of Babylon) are considered among the worldwide jewels of archaeological findings. To lodge these, he started building what is today the Istanbul Archaeology Museum in 1881. The museum officially opened in 1891 under his directorship. Throughout his professional career as museum and academy director, Osman Hamdi continued to paint in the style of his teachers, Gérôme and Boulanger. Yet, he frequently depicted himself and his family members in these paintings, complicating an assumption of a removed orientalist gaze in his work. The Tortoise Trainer Hamdi's 1906 painting, The Tortoise Trainer, has held the record until 2019 for the most valuable Turkish painting, after being sold for 5 million Turkish liras (approx. US$3.5 million) in December 2004. At the 2004 Artam Antik A.Ç. auction in Istanbul, the Pera Museum and the Turkish Modern Museum fought to acquire the painting, and was ultimately purchased by the Pera Museum. The painting depicts Hamdi's likeness clad in antiquated clothing, training tortoises in a mosque. This choice of subject matter leads many to see this painting as a commentary on Turkey's conflicted national identity. The painting expresses a sarcastic innuendo on the painter's own view of his style of work compared to those of his collaborators and apprentices, and is also a reference to the historical fact of tortoises having been employed for illuminating and decorative purposes, by placing candles on the shell, in evening outings during the Tulip Era in the early 18th century. The painting was acquired by the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation and is currently on display at the Pera Museum in İstanbul, which was established by this foundation. His Girl Reciting Qur'an (1880) broke the record by realizing US$7.8 million at a Bonhams auction in September 2019. Modern researchers have identified the animals portrayed are Testudo graeca ibera, a variety of the Spur-thighed tortoise. A reproduction of the painting appeared on the cover of the Bibliotheca Herpetologica issue in which the paper about the identification was published. Historian Edhem Eldem has identified the source of the painting as an engraving of a Korean circus entertainer printed in Le Tour du Monde (1869) which was a popular French travel magazine. The meaning or any symbolic significance of the tortoises is still contested by scholars. Work Osman Hamdi was a prolific painter and author, whose work dealt with themes of archaeology, travel and folk customs in the Middle East. Hamdi studied painting