This paper argues that changes in the structure of the Ottoman government during the Tanzimat era created corresponding shifts in legislation and ideology that enabled the effective policing of antiquities smuggling. Furthermore, these shifts represented not only a tightening of trade regulations, but both precipitated and reflected changing ideas about Ottoman identity and history. I use the correspondence of U.S. Vice Consul Rudolf Hurner as a focal point for examining the smuggling of antiquities by U.S. archaeologists and attempts by Ottoman officials of the Imperial Museum to thwart this illicit trade. Rudolf Hurner was a businessmen that used the diplomatic office to promote his personal economic interests; he was the nexus for antiquity smuggling out of U.S. archaeological digs at Adab and Nippur. In one particularly bold case, Hurner and Edgar Banks, an archaeologist working for the University of Pennsylvania, staged a robbery in an attempt to smuggle a statue, known as the King of Adab, out of Ottoman Iraq. Due to increased regulations that began during the Tanzimat era of the 19th century, Ottoman officials at the Imperial Museum – in particularly Hamdi Bey and his deputy Heider Bey - were able to prevent the smuggling of this statue and other artifacts. I argue that the restructuring of the Ottoman State during the Tanzimat era led to the regulation of antiquities, beginning with official legislation in 1874 that granted antiquities oversight to the Ministry of Education, to the creation of an Ottoman school to train archaeologists in 1875, and finally culminating in 20th century legislative changes that gave the Ottoman state full control over the fate of excavated antiquities. Changing Tanzimat regulations reflected not only the political but also the cultural values of Western nationalism; thus artifacts, once associated with the pre-Islamic past, became part of a larger project to foster a unified Ottoman identity and national mythology. Artifacts had to be protected because they represented not only a loss in commodities, but a loss of cultural heritage that contributed to the national imaginary.