Haḍḍa, lost location


Description :

Circumstances led Barthoux to leave his work unfinished. At the time of the sharing of the finds, specified in the agreement
signed in 1922 between France and Afghanistan, a large number of objects, about 90% stucco, was sent from the Kabul Museum to the Guimet Museum. Disagreements arose with Hackin, then chief curator of the Guimet Museum. Hostility grew among them until Hackin tried to keep Barthoux away from the objects he had discovered, by sending hundreds of stucco statues to museums around the world, deposited by ministerial order. An abbreviatedlist of these deposits is below:


- September 1934 : letter of thanks from the Director of the Istanbul Antiquities Museum for receiving four small stucco heads
from the Barthoux excavations at Haḍḍa.
- 1935, order of 23 May, 25 stucco objects from the Barthoux excavations at the Royal Museums of Belgium are placed in
storage.
- 1935, order of May 23, deposit of 20 stucco objects from the Barthoux excavations at the British Museum.
- 1935, decree of 23 May, deposit of 20 objects in the Musée du Grand-Ducal du Luxembourg.
- 1935, order of May 23, deposit of 20 stucco objects at the Yale Museum.
- 1935, June letter of thanks from the interim director to Hackin for the receipt by the Istanbul Museum of Antiquities of 7
stuccoes to complete the series already acquired.
- 1936, order of 17 January, 20 objects, most of them in stucco, were placed in storage at the Stockholm National Museum.
- 1936, order of January 17, 20 stucco and limestone objects deposited at the Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City.
- 1936, order of 17 January, 20 stucco and schist objects were placed in the Hermitage Museum.
- 1937, order of February 1st, removed from the Guimet Museum for the legation of Iran of 16 terracotta (actually stucco) and
2 schist sculptures.
- 1939, order of August 1st, 10 stucco objects placed in storage at the Buffalo Museum.
- 1939, order of November 28, deposit, without date limit, at the Buddhist Institute of Phnom Penh (Karpelès) of 13 objects
including 12 in stucco.
- 1939, order of 28 November, 20 objects, most of them in stucco, were placed in storage at the Museum of the Thai-Thailand.


Discouraged, Barthoux never wished to return the photographic album which illustrated the volume on stūpas, nor the text
corresponding to the album of figures and figurines. On this subject, see Tarzi 1996.

Such deposits continued after the death of J. Hackin:
- 1955, decree of November 16, 1955, deposit of 5 objects, including 4 in stucco and one in limestone (a fragment of the staircase handrail from Chakhil-i Ghoundi, which slows down the restitution of the staircase from other fragments in the Guimet Museum) to the Tokyo Museum.
- 1970, decree of May 11, deposit of 8 objects from Haḍḍa (excavations by J. Barthoux), 7 of which are in stucco and 1 in schist.

A récolement (collection audit) file was created thanks to the important photographic background collected by Pierre Cambon in 1994. None of the items on deposit had a Guimet Museum inventory number. They were sent with a handwritten red label glued to the back with the part number, in accordance with the ministerial order and its measures. Activity Reports of the Guimet Museum (available on their website <http://www.guimet.fr/collections/documentation/rapports-dactivite/>, last accessed 3rd March 2019) recount the progress of the récolement missions.