It wasn’t that nobody cared, it was that the British, being the largest and wealthiest country on earth, could spare the resources to do so. Not all archaeologists from that period were British though. Heinrich Schliemann, the guy who discovered Troy, was German.

Fun question! The answer is that the even the British didn’t give much of a fuck about preservation, in the early days of archaeology! For all the stuff that the British preserved, they also destroyed or tossed out enormous amounts of evidence that modern archaeologists now wish they had access to. Most of the stuff in the Near East and Classical world was not considered important by the people who lived there - they had to make their livelihoods, they had to farm, they had to make their homes out of something, and doing it on top of old ruins was easy. Not to mention that old ruins are usually already in advantageous places, so it makes sense to keep living there. For a specific example, in the early days of Egyptian archaeology, British archaeologists (such as Petrie) were fighting a tide of native Egyptians who were digging up old ruins due to the ruins having been made out of mud brick, which also made great fertilizer. You can’t really fault the people who lived there, they had to farm and whatnot and they were using the materials easily available. The British (and other countries, although often the British) had a very imperialist motivation for doing archaeology in the early days, in that they were looking mostly for interesting Classical artifacts that would help to establish their sense of the world. There was an idea that civilization was born in the Fertile Crescent, and then migrated to Greece, and then to Rome, and then to England, thus making imperialism “okay”. I can recommend some interesting papers and articles if you’re interested in learning more on this topic as it’s one I’m very invested in!

Actually, modern Egyptology essentially begins with Napoleon's Egyptian expedition. So the French were clearly interested as well. If I recall correctly, many of the artifacts from that expedition (including the Rosetta Stone itself) were stolen and looted from the French, not the original owners.

Back then, archaeology was basically tomb robbing. Here's an interesting guy from that era who was Italian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Belzoni

As others have stated, people had more pertinent issues such as basic survival to even care about some old ruins.

In hindsight it is easy to judge earlier generations for common practices that we would regard as erroneous or immoral. Look at it this way, in 50 / 100 years time the next generations will never understand how our generations have largely sat back and destroyed ecosystems for ease of fossil fuel, large scale animal farming etc. A more pertinent issue for our time than preservation of ruins were for people a couple of hundred years ago and yet largely inaction.

It depends on the site. Some of the British discoveries left much to be desired in the way the items were cataloged. For instance, the work that was done in Nineveh in the 1850's where they simply labeled the items with a single letter to show they were from that site.

This library was an enormous trove of knowledge that predated and was said to have been the inspiration for Alexander and Ptolemy's famous library of Alexandria. Sure there was looting since the Medes and Persians took it down in 600 something BC. This guy Ashurbanipal was probably one of the first huge archaeologists or funders of archaeology. He was able to read and write in Sumerian, Akkadian and Aramaic. Also bragged about deciphering and being able to read something found from a pre-flood language.

When the temple/library were burned much of those items collapsed below, which if labeled properly may have given some easier semblance of how it might have looked 3000 years ago.

Now we'll have to guess about a lot of it.

Still the work done by sir Austen Henry Layard in that time period was leaps and bounds better than the French who were given rights over the parallel site yet let it sit for decades until the British snuck in and worked and found some artifacts where they ended up having to return them and then were given rights over that site as well.

I've read most of the comments following and I'll add a bit more to your understanding.

1. Modern Archaeology as a Science is actually not that old. It came out of the Renaissance and Enlightenment from historians interested in the non-written/non-recorded parts of history and certain collectors who would write histories of ancient civilizations. There were many books written about ancient and pre-writing civilizations but most of them were studies based on ancient writings and not on field work or science.

2. The Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Chinese and other large wealthy ancient civilizations all collected foreign statues, monuments and pieces of ancient empires as war trophies. As an example, Alexander took statues back to Greece after the fall of Persepolis and Egypt. They would be exhibited to the public as proof of the empire's greatness. The Aztecs also did this with lesser tribes it had conquered. Medieval England, Spain, Russia and France continued this taking of war trophies. Examples of this include 'The Stone of Scone' and the Scottish Crown taken by the English after Scotland's conquest in the 13th century. Also, many medieval kingdoms looted ancient religious artifacts during the crusades and brought them back to Europe.

3. The Muslim empires of the pre-colonial middle east did not recognize the greatness of the ancient cities around them due to the Islamic religion's belief that anything predating the prophet Mohammed was unimportant to the religion and symbols of ancient religions were erased from history. This didn't mean they were intentionally destroying Buddhist statues or Ancient cities like the Taliban or ISIS but it did mean that while Medieval France, England, Spain and Italy were trying to repair their Roman ruins as a symbol of their countries longevity, the Pyramids, Persepolis and Babylon were looted for their bricks and Constantinople was washed of it's Christian, Greek and Roman symbols. Knowledge on the other hand was preserved by the Muslims and much of what we know of ancient Greece and Rome actually comes to us from books preserved and translated in the Middle East while Christian Priests burned and destroyed anything seen as contradicting the Christian religion.

4. France was the true birthplace of Archaeology as a science and this predates even Napolean's conquest of Egypt and parts of the Middle East although his conquest opened up a whole Universe of study into ancient Egypt. His troops brought home ziggurats and placed them around France but they also brought back increasingly more important items to the science of Archaeology such as the Rosetta stone which opened up the study of hieroglyphs and ancient languages. France, England Spain, The Netherlands and Portugal were by far the richest empires in the world at this point due to their exploration and colonization of large parts of the new world and the far east and because of that they built museums and art galleries. It's not just British museums filled with ancient art and archaeological items. The Louvre's entire basement level is dedicated to ancient art and archaeological items.

5. Many large empires such as China, Germany, the Mongols and the Middle East have lost vast quantities of the ancient history of the lands they ruled. The Mongols through sheer destruction of cities. The Middle East through a religion that de-emphasized the past. China's destruction of it's ancient art and archaeology during the communist regime was truly devastating to it's architecture and history. The Nazi's destroyed much during WWII that wasn't seen as supporting Hitler's views on the German race. The British, Italians, Japanese and French never faced things such as this and because of that smaller pieces of their histories were there to fill out their story as a nation for good or bad.

The British in the Victorian era would host “mummy unwrapping parties.” I think it’s safe to say a lot of the British really didn’t give a ahit about historical preservation.

Almost all of the territory in question was under Ottoman occupation and they gave no shits whatsoever

Hey man, it's ok to ask questions. Dont let society make you think everything thing is racist just because something potentially has racial context.

Firstly, facts aren't racist.

The British were certainly the only ones to both catalogue and value historical treasures.

There were also no "museums" to speak of. If certain treasures were found in countries where there were historical sites, then most likely they were just plundered by looters and tomb robbers. Certainly this was the case in Egypt.

Howard Carter's 1922 Expedition and discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb was critical because a) the tomb was unique in that it remained untouched (undiscovered) by looters, and b) that it contained many artifacts which served to educate many about Ancient Egypt.

So to answer your questions:

Why did no one but the British seem to care about preservation? Because different countries and different cultures value different things. For example, the French only wanted to conquer lots of land (Under Napoleon). And a particular Italian explorer only cared about treasure and gold, so he smashed the tops off all of the gorgeous pyramids in Meroe, Sudan.

So yes, lust for gold and land is more important to some than the preservation of history.

Did the British steal artifacts from museums? No.

Were the artifacts in the ground or laying around? Not exactly. Tomb raiders aren't archaeologists, and so if it can't be smashed down, or forced open with a crowbar, they're not going to bother digging for months to find things.

Why wasn't Egypt already excavating? Because the majority of the population of Egypt wasn't exactly "Egyptian" in the sense of being related to the historical Egypt of antiquity. There was no sense of being "connected" to that ancient culture. Islam spread into Egypt long after the Ptolemies were gone, so the last of the "True" Egyptians were gone with the rise of Rome. Say hello to Islam in 600 AD, and with the Roman Empire being gone, Egypt turns Muslim, and the culture shifts permanently.

All of the comments say good things but another reason was around this time period they were trying to prove a lot of the old testament stories so they tried to dig up as much proof as possible.

Why did no-one but the British seem to give a single shit about historical preservation?

If you actually come down to England and look at ruins of Roman forts and Hadrian's wall and such, you'll find that we didn't give much of a shit about it back in the day either.

When you're living day by date, preservation is not a priority, not when you can use ruins to build what you need to get by.

That said it's still well worth checking out if you ever get the chance.

Never saw it that way, cool story.

That's 10000000000% false that they "care about preservation" in general. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fire-ravages-library-of-congress

To localize it to those places and that era, the preservation of other cultures' history and art laid firmly in the beliefs of the attackers. For example, in the Crusades it was common to specifically raze and burn any of the "heathen" artifacts / texts of those cultures.

Makes sense, right: your leader is Godly and some other culture has all sorts of blasphemy claiming that God doesn't give us air to breathe, but plants and water do... burn that shit!

Likewise in the article above, nothing better to burn than the Library of Congress when you're trying to suppress the establishment of a breakaway colony.

You're literally not even discussing races per se, you're discussing the nation of Britain

I think the fact that British archeologists got local guides to the pyramids says a lot. People around definitely knew a little about ancient tombs and stuff (especially since ALL of them had been ransacked before any brits got there) but when Brits came in and saw that bullshit they were absolutely blown away.

Also, the way history and archeology was practiced back in the day was extremely destructive. In fact, the level of ignorance at which people acted is sometimes more impressive than their scholarly pursuits.

The guy who discovered Troy, mentioned in other comments, thought that the city would be older and it was. So while looking for his Troy he blasted through like 7 layers of ancient cities like with dynamite. It turns out the historical Troy was probably city level 5 or something and the guy just blew a whole bunch of it up.

https://history-podcasts.com/the-ancient-world

Specifically the "R" series. (Rediscovery) R3, R4, R5 are the ones specifically about that time period.

Easily my favourite podcast.

If you're looking for reading material, look up Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Paul-Emile Botta,

Ancient armies were larger and more advanced.

Could be! I always imagined it covered in greenery and aquaducts though.

I think it may be this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etemenanki

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You can see to the right in the foreground what could be the Hanging Gardens. Archers are firing down on the crowds while women wail while running from the gardens.

Edit: Oops, u/-Hastis- already mentioned it.

Keep the Great Knowledge alive, my friend.

Always upvote Monty Python

I mean, tbh i kinda feel like people have already made any mark they possibly could by age 25 and after that is just withering away and dying (which i am not comfortable with at all, but feel is the unfortunate truth nevertheless).

Thanks I’ll check it out!

One of my favorites of all time. Think the first sci-fi TV show I watched that had a multi season story and definite end that was planned from the beginning. Lots of filler episodes that were still fun and made me care about all of the characters.

Is it any similar to Stargate?

Actually i think this is an incorrect comment -- the stylistic sophistication has advanced through the various eras: Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, perhaps Rococo, NeoClassical.... but the coloration in this piece (an etching/mezzotint) being part of a print-edition project (or perhaps even hand/water-colored after the fact, I should google this piece) is NOT particularly 'advanced' over say Baroque coloration which got extremely sophisticated... this is like a colored-in-comic book. Curious if you got your opinion from some external source, if so, i'd like to see because it goes against what I'm seeing

NO

Wow, that is rather larger indeed. At the same time, The Great Day of His Wrath is an oil painting whereas The Fall of Babylon is a Mezzotint.

I started on a Mezzotint once. A tiny plate of 2 x 3 inches. You have to work the entire surface with a steel device called a 'rocker' to make many small indentations. Many times actually, for many different angles. It took hours. 18 1/2 x 23 3/8 is huuuuuge for a Mezzotint. At least, that's the opinion of me and my sore wrist.

He made mezzotint copies of his paintings so that the public could enjoy them, so you might have seen the original.

The Jews have a whole bunch of Messiahs man.

The interesting thing is that Cyrus is the only gentile to receive the honour of being anointed by YHWH. Really shows how much he was revered by the Jewish people of the time for freeing them from the Babylonian Captivity and funding the construction of the Second Temple

Perhaps you're confusing the Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians? Belshazzar was the son of the last Neo-Babylonian king.

Yes, but in the act of destroying a city a painting would be dark no matter what. It would have more light than this painting (which already has too much light as I mentioned before), but the darkness would be required to amplify the feeling of terror.