🇬🇧Lady Hester Stanhope

The Woman Who Smashed the Statue

Lady Hester Stanhope ran 10 Downing Street for her uncle William Pitt the Younger, then walked away from English society at thirty and never looked back. She rode unveiled into Palmyra, corresponded with Ottoman officials as a peer, and in 1815 organized what is now considered the first intentional archaeological excavation in Palestine. Her workers unearthed a large, intact Roman marble statue. She had it smashed to pieces and thrown into the sea, then filed a formal report with the Ottoman authorities documenting exactly what had been found and exactly what she had done to it. She spent her final years in a fortified monastery in Lebanon, increasingly reclusive, increasingly indebted. In 1838 she had the gates walled shut. She died inside.