaeological investigations he conducted during this tour would establish his reputation as an antiquary.
Befriending Byron in Greece
Lee arrived in Athens in early 1811. He spent three months there, in the company of Lord Byron. It is possible that the men may have known each other in their Cambridge days – Byron entered Trinity College in 1805, when Lee was still at St John’s. However, no other correspondence between the two survives. Given Lee’s tendency to keep all personal papers, it is therefore likely that their friendship was brief, and hinged on their shared experiences in Greece.
Byron was, at the time, on a ‘grand tour’ of Europe with his valet, William Fletcher. He was 23 years old, and Lee was five years older. Byron’s tour was punctuated by affairs and excitement – for example, he travelled around western Greece accompanied by a troop of Albanian guards, and met Lady Hester Stanhope, who famously travelled disguised as a Turkish man and conducted some of the first ‘modern’ archaeological investigations in the Holy Land.
Two weeks after leaving Athens, Lee wrote to Byron, describing his travels through Aegina, Argos, Mycenae, Corinth, and the mountains at Angelokastro, where he was snowbound for a day. The letter gives us a glimpse into the friendship between the two men, and their shared love of Greek and Roman antiquities. Lee’s letter also included Latin and Italian inscriptions he found in churches, that he thought would interest Byron.
Egypt and the Levant
Lee left Greece and made his way to Egypt, arriving in Alexandria in May 1811. Interest in Egypt was at an all-time high in Europe, and Lee reputedly became the first to sketch the tombs surrounding the Great Pyramid at Giza. His time in Egypt was cut short by a fever, due to which he left for Syria. In late 1811 he travelled through the Holy Land, reaching Aleppo in early 1812, where he associated with the diplomatist with John Barker and the experienced traveller and Orientalist John Lewis Burckhardt. Lee and Burckhardt travelled on to Syrian Tripoli together, where Lee left Burckhardt and made for Aleppo via Antioch.
Ionian Islands
By late 1812 Lee had reached the Ionian Islands, where his archaeological excavations became the subject of some local controversy.
A retrospective account of his activities there was read to the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1848 and published in their Proceedings in 1849. The paper was based on a letter Lee wrote to a friend. It relates the difficulties Lee and his companion encountered after displaying some finds made at Ithaca on 28–31 December 1812:
“we imprudently exhibited all we had found, in order to gratify several persons who called upon us, and wished to see the result of our labour. This step however only excited jealousy and envy, instead of giving satisfaction, for we were soon informed that the primates of the island had requested the Commandant to stop our proceedings. […] we went to work again, but with only seven labourers; and we had reason to believe that the others were prevented from coming to our aid by the fear of being sent to prison. Being this opposed by some unseen but powerful influence, we were unable to make much progress.”
When Lee moved to another part of the island, he found that “excavations could not be permitted without an order from the general government of the Ionian Islands.” Sentinels were ordered to guard the tombs that Lee was interested in. Lee argued that he only wished to “throw light upon local story; and by the collateral evidence thus produced, strengthen the great chain of universal history.” He complained to General Airey, commandant of the forces in the Ionian Islands at the time, and was pleased when it was confirmed that future antiquaries would not be prevented from excavating, as long as they had the landowner’s permission.
“Thus I had the satisfaction, as far as my humble means would admit, of having supported and confirmed the presumed rights of classical scholars, to prosecute their antiquarian researches in those countries the former authors and heroes of which are still the theme of general admiration, after the lapse of two thousand, or even three thousand years.”
What they did manage to excavate, though, included a “magnificent silver dish”; a bell-shaped, richly embossed calyx or vase; gold and silver jewellery; a gold Siren measuring 1½ inches tall; leaves of beaten gold; terracotta figures and tiles; coins and medals; and a number of sepulchral vases.
Elba and After
By 1814, Lee found himself on the island of Elba, where he witnessed the arrival of Napoleon I to begin his exile there. Concurrently, Louis XVIII left his refuge at Hartwell House, Lee’s mother’s ancestral home, to return to France.
Lee was slowly making his way back to Britain via Italy and Germany in 1815, when he received news that his uncle and guardian, William Lee Antonie, was in ill-health. This hastened his return to England and soon brought changes to Lee’s life in the shape of a considerable inheritance. In order to receive this inheritance, he was obliged to change his surname from Fiott to Lee.
Lee’s extensive travels in the Near East and Egypt contributed substantially to his personal collection of artefacts, and helped him to become recognised as an authority on the region. He was later a member of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Antiquaries, and the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He was first president of the Royal Numismatic Society in 1836, chairman of the British Archaeological Association in 1862, and co-founded the Syro-Egyptian Society in 1848. Throughout his life he corresponded with leading antiquaries and Orientalists in at least three languages, and received from them copies of Greek, Arabic and hieroglyphic manuscripts and inscriptions. His private museum was celebrated for its antiquities, collected by himself and gifted by the friends he made during his travels.
Sources:
Fiott [Lee], John. Letters of various correspondents, surnames Do to Fr, to Byron. 3 April 1811. MS. National Library of Scotland, MS 43424.
Lee, John. “Antiquarian Researches in the Ionian Islands, in the year 1812.” Archaeologia, 33, 1849, pp. 36–54.
McGann, Jerome. “Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788–1824).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed February 17, 2017, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4279.