Archaeology and excavation

Le commerce des antiquités ends on a noun that English owns twice over, and the two English words divide between them exactly what the one French word holds. « Antiquities » belong to archaeology: the objects of the ancient world, the ones a ministry licenses and a museum accessions. The word is nearly always plural and always a little solemn. « Antiques » are furniture and silver, a century old and for sale on a Saturday morning. French makes no such cut. Les antiquités are the finds of this list — le trafic d’antiquités, les antiquités égyptiennes — and they are equally the contents of the shop on the corner, un magasin d’antiquités. The person follows the word. Un antiquaire is the dealer in old furniture, the man with a shop, and never the student of the ancient world, whom English calls « an antiquarian » and French has to name with a phrase, un spécialiste de l’Antiquité. Two habits follow. Never render un antiquaire as « an antiquarian », which promotes a shopkeeper into a scholar; and when les antiquités appears, read the sentence round it before deciding which trade is meant.