Letter from Schaeffer to Plenderleith requesting additional photographs of the bull bowl for publication and asking to wait before exhibiting it at the British Museum pending Cyprus authorisationClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

P.S. my letter to M.Plenderleith 9 september 1951.

I just return from Damascus where the general director of antiquities and the Minister of Education have asked my opinion with regard to the preservation of the unique roman helmet with silver mask which constitutes one of the most precious and popular pieces of the National Museum of Damascus.

Found accidentally before the war, the helmet was cleaned and preserved by M.Andre in Paris. Since some time the iron lining of the silvermask or under the silverpating of the mask has swollen and the sheet of silver of the mask begins to crack and to be distorted. Dr.Selim Abdul Hak, the director general of Syria has lately in Paris consulted M.Andre about what could be done to save the helmet and he proposed to take away the iron part under the silver mask.

Having carefully inspected the piece yesterday, I came to the conclusion that this proposal is dangerous and may be a too delicate operation to be undertaken by M.Andre, whose excellent empirical work I esteem, but consider as too risky in the present state of corosion of the iron part of the helmet.

I therefore gave to the general director and his minister in Damascus the following advice: to bring the endangered part of the helmet, the silver mask, to London and to have shown it to you. I strongly adviced also that if an operation is necessary that it should be undertaken in your laboratary instead in Paris.

The Damascus Museum has to send in any case in october its curator to London in connection with the division of the prewar El- Atchanafinds now in the departmen-t of Prof.Ashmole. At this occasion the silverpart of the helmet could be brought to London and submitted to you. In any case you would render a precious service to the Syrian National Antiquities by advising the Damascus Museum what should be done with the endangered helmet.

Please inform M.Kendrick of this initiative of mine, my letter to him is already underway.

Yours sincerely

Handwritten: C. Schaeffer

Hw note at left margin: Mina+