Merres and Ella Cornwall

Merres and Ella Cornwall were a pair of self-styled "battling sorcerers"(though they had no magic) who lived in the early Second Age. Inspired by the romanticisim of the Golden Age, they were explorers and archaeologists who made to visit remote sites and recover lost treasures on the Greater Continent. Though reviled by mainstream academics, they were beloved by the public and remained popular figures in in historical fiction for centuries after their deaths.

Controversies

While the Cornwall's did indeed visit and map several remote sites, and brought back minor artifacts of considerable significance, the bulk of their most important 'finds' were in fact very obvious and poor-quality forgeries. It didn't help that most of the well-known artifacts they recovered were known by serious scholars as myth. The Horn of Agraya, one of their most publicized discoveries, was a well-known historical fraud and had been completely debunked over a century earlier. When questioned about their fact-checking, Merres replied that "Given as nothing of historical importance hinges on the validity of the artifact, not much time need to be expended on considering this matter further. We had a grand adventure, we sought to delight the senses and inflame the imagination, and that is all that need be said about that.".