“What I Would Have Liked is for the Museum to be a World-Class Institute”

Conversation with Mihály Nagy, archaeologist

Mihály Nagy speaks not only about what it was like to be a Roman era archaeologist in the country’s largest museum, the Hungarian National Museum, but also about how he took part in authenticating the Sevso treasure, what assumptions were adopted regarding the origin of the finds, how the museum’s lapidarium came into being, and how he approached his later work in the ministry.

Archaeology is a discipline requiring versatility, scholarly erudition, much research in libraries and, of course, field work. There aren’t many other subjects like this in the humanities. From the end of the 1970s Mihály Nagy was a frequent visitor to the National Museum. After he had gained his degree, he won an Academy of Sciences’ scholarship and his designated research base was the National Museum, where he was later taken on as a staff member. From 1986 he was head of the Roman collection and from 1989 he worked alongside director István Fodor as the museum’s chief secretary.

Already in the 1980s Hungarian researchers were aware of the Sevso treasure’s existence, but János György Szilágyi had seen the objects in the Getty Museum. In November 1989 the Interpol liaison officer in the Interior Ministry approached Mihály Nagy with some black and white photographs of the Sevso treasure. The question was whether the items could previously have been somewhere in Hungary and the answer was ‘yes’, since they were similar to the Polgárdi tripod in terms of decoration, execution, form and size. Further investigation would be worthwhile once they were on the wanted list. At the time they could do no more. In March 1990, Népszava broke the news about the treasure. A silverware auction was being planned in London and the name Sevso appeared. Until displayed in 1990, the existence of the treasure had been a close-kept secret.

In the 1990s one of the most important activities of Mihály Nagy concerned the establishment of the National Museum’s lapidarium. In 1998 he set up the exhibition and then left the museum. In his view, the museum management was not really modern and many possibilities were unexplored. He would have liked the museum to be a truly world-class institute, as it was in the 1930s. In 1998 the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage was established. Complete renewal was required in the ministerial organisation, which included the establishment of the Department for Heritage Protection. This represented a new opportunity. A new heritage protection law was prepared, the basics of which were formulated by Mihály Nagy. He also took part in the preparation of the museum law.