The
fluted drums were taken from the
Temple of Poseidon, Sounion in
Attica, Greece, dated c. 480 BC. However, as can be seen from the object's pedestal poem inscription whereby its provenance was mistakenly referred to
Minerva (the Greek
Athena), the name of the Temple of Poseidon was misunderstood in 19th century until 1897, when
Valerios Stais’ excavation of this site rediscovered the temple's name and its worshiped deity,
Poseidon, god of the sea. Further research suggests that the four drums are presumably from a single collapsed Poseidon Temple column of which the bottom, 3rd, 4th and the 6th drum were stacked in sequence and formed this object. Some point before the publication of his
Handbook (1845), possibly in 1825 when his half brother returned from the Mediterranean voyage,
the sixth Duke of Devonshire was gifted these column drums from his half brother
Augustus Clifford, who at the time was the captain of
HMS Euryalus and collected several antiquities in Greece between 1821 and 1825 during his military deployment in the Mediterranean. The lines on the base were composed by the Duke's nephew,
George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle (then Lord Morpeth), before 1831. == Pedestal inscriptions ==