Edhem Eldem starts Documenting the Imperial Museum with a reference to a 27-page article by Albert Dumont published in 1868 in Revue Archéologique. I looked it up on Gallica and found it a highly pleasurable read with sharp remarks by Dumont esp. in the footnotes.
He deemed the monuments of Antiquity to be lucky because the Orient is scarcely populated. (C’est heureux pour les monuments de l’antiquité que L’orient que soit dépeuplé.)
There was another comment which made me chuckle about the editors' sometimes meagre comments under the monuments such as "bas-relief" and nothing more.
(Il est regrettable que les deux savants éditeurs des inscriptions de Constantinople se soient imposé comme règle de s’occuper seulement de la partie épigraphique des monuments sans rien dire des bas-reliefs que les textes commentent. Ainsi à propos de cette stèle, ils se bornent à simple mot: “bas-relief”)
I also wished to find the L'Univers Illustré 1869 Septembre 25 that the author mentions which has an article about the head of Medusa now to be seen in the wonderful garden of the museum but unfortunately the first year of the magazine available on Gallica was 1871.
What remains to do is another stroll in the museum accompanied by this marvelous work by EE.