He was forced to resign as Ephor General over his delivery of the Athenian "Naval Records", a series of inscriptions first unearthed in 1834, to the German August Böckh for publication.

He was subsequently appointed as the first professor of archaeology at the University of Athens, but lost his post as a result of the 3 September 1843 Revolution, which removed most non-Greeks from public service in the country.

[12] His teachers at Kiel included the theologian August Twesten,[11] the historian Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann,[11] and the classical scholar Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch.

[12] While at Kiel, Ross met his friend and future travelling companion, the philologist Peter Wilhelm Forchhammer,[13] and befriended Otto Jahn, later known as a historian of ancient Greek and Roman pottery.

He made an unsuccessful application for a scholarship from the "Fund for the Public Benefit" (Fonden ad usos publicos),[1] administered on behalf of the King of Denmark, to travel in Greece.

[11] Ross's letters of this period to Nitzsch reveal his intention to continue his studies of Aristophanes, and to publish academic work to build his scholarly reputation.

[15] Ross spent nine months in Leipzig, beginning in the autumn of 1831, living with the school headmaster Karl Hermann Funkhaenel and attending lectures on Greek culture.

On 23 May 1832,[17] he left to make his way to Greece,[10] travelling overland to Munich, Salzburg[1] and Trieste before boarding a Greek ship, the Etesia,[18] for Nafplion on 11 July.

[20] He was made deputy curator of antiquities at the Archaeological Museum of Nafplion, then capital of Greece, in 1832,[10] and was received by the Greek National Assembly in the city on 8 August [O.S.

[17] Ross's first visit in the city was to the home of Kyriakos Pittakis, Black's brother-in-law,[22] a self-taught archaeologist who would be appointed "custodian of the antiquities in Athens" a few weeks later.

The party met Otto within a few months of their own arrival, a few days after the king's, and travelled widely around nearby archaeological sites such as Epidauros, Tiryns and Argos.

[26] Tension existed between the Greek state's aim of conserving Athens's ancient monuments, the Acropolis's role as a military fortification, and the needs of the expanding city.

[49] Through the support of Egid von Kobell [de],[c] a member of Otto's regency council, Ross was able to arrange the soldiers' departure in February[36] and for guards for the archaeological works to be posted in their stead.

[58] Klenze's proposals advocated for the removal of some of the Acropolis's remaining fragments of sculpture to be displayed in the Theseion;[56] in March–May 1835, Ross and Schaubert carried out rebuilding and restoration work there to make it suitable for its new role as a museum, which included the demolition of the apse constructed during the monument's use as a Christian church.

[62] The first tasks were to demolish the modern bastion near the Tower of Athena Nike and the mosque inside the Parthenon, which Ross justified in his letters to Klenze as necessary to prevent the re-militarisation of the Acropolis,[36] both structures having previously been used by the military garrison.

[63]At the Tower of Athena Nike, Ross's demolition of the bastion revealed the disiecta membra of the former temple, which has been described by the archaeological historian Fani Mallouchou-Tufano as "one of the greatest moments in the history of the Acropolis in this period".

[64] They arranged the excavated fragments of the temple, as well as other remains of nearby monuments, including the Propylaia, on top of the surviving crepidoma and column bases with little regard for their individual situation.

[68] He remained closely connected with the Ottonian court,[10] and guided Otto's father Ludwig I of Bavaria and the German nobleman Hermann von Pückler-Muskau during their respective visits to Greece.

[26] In 1834 and 1835, excavations in the harbour of the Piraeus uncovered a series of inscriptions known as the "Naval Records",[68] which gave information on the administration and financing of the Athenian navy between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.

[75] On Ross's resignation,[76] Pittakis was appointed ephor of the Central Public Museum for Antiquities,[77] making him the most senior archaeologist employed by the Greek Archaeological Service and its de facto head.

[89] Ross was elected as a member of the university's nine-member senate, where he supported the introduction of German-style Privatdozenten, so-called "private lecturers" teaching without the status or rights of full professors.

[91] Between May and October 1838, he travelled in Italy, Austria and Germany, staying with the classicist Friedrich Thiersch in Munich and visiting his family in Bornhöved for the first time since his departure for Greece.

[96]During his tenure at Athens, Ross travelled widely throughout Greece, including a journey to Marathon in 1837 with his brother Charles and Ernst Curtius, the future excavator of Olympia.

[99] In August and September 1837, he travelled through the Greek islands, visiting Sikinos, Sifnos, Amorgos, Kea, Kythnos, Santorini and Ios, accompanied by the German geographer Carl Ritter and the Scottish historian George Finlay.

[105] He regularly accompanied King Otto on archaeological travels during his time at Athens,[28] including a tour of the Peloponnese with Queen Amelie in May–June 1840, which Ross considered one of his most successful journeys.

[112] He also wrote to Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier at the University of Halle in the German state of Saxony, then ruled by Prussia,[10] asking for a post there.

The beginning of his employment was delayed by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, who granted him a two-year travel stipendium,[10] allowing him to spend time in Smyrna, Trieste and Vienna.

[10] He was an isolated figure in German academia, partly due to his criticism of well-respected scholars like the philologist Friedrich August Wolf and the historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr.

[123] During a debate at Halle over the layout of its museum of art, Ross proposed that exhibits should be displayed on four walls, giving equal prominence to objects from Greece, Rome, Egypt and Asia.

[128] Both Müller (in 1843) and the French archaeologist Philippe Le Bas (in 1847) had already published some of the discoveries from the Temple of Athena Nike, relying on drawings made by others.