Nestled among the trees in the grounds of Windsor Castle, one of King Charles III’s homes, is an array of ancient columns and water-stained stones that are a little of piece of Libya's long history as a power in the southern Mediterranean.
A sign on the fence that keeps visitors from getting too close reveals the monumental stack to be the Leptis Magna ruins, relics from the ancient Roman city that have been at the heart of a dispute between the UK and Libya.
Britain maintains the stones were gifted by the ruler of the region of Tripolitania, in modern-day Libya, to King George IV, when he was Prince Regent. Libya says a priceless part of its cultural heritage was stolen by the British and should be returned to its rightful home.
New details of how they ended up in this quintessentially English setting have been revealed in a report obtained by The National. Their home for the last 200 years or so has been the sculpted gardens of Virginia Water, sitting on a bed of bushy grass on either side of a path leading to a road bridge. But there have been calls for them to be repatriated to Libya, or at least for Britain to pay compensation.
The report draws on letters written by the British officers who took the stones, as evidence that Yusuf Karamanli, the governor of Tripoli under the Ottoman Empire, willingly handed them over as a present. But it leaves open the possibility that the pair were up to “mischief” and had power over the local ruler, and it contains an admission that there is no letter from Karamanli formally gifting the stones.
The Crown Estate, the body which manages the properties of the British Crown, has for four years sat on a report it commissioned from a historian to establish how and why the ruins were taken from Libya. The National requested updates on its progress but received no answer. The report was eventually released after a request was put in under the UK’s freedom of information rules, though the name of the author has been redacted.
The report was drafted in response to the lawyer representing the Libyan government, Mohamed Shaban, himself a British-Libyan, who had written to the Crown Estate asking them to provide evidence that the ruins had indeed been gifted. “It’s important to me in the same way as if stones from Stonehenge or Hadrian’s Wall were taken from the UK and planted in another country,” he told The National.
“So the Libyan people and myself would like to know why in 1816 and how at that time artefacts of this magnitude and magnificence were taken out from their home location and transported 1,500 miles away to the UK.” Mr Shaban has in the past accused the Crown Estate of failing to respond to what he says are legitimate questions about how and why the ruins came to be in Virginia Water, an area at the southern edge of Windsor Great Park,
“Since October 2021 I sent letters to the Crown Estate in which I raised reasonable enquiries that are within their gift to answer,” he said. “These letters were worded in a conciliatory and collaborative manner. Despite this, over three years have elapsed and I have yet to receive a substantive response to my correspondence. The Crown Estate provided copies of my letters and their own internal investigation to a journalist in response to a Freedom of Information Request.”
Barbary pirates
Leptis Magna is described by Unesco has having been “one of the most beautiful cities of the Roman Empire” and its ruins sit near the city of Khoms, around 125km from the Libyan capital Tripoli. The ruins are classified as a World Heritage Site by the UN cultural body.
The letters dug out of the National Archives show that the process of removing 22 granite columns, 15 marble columns, 10 capitals, 25 pedestals, seven loose slabs, 10 pieces of cornice, five inscribed slabs and various fragments of figure sculpture began in 1815, and culminated with them arriving in the UK in 1817.
In the report, the historian used letters sitting in Britain’s National Archives that were written by British officers, Col Hanmer George Warrington and Capt William Henry Smyth, of the Royal Navy. Warrington was the Consul General to the Barbary Coast, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire and is now the Maghreb. He was the facilitator of the deal to bring the ruins to the UK, and the artefacts themselves were taken by Smyth to Britain on a warship.
The other half of the enterprise was Yusuf Karamanli, who was known as Bashaw, an Anglicised version of the Turkish title Pasha, which was given to high-ranking governors and military officers in the empire. He is also referred to as Bey, a general title of respect, prompting the historian GE Chambers to describe him in his book The Ruins at Virginia Water as having an “oriental abundance in respect of his titles”.
Karamanli was a one-time pirate of Turkish origin who fought the naval forces of the newly independent United States in the First Barbary war. The conflict began after he violated a treaty permitting the safe passage of American ships and demanded a tribute of $225,000 from President Thomas Jefferson. For good measure, he had the flagpole at the American consulate in Tripoli chopped down.
But the ensuing conflict ended in his defeat by America’s fledgling naval forces, which had been formed in 1794 in response to the activities of Karamanli and other pirates. The line "shores of Tripoli" in the hymn of the United States Marine Corps refers to their involvement in the war.
Karamanli also is infamous for his brutal suppression of an uprising by Arab tribes in which thousands were killed. In a letter used in the report, Smyth says he "waded through a brother's blood to the throne", though he adds the Bashaw was "intelligent, an affectionate father, and a warm friend".
Partners in crime
The first reference in the Crown Estate report to the Leptis Magna ruins leaving Libya comes in a memorandum probably written by Warrington in December 1815. Warrington and Smyth visited the coast of Libya in May of the following year, with the former's friend, the artist Augustus Earle.
In common with many others, they were greatly impressed by the ruins of the Roman city. It had been believed he persuaded Karamanli to hand them over, but the historian who wrote the Crown Estate report makes the case that the ruins were removed legitimately after being gifted by Karamanli voluntarily.
In his memorandum Warrington states that “the whole of these ruins and everything connected with them the Bashaw proposed to give in a present to HRH the Prince of Wales – and I had no hesitation in accepting them to prevent any other person interfering with them”.
Smyth wrote that he “first visited Leptis in May 1816, to examine into the possibility of embarking the numerous columns lying on its sands, which the Bashaw of Tripoly [sic] had offered to His Majesty".
During the visit, Earle produced a watercolour painting of the site that was presented to the Prince Regent, the title of which refers artefacts "presented by the Bey of Tripoli”. The site had already been plundered by French King Louis XIV, who took 600 columns for his palace at Versailles, and it was thought that Warrington too decided to take what artefacts he could back to the UK.
Warrington is thought to have hoped to gain similar recognition the Earl of Elgin, who won fame for acquiring for the UK sculptures of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.
Case for the prosecution
While the Crown Office’s official statements say the report makes the case for the ruins having been gifted, a substantial part of it is dedicated to making the opposite argument.
Under the heading Evidence Contradictory to the Giving of a 'Gift', the report quotes GE Chambers, who said Captain Smyth's "enthusiasm and satisfaction" at recovering the artefacts "is indicative of the fact that he was up to some considerable mischief”. Smyth himself wrote to a superior stating that Warrington was able to exert “complete influence” over Karamanli.
“This may possibly be used to demonstrate that the giving of the 'gift' was not achieved without a level of outside influence – ie, the gift was not simply given as a result of the Bashaw's own personal decision to do so,” says the report.
In other letters, Warrington also states "it was me who obtained the gift”, which according to the report could be interpreted as meaning that he had “somehow personally managed to contrive a means of persuading the Bashaw to give up the Antiquities, only later referring to it as a gift”.
In letters to the Earl Bathurst in 1817, Warrington also talks about the presentation of the ruins as “having emanated from me”, and says it was “me who obtained the gift”. The report also quotes an in-house Crown Estate document called The Ruins, Virginia Water – Past and Present, which states that Warrington “persuaded the local Governor that the Prince Regent (later George IV) should be able to help himself to the ruins”.
Mr Shaban says that in his view he can infer that Smyth and Warrington “exerted tacit pressure on Karamanli to ‘gift’ the columns to their masters”.
“In 1816 Tripolitania was ruled by a brutal dictator, engaged in repression and piracy,” he said. “With the Ottoman Empire on the decline and the British on the rise, Karamanli was keen to curry favour with a superpower. Of course none of us were there, but there may well have been a nod and a wink to a fragile ego-ed dictator that if he were to ‘gift’ these to the British Empire he would be looked on favourably ”.
Scenario questioned
Among the questions posed by Mr Shaban was whether there is any written evidence that Yusuf Karamanli gifted the ruins to the Prince Regent. The unnamed historian says that “the ideal scenario here would be the discovery of a document written and signed by Yusuf Karamanli … addressed to HRH George Augustus Frederick, The Prince Regent, detailing the giving of a 'gift' of ancient Roman artefacts from the Bashaw to the Prince Regent“, but that “unfortunately, no such document has been found to date”.
According to Mr Shaban, “the use of the expression ‘the ideal scenario’ would suggest that they are rightly concerned that the items may not have been lawfully assigned to the British royal family for lack of a formal written agreement. Is it likely or even plausible that treasures of such historic value to the Ottoman Empire and the people of Tripolitania were legitimately assigned to a foreign country without a written record of the terms upon which they were allegedly gifted?”
In February 1817, Smyth, by now promoted to Commander, arrived in Tripoli on warship with the aim of taking the ruins back to Britain, a letter to a superior reveals. It wasn’t plain sailing, as The Ruins, Virginia Water – Past and Present details.
According to its account "local people were outraged, perhaps as they found the stones useful themselves, for building and for mill stones", and "they obstructed Smyth’s efforts and many statues and columns were destroyed as they waited to be loaded on to the ship”.
But when the ruins arrived neither the UK government nor the British Museum were impressed and for eight years the columns languished in the British Museum's courtyard. Eventually, in 1826, the decision was made to transfer the stones to Windsor on gun carriages through central London. They were arranged at Virginia Water by Sir Jeffry Wyatville, King George IV’s architect, in the form of a ruined Roman temple.
Libyan cause
Awareness of the ruins and a desire to see them returned began circulating around the Libyan diaspora before the case was eventually picked up by Mr Shaban. In turn he was instructed by the Libyan embassy to act on their behalf. The London-based solicitor has been involved in repatriating looted artefacts from Libya before.
After a 2,000-year-old funerary statue of the Greek goddess Persephone was stolen from the ancient city of Cyrene in Libya in 2011 and taken to the UK, Mr Shaban represented the North African country during the legal case to return it. He also successfully negotiated the return to Libya of a Roman statue of Princess Donatella Flavia – also stolen from Libya during the civil war – which was mistakenly sold by Christie's in 2011.
One of the Libyans living in the UK who would like to see the ruins returned, or at least for the UK to acknowledge Libya’s ownership of the ruins, is Nader Elgani. “It’s one of the places you’re taken as a young Libyan on school trips. So despite the neglect of the site, it’s significant for Libyans,” he told The National.
“To be honest, I don’t feel that they belong here. When you see them it does bring back that feeling of colonialism and it’s degrading in that sense.” Mr Elgani said he and other Libyans continue to “disagree” with the argument put forward by the Crown Estate that they ruins were gifted,
“I’m in line with Mohamed Shaban and his attempt to take them back. I think they should rightfully be taken back to Libya and restored in the actual city of Leptis Magna. Practically, they're quite massive, and there might be a lot of costs, but they did take them from there to bring them here. They don’t belong among the trees but in the sunny space of Libya – it feels very odd for them to be here.”
Mr Shaban points out that British institutions have voluntarily returned artefacts to their country of origin “even where, technically, they may not have been under strict legal obligations to do so at the time”. Among them have been the universities of Aberdeen and Cambridge, Manchester Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Army Museum, the Wellcome Trust and Exeter City Council.
They did so in the spirit of the Unesco Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation, which was created in 1978, he explained. But he said that "if excavating the site in Virginia Water would risk the integrity of these ancient structures and render it difficult to return them home, the Crown Estate could offer Libya compensation, in recognition for its use, free of charge, of these artefacts for the last 200 years”.
"This could include a public declaration confirming the provenance of these artefacts, making it clear that they belong to the Libyan people, financial compensation and assistance with the refurbishment of the main Leptis Magna site in Libya. I would also suggest a programme of knowledge-sharing between British and Libyan experts in archaeology and loosening visa and travel restrictions on Libyan academics seeking to attend workshops in the UK."
In a statement, the Crown Estate said it “commissioned a historian and Arabic specialist to undertake research into the status of the Leptis Magna columns which has taken some time. Our findings from the research lean towards the view that the columns were received in the UK on behalf of the Prince Regent, later George IV.
“While the columns are located on land managed by The Crown Estate, the fact that they were accepted by the Monarch of the time suggests that they are the responsibility of the Crown and not The Crown Estate Commissioners.”
