 Amongst those early travellers and archaeologists were James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, who were commissioned by the Society of Dilettanti to survey the ruins of classical Athens.What they produced was the first measured drawings of the Parthenon, published in 1787 in the second volume of "Antiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated".In 1801, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, the Earl of Elgin, obtained a questionable "firman" (edict) from the Sultan, whose existence or legitimacy has not been proved to this day, to make casts and drawings of the antiquities on the Acropolis, to demolish recent buildings if this was necessary to view the antiquities, and to remove sculptures from them.