Arundel marbles

The Earl of Arundel had supervised excavations in Rome, and deployed his agents in the Eastern Mediterranean, above all at Istanbul.

Late in the seventeenth century, a visitor to Ottoman Turkey (in modern-day İzmir) could complain that: the scarcity of antiquities now to be found in Smyrna arises from hence, that it furnished the greatest part of the Marmora Arundeliana.

Among them is the Parian Chronicle, inscribed about 263 BC so called because it was found on Paros, which gives Greek dates from 1582 BC down to 354 BC [2] Among outstanding pieces is a relief that shows parts of the human body, outstretched arms: elbow to finger tips, foot, clenched fists and fingers each used as in that period of Ancient Greece as standard units of measure.

[3] The Arundel marbles were catalogued as early as 1628, when, at the suggestion of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, John Selden compiled a catalogue: Marmora Arundelliana with the assistance of two others, Patrick Young and Richard James.

In 1763 Richard Chandler published a fine edition of the inscriptions as Arundelian Marbles, Marmora Oxoniensia with a Latin translation, and a number of suggestions for filling the lacunae (gaps).