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= Arthur_Evans =
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Introduction
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Sir Arthur John Evans (8 July 1851 - 11 July 1941) was a British
archaeologist and pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the
Bronze Age.
The first excavations at the Minoan palace of Knossos on the Greek
island of Crete began in 1877. They were led by Cretan Greek Minos
Kalokairinos, a native of Heraklion. Three weeks later Ottoman
authorities forced him to stop (at the time, Crete was under Ottoman
rule). Almost three decades later, Evans heard of Kalokairinos'
discovery. With private funding, he bought the surrounding rural area
including the palace land. Evans began his own excavations in 1900.
Based on the structures and artefacts found there and throughout the
eastern Mediterranean, Evans found that he needed to distinguish the
Minoan civilisation from Mycenaean Greece. Evans was also the first to
define the Cretan scripts Linear A and Linear B, as well as an earlier
pictographic writing.
Family
========
Arthur Evans was born in Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire,
England, the first child of John Evans (1823-1908) and Harriet Ann
Dickinson (born 1824), the daughter of John's employer and maternal
uncle, John Dickinson (1782-1869), the founder of Messrs John
Dickinson, a paper mill business. Arthur Evans' grandfather, Arthur
Benoni Evans, had been headmaster of Dixie Grammar School at Market
Bosworth, Leicestershire. John knew Latin and could quote the
classical authors.
In 1840 John Evans started work in the mill owned by his maternal
uncle, John Dickinson. He married his first cousin, Harriet, in 1850,
and in 1851 became a junior partner in the family business. Profits
from the mill would help fund Arthur Evans's excavations, restorations
at Knossos, and resulting publications. For the time being they were
an unpretentious and affectionate family. They moved into a brick
terraced house built for the purpose near the mill, which came to be
called the "red house" because it lacked the sooty patina of the other
houses. Harriet called her husband "Jack." Grandmother Evans called
Arthur Evans "darling Trot," asserting in a note that, compared to his
father, he was "a bit of a dunce." In 1856, with Harriet's declining
health and Jack's growing reputation and prosperity, they moved into
Harriet's childhood home, a mansion with a garden, where the children
ran free.
John Evans maintained his status as an officer in the company, which
eventually became John Dickinson Stationery, but also became
distinguished for his pursuits in numismatics, geology, and
archaeology. His interest in geology came from an assignment by the
company to study the diminishing water resources in the area with a
view toward protecting the company from lawsuits. The mill consumed
large amounts of water, which was also needed for the canals. He
became an expert and a legal consultant.
John became a distinguished antiquary, publishing numerous books and
articles. In 1859, he conducted a geological survey of the Somme
Valley with Joseph Prestwich. His connections and invaluable advice
were indispensable to Arthur Evans's career throughout the remainder
of his long life.
Arthur Evans's mother, Harriet, died after childbirth in 1858 when he
was seven. He had two brothers, Lewis (1853) and Philip Norman (1854),
and two sisters, Harriet (1857) and Alice (1858). He would remain on
excellent terms with all of them all of his life. He was raised by a
stepmother, Fanny (Frances), née Phelps, with whom he also got along
very well. She had no children of her own and also predeceased her
husband. John's third wife was a classical scholar, Maria Millington
Lathbury. When he was 70, they had a daughter, Joan, who became an art
historian. John Evans died in 1908 at 85, when Arthur Evans was 57.
His close support and assistance was indispensable in excavating and
conceptualising Minoan civilisation.
Harrow
========
After a preparatory school, he entered Harrow School in 1865 at the
age of 14. He was co-editor of 'The Harrovian' in his final year,
1869/70. At Harrow he was friends with Francis Maitland Balfour. They
competed for the Natural History Prize; the outcome was a draw. They
were both highly athletic, including riding and swimming, and also
mountain climbing, during which activity Balfour was killed later in
life. Evans was near-sighted, but refused to wear glasses. His
close-up vision was better than normal, enabling him to see detail
missed by others. Farther away his field of vision was blurry and he
compensated by carrying a cane, which he called Prodger, to explore
the environment. His wit was very sharp, too sharp for the
administration, which stopped a periodical he had started, 'The
Pen-Viper', after the first issue.
Oxford
========
Arthur matriculated on 9 June 1870 and attended Brasenose College,
Oxford. His housemaster at Harrow, F. Rendall, had eased the way to
his acceptance with the recommendation that he was "a boy of powerful
original mind." At Brasenose College, he read Modern History, a new
curriculum, which was nearly a disaster, as his main interests were in
archaeology and classical studies.
His summertime activities with his brothers and friends were perhaps
more important to his subsequent career. Having been given an ample
allowance by his father, he went looking for adventure on the
continent, seeking out circumstances that might be considered
dangerous by some. In June 1871, he and Lewis visited Hallstatt, where
his father had excavated in 1866, adding some of the artefacts to his
collection. Arthur Evans had made himself familiar with these.
Subsequently, they went on to Paris and then to Amiens. The
Franco-Prussian War had just concluded the month before. Arthur Evans
had been told at the French border to remove the dark cape he was
wearing so that he would not be shot for a spy. Amiens was occupied by
the Prussian army. Arthur found them prosaic and preoccupied with
souvenir-hunting. He and Lewis hunted for stone-age artefacts in the
gravel quarries, Arthur Evans remarking that he was glad the Prussians
were not interested in flint artefacts.
In 1872, he and Norman adventured into Ottoman territory in the
Carpathians, already in a state of political tension. They crossed
borders illegally at high altitudes, "revolvers at the ready." This
was Arthur Evans's first encounter with Turkish people and customs. He
bought a set of clothes of a wealthy Turkish man, complete with red
fez, baggy trousers, and an embroidered short-sleeved tunic. His
detailed, enthusiastic account was published in 'Fraser's Magazine' in
May 1873.
In 1873, he and Balfour tramped over Lapland, Finland, and Sweden.
Everywhere he went he took copious anthropological notes and made
numerous drawings of the people, places and artefacts. During the
Christmas holidays of 1873, Evans catalogued a coin collection being
bequeathed to Harrow by John Gardner Wilkinson, the father of British
Egyptology, who was too ill to work on it himself. The headmaster had
suggested "my old pupil, Arthur John Evans - a remarkably able young
man."
Arthur John Evans graduated from Oxford at the age of 24 in 1874, but
his career had come near to foundering during the final examinations
on modern history. Despite his extensive knowledge of ancient history,
classics, archaeology, and what would be termed today cultural
anthropology, he apparently had not even read enough in his nominal
subject to pass the required examination. He could answer no questions
on topics later than the 12th century. He had convinced one of his
examiners, Edward Augustus Freeman, of his talent. They were both
published authors, they were both Gladstone liberals, and they were
both interested in the Herzegovina uprising (1875-1877) and on the
side of Old Herzegovina insurgents. Freeman convinced Evans's tutors,
George Kitchen and John Richard Green, and they convinced the Regius
professor, William Stubbs, that, in view of his special other
knowledge and interests, and his father's "high standing in learned
society", Evans should not only be passed, but receive a first-class
degree. It was the topic of much jesting; Green wrote to Freeman on 11
November 1875:
In the spring of 1875 he applied for the Archaeological Travelling
Studentship offered by Oxford, but, as he says in a letter to Freeman
later in life, he was turned down thanks to the efforts of Benjamin
Jowett and Charles Thomas Newton, two Oxford dons having a low opinion
of his work there.
Göttingen
===========
In April-July 1875 he attended a summer term at the University of
Göttingen at the suggestion of Henry Montagu Butler, then headmaster
at Harrow. Evans was to study with Reinhold Pauli, who had spent some
years in Britain, and was a friend of Green. The study would be
preparatory to doing research in modern history at Göttingen. The
arrangement may have been meant as a remedial plan. On the way to
Göttingen, Evans was sidetracked, unpropitiously for the modern
history plan, by some illegal excavations at Trier. He had noticed
that the tombs were being plundered surreptitiously. For the sake of
preserving some artefacts, he hired a crew, performed such hasty
excavations as he could, crated the material and sent it home to John.
Göttingen was not to Evans's liking. His quarters were stuffy, and the
topics were of little interest to him, as he had already demonstrated.
His letters speak mainly of the discrepancy between the poor peasants
of the countryside and the institution of the wealthy in the town. His
thinking was of a revolutionary bent. Deciding not to stay, he left
there to meet Lewis for another trip to Old Herzegovina. That decision
marked the end of his formal education. Herzegovina was then in a
state of insurrection. The Ottomans were using bashi-bazouks to try to
quell it. Despite subsequent events, there is no evidence that the
young Evans might have had ulterior motives at this time, despite the
fact that Butler had helped to educate half the government of the
United Kingdom. He was simply an adventurous young man bored with
poring through books in a career into which he had been pushed against
his real interests. The real adventure, in his mind, was the
revolution in the Balkans.
Agent in the Balkans
======================
After resolving to leave Göttingen, Evans and Lewis planned to spy
against the Principality of Montenegro in the rebellious mountain
village of Bobovo, Pljevlja at the time of their journey the strongest
point of resistance in triple mountain ranges of Ljubišnja and Tara
gorges. During the struggle in Bobovo on 15 August 1875 during the
Herzegovina uprising (1875-1877) they were expelled from Province of
Pljevlja by the Ottoman authorities and went to board a ship in the
city of Dubrovnik via Pljevlja, a city with a large settlement from
the Roman period, which Evans named as the Municipium S.
They knew that the region, a part of the Ottoman Empire, was under
martial law and that the Christians were in a state of insurrection
against the Muslim beys placed over them. Some Ottoman troops were in
the country in support of the beys, but mainly the beys were using
irregular forces, the bashi-bazouks, loosely attached to the Ottoman
military. Their notorious cruelty, which they practised against the
natives, helped to turn the British Empire under W. E. Gladstone
against the Ottoman Empire, as well as to attract Russian intervention
at Serbian request. At the time of Evans' and Lewis' initial
adventure, the Ottomans were still trying to lessen the threat of
intervention by placating their neighbours. Evans sought and obtained
permission to travel in Bosnia from its Ottoman military governor.
The two brothers experienced little difficulty with either the Serbs
or the Ottomans but they did provoke the neighbouring Austro-Hungarian
Empire and spent a night in "a wretched cell". After deciding to lodge
in a good hotel in Slavonski Brod on the border, having judged it
safer than Bosanski Brod across the Sava River, they were observed by
an officer who saw their sketches and concluded they might be Russian
spies. Politely invited by two other officers to join the police chief
and produce passports, Evans replied, "Tell him that we are Englishmen
and are not accustomed to being treated in this way". The officers
insisted and, interrupting the chief at dinner, Evans suggested he
should have come to the hotel in person to request the passports. The
chief, in a somewhat less than civil manner, won the argument about
whether he had the right to check the passports of Englishmen by
inviting them to spend the night in a cell.
On the way to the holding cell the two young men were followed by a
large crowd, whom Evans lost no opportunity to harangue, even though
they understood only German. He threatened the authorities in the name
of the British fleet, which, he asserted, would sail up the Sava
river. He demanded the mayor, offered the jailer a bribe for food and
water, but went into the cell unfed and without water. Meanwhile, the
incident came to attention of Dr Makanetz, leader of the National
Party of the Croatian Assembly, who happened to be in Brod. The next
day he complained to the mayor. Evans and his brother were released
with profuse apologies.
They crossed the Sava into Bosnia, which Evans found so different that
he regarded the Sava as the border between Europe and Asia. After a
number of interviews with Ottoman officials who attempted to dissuade
them from travel on foot, the passport from the pasha prevailed. They
were given an escort - one man, enough to establish authority - as far
as Derventa. From there they travelled directly south to Sarajevo and
from there to Dubrovnik (Ragusa) on the coast, in Dalmatia. In
Sarajevo they learned that the region through which they had just
passed was now "plunged in civil war".
Reporter for ''The Manchester Guardian''
==========================================
Home again, Evans wrote of his experiences, working from his extensive
notes and drawings, publishing
'[
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73712 Through Bosnia and
Herzegovina]', which came out in two editions, 1876 and 1877. He
became overnight an expert in Balkan affairs. 'The Manchester
Guardian' hired him as a correspondent, sending him back to the
Balkans in 1877. He reported on the suppression of the Christian
insurrectionists by the military of the Ottoman Empire, and yet was
treated by the Ottomans as though he were an ambassador, despite his
anti-Turkish sentiments. His older interests in antiquities continued.
He collected portable artefacts, especially seal stones, at every
opportunity, between sending back article after article to 'The
Guardian'. He also visited the Freemans in Sarajevo whenever he could.
A relationship with Freeman's eldest daughter, Margaret, had begun to
blossom. In 1878 the Russians compelled a settlement of the conflict
on appeal by the Serbs. The Ottomans ceded Bosnia and Herzegovina to
the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a protectorate.
In 1878, Evans proposed to Margaret Freeman, three years his senior,
an educated and literate woman, and until now secretary for her
father. The offer was accepted, to everyone's great satisfaction.
Freeman spoke affectionately of his future son-in-law. The couple were
married near the Freeman home in Wookey, Somerset, at the parish
church. They took up residence in a Venetian villa Evans had purchased
in Ragusa, Casa San Lazzaro, on the bluffs overlooking the Adriatic.
One of their first tasks was to create a garden there. They lived
happily, Evans pursuing his journalistic career, until 1882.
Evans's continued stance in favour of native government led to a
condition of unacceptability to the local regime within the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. He did not see Austro-Hungarian rule in
Bosnia and Herzegovina as an improvement over Ottoman. He wrote: "The
people are treated not as a liberated but as a conquered and inferior
race...." The Evans's sentiments were followed by acts of personal
charity: they took in an orphan, invited a blind woman to dinner every
night. Finally Evans wrote some public letters in favour of an
insurrection.
Evans was arrested in 1882, to be put on trial as a British 'agent
provocateur' stirring up further insurrection. His journalistic
sources were not acceptable friendships to the authorities. He spent
six weeks in prison awaiting trial, but at the trial nothing
definitive could be proved. His wife was interrogated. She found most
offensive the reading of her love letters before her eyes by a hostile
police agent. Evans was expelled from the country. Gladstone had been
apprised of the situation immediately, but, as far as the public knew,
did nothing. The government in Vienna similarly disavowed any
knowledge of or connection to the actions of the local authorities.
The Evans returned home to rent a house in Oxford, abandoning their
villa, which became a hotel. However, Evans's reputation among the
Slavs assumed unassailable proportions. He was invited later to play a
role in the formation of the pre-Yugoslav state. In 1941 the
government of Yugoslavia sent representatives to his funeral.
During Gascoyne-Cecil's first tenure as Prime Minister from 1885 to
1886, the English public held negative views of the Kingdom of Serbia
and instead supported the Kingdom of Bulgaria. A 'Times' correspondent
said Serbia was the biggest threat to peace in the Balkans. This view
was refuted by Evans, who stated that Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija
were facing terror from the hand of local Albanian population, with
murders being a daily occurrence.
Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum
================================
Evans and his wife moved back to Oxford, renting a house there in
January 1883. This period of unemployment was the only one of his
life; he employed himself finishing up his Balkan studies. He
completed his articles on Roman roads and cities there. It was
suggested that he apply to a new professorship of Classical
Archaeology at Oxford. When he found out that Jowett and Newton were
among the electors, he decided not to apply. He wrote to Freeman that
to confine archaeology to classics was an absurdity. Instead he and
Margaret travelled to Greece, seeking out Heinrich Schliemann at
Athens. Margaret and Sophia had a visit for several hours, during
which Evans examined the Mycenaean antiquities at hand with Heinrich.
Meanwhile, the Ashmolean Museum, an adjunct of Oxford University, was
in a chaotic state of transition. It had been a natural history
museum, but the collections had been transferred to other museums. The
lower floor housed some art and archaeology, but the upper floor was
being used for university functions. John Henry Parker, appointed the
first keeper in 1870, had the task of trying to manage it. His efforts
to negotiate with the art collector Charles Drury Edward Fortnum, over
housing his extensive collection, were being undercut by university
administrators. In January 1884, Parker died. The museum was in the
hands of its assistant keepers, one of whom, Edward Evans (no
relation), was to be Arthur Evans' executive during Evans' extended
absences.
The strategy for the museum now was to convert it to an art and
archaeology museum, expanding the remaining collections. In November
1883, Fortnum wrote to Evans asking for his assistance in locating
some letters in the Bodleian Library that would help to validate a
noted ring in his collection; he did so on the advice of John Evans of
the Society of Antiquaries. Unable to find the letters, Arthur Evans
suggested Fortnum visit Oxford. Fortnum in fact was becoming
dissatisfied with rivals for his collection, the South Kensington
Museum, because of their "lack of a properly informed and competent
person as keeper." Evans had the right qualifications and took the
position of keeper at the Ashmolean when it was offered.
In 1884, therefore, Evans, at the age of 34, was appointed Keeper of
the Ashmolean Museum. He held a grand inauguration at which he
outlined his planned changes, publishing it as 'The Ashmolean as a
Home of Archaeology in Oxford'. Already the great frontage building
had been erected. Evans took it in the direction of being an
archaeology museum. He insisted the artefacts be transferred back to
the museum, negotiated for and succeeded in acquiring Fortnum's
collections, later gave his father's collections to the museum, and
finally, bequeathed his own Minoan collections, not without the
intended effect. Today it has the finest Minoan assemblages outside
Crete. Evans gave the Ilchester Lectures for 1884 on the Slavonic
conquest of Illyricum, which remained unpublished.
Excavations at Aylesford
==========================
A cemetery of the British Iron Age discovered in 1886 at Aylesford in
Kent was excavated under the leadership of Evans, and published in
1890. With the later excavation by others at Swarling not far away
(discovery to publication was 1921-1925) this is the type site for
Aylesford-Swarling pottery or the Aylesford-Swarling culture, which
included the first wheel-made pottery in Britain. Evans's conclusion
that the site belonged to a culture closely related to the continental
Belgae, remains the modern view, though the dating has been refined to
the period after about 75 BC. His analysis of the site was still
regarded as "an outstanding contribution to Iron Age studies" with "a
masterly consideration of the metalwork" by Sir Barry Cunliffe in
2012.
End and beginning
===================
In 1893, Evans's way of life as a married, middling archaeologist,
puttering around the Ashmolean, and travelling extensively and
perpetually on holiday with his beloved Margaret, came to an abrupt
end, leaving emotional devastation in its wake and changing the course
of his life. Freeman died in March 1892. Always of precarious health,
he had heard that Spain had a salubrious climate. Travelling there to
test the hypothesis and perhaps improve his physical condition, he
contracted smallpox and was gone in a few days. His oldest daughter
did not survive him long. Always of precarious health herself - she is
said to have had tuberculosis - she was too weak to prepare her
father's papers for publication, so she delegated the task to a family
friend, Reverend William Stephens.
In October of that year Evans took her to visit Boar's Hill, near
Oxford. He wanted to buy 60 acres to build a home for Margaret on the
hill. She approved the location, so he convinced his father to put up
the money. Then he had the tops of the pines cut, eight feet from the
ground, on which he had built a platform and a log cabin to serve as a
temporary quarters while the mansion was being built. His intent was
to keep her from the cold, damp ground. Apparently she never lived
there. They were away again for the winter, Margaret to winter with
her sister in Bordighera, Evans to Sicily to complete the last volume
of the history he and Freeman had begun together.
In February, Evans met John Myres, a student at the British School, in
Athens. The two shopped the flea markets looking for antiquities.
Evans purchased some seal stones inscribed with a mysterious writing,
said to have come from Crete. Then he met Margaret in Bordighera. The
two started back to Athens, but en route, in Alassio, Italy she was
overtaken by a severe attack. On 11 March 1893, after experiencing
painful spasms for two hours, she died with Evans holding her hand, of
an unknown disease, perhaps tuberculosis, although the symptoms fit a
heart attack also. He was 42; she, 45.
Margaret was buried in the English cemetery at Alassio. Her epitaph
says, in part, "Her bright, energetic spirit, undaunted by suffering
to the last, and ever working for the welfare of those around her,
made a short life long." Evans placed on the grave a wreath he wove
himself of ox-eye daisies (also known as marguerites) and wild broom,
expressive of their innermost feelings, commemorating the event with a
private poem, 'To Margaret my beloved wife', not published until after
his death decades later:
To his father he wrote: "I do not think anyone can ever know what
Margaret has been to me." He never married again. For the rest of his
life he wrote on black-bordered stationery. He went ahead with the
mansion he had planned to build for Margaret on Boars Hill in
Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), against the advice of his father, who
regarded it as wasteful and useless. He called it Youlbury, after the
name of the locality.
Waiting for the future
========================
After Margaret's death Evans wandered aimlessly around Liguria
ostensibly looking at Terramare Culture sites and for Neolithic
remains in Ligurian caves. Then he revisited the locations of his
youthful explorations in Zagreb. Finally he returned to live a
hermit-like existence in the cabin he had built for her. The Ashmolean
no longer interested him. He complained to Fortnum in a late, childish
display of sibling rivalry, that his father had had another child, his
half-sister Joan. After a year of grief the mounting tension in Crete
began to attract his interest. Knossos was now known to be a major
site, thanks to Evans's old friend and fellow journalist in Bosnia,
William James Stillman. Another old friend, Federico Halbherr, the
Italian archaeologist and future excavator of Phaistos, was keeping
him posted on developments at Knossos by mail.
Archaeologists from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United
States were in attendance at the site watching the progress, so to
speak, of the "sick man of Europe", a metaphor of the dying Ottoman
Empire. The various pashas, eager not to offend the native Cretan
parliament, were encouraging foreigners to apply for a firman to
excavate, and then not granting any. The Cretans were afraid of the
Ottomans' removing any artefacts to Istanbul. The Ottoman method of
stalling was to require any would-be excavators to buy the site from
its native owners first. The owners in turn were coached to charge so
much money that none would think it worthwhile to apply in such
uncertain circumstances. Even the wealthy Schliemann had given up on
the price in 1890 and had gone home to die in that year.
In 1894, Evans became intrigued by the idea that the script engraved
on the seal stones he had purchased before Margaret's death might be
Cretan, and steamed off to Heraklion to join the circle of watchers.
During his year of tending to the details of Youlbury, administering
the Ashmolean, and writing some minor papers, he had also discovered
the script on some other jewellery that came to the museum from Myres
in Crete. He announced that he had concluded to a Mycenaean
hieroglyphic script of about 60 characters. Shortly he wrote to his
friend and patron at the Ashmolean, Charles Fortnum, that he was "very
restless" and must go to Crete.
Arriving in Heraklion he did not join his friends immediately, but
took the opportunity to examine the excavations at Knossos. Seeing the
sign of the double axe almost immediately he knew that he was at the
home of the script. He used the Cretan Exploration Fund, devised on
the model of the Palestine Exploration Fund, to acquire the site. The
owners would not sell to individuals, who could not afford it, but
they would sell to a fund. Apparently Evans did not bother to explain
that he was the only contributor. He bought 1/4 of the site with first
option to buy the rest later. The firman was still in deficit.
Politics in Crete were taking a violent turn however. Anything might
happen. Evans returned to London to wind up his affairs there and make
sure the Ashmolean had suitable direction in the event of his further
absence.
Religious violence in Crete
=============================
In 1898, he became one of the first reporters of the ethnic cleansing
of Turkish Cretans by Greek forces. In September 1898, the last of the
Turkish troops withdrew from Crete. Their withdrawal did not however
presage peace, and religious violence against the Muslim minority
ensued. The British Army forbade travel for any reason with
checkpoints set up to enforce this. Despite this Evans, Myres and
Hogarth returned to Crete together, Evans in his capacity as a
journalist for the 'Manchester Guardian'. He took a combative stance
in his journalism, criticising the Ottoman Empire for its 'corruption'
and the British empire for 'collaborating with the Ottomans.' Many
officials of that empire had been Greek. Now they were working with
the British to build a Cretan government. Evans accused these
officials of being part of "the Turco-British regime". He deplored
religiously motivated violence, be it from Muslims or Christians. His
critical journalism caused friction with the local administration, and
he was forced to call on friends higher up in the government to avoid
problems.
Evans travelled widely in his reporting. He saw that the Muslim
population was now on the decline, some being massacred, and some
abandoning the island. One of the episodes he reported on was a
massacre at Eteà. The Muslim villagers had been attacked by Christians
in the night. They sought refuge in a mosque. The next day they were
promised clemency if they would disarm themselves. Handing over their
weapons, they were lined up, having been told they were to be
re-settled. Instead, they were shot, the only survivor being a small
girl who had a cape thrown over her to conceal her. In his report to
'The Manchester Guardian' in 1898, he described this ethnic cleansing
of Cretan Muslim civilians by saying:
Prince George was keen to avoid such massacres, and establish a
functioning government on the island. In 1899 a cross-confessional
government was established as part of a republican Crete.
Excavations of Knossos
========================
Now that the restriction of the Ottoman firman was removed, there was
a great rush on the part of all the other archaeologists to obtain
first permission to dig from the new Cretan government. They soon
found that Evans had a monopoly. Using the Cretan Exploration Fund,
now being swollen by contributions from others, he paid off the debt
for the land. Then he ordered stores from Britain. He hired two
foremen, and they in turn hired 32 diggers. He started work on the
flower-covered hill in March 1900.
Assisted by Duncan Mackenzie, who had already distinguished himself by
his excavations on the island of Melos, and Mr Fyfe, an architect from
the British School at Athens, Evans employed a large staff of local
labourers as excavators, and began work in 1900. Within a few months
they had uncovered a substantial portion of what he called the Palace
of Minos. The term "palace" may be misleading; Knossos was an
intricate collection of over 1,000 interlocking rooms, some of which
served as artisans' workrooms and food processing centres (e.g., wine
presses). It served as a central storage point, and a religious and
administrative centre.
On the basis of the ceramic evidence and stratigraphy, Evans concluded
that there was another civilisation on Crete that had existed before
those brought to light by the adventurer-archaeologist Heinrich
Schliemann at Mycenae and Tiryns. The small ruin of Knossos spanned 5
acre and the palace had a maze-like quality that reminded Evans of the
labyrinth described in Greek mythology. In the myth, the labyrinth had
been built by King Minos to hide the Minotaur, a half-man half-bull
creature that was the offspring of Minos's wife, Pasiphae, and a bull.
Evans dubbed the civilisation once inhabiting this great palace the
Minoan civilisation.
By 1903, most of the palace was excavated, bringing to light an
advanced city containing artwork and many examples of writing. Painted
on the walls of the palace were numerous scenes depicting bulls,
leading Evans to conclude that the Minoans did indeed worship the
bull. In 1905 he finished excavations. He then proceeded to have the
room called the throne room (due to the throne-like stone chair fixed
in the room) repainted by a father-son team of Swiss artists, Émile
Gilliéron 'père' and fils. While Evans based the recreations on
archaeological evidence, some of the best-known frescoes from the
throne room were almost complete inventions of the Gilliérons,
according to his critics.
Senior trustee
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All the excavations at Knossos were done on leave of absence from the
museum. "While the Keeper's salary was not generous, the conditions of
residence were very liberal ... the keeper could and should travel to
secure new acquisitions". But in 1908 at the age of 57 he resigned his
position to concentrate on writing up his Minoan work. In 1912 he
refused the opportunity to become president of the Society of
Antiquaries, a position which his father had already held. But in
1914 at the age of 63, when he was too old to take part in the War, he
took on the presidency of the Antiquaries which carried with it an ex
officio appointment as a Trustee of the British Museum and he spent
the War successfully fighting the War Office who wanted to commandeer
the museum for the Air Board.
He thus played a major role in the history of the British Museum as
well as in the history of the Ashmolean Museum.
Scripta Minoa
===============
During excavations by Evans, he found 3,000 clay tablets, which he
transcribed and organised, publishing them in 'Scripta Minoa'. As some
of them are now missing, the transcriptions are the only source of the
marks on the tablets. He perceived that the scripts were two different
and mutually exclusive writing systems, which later he termed into
Linear A and Linear B. The A script appeared to have preceded the B.
Evans dated the Linear B Chariot Tablets, so called from their
depictions of chariots, at Knossos to immediately prior to the
catastrophic Minoan civilisation collapse of the 15th century BC.
One of Evans's theses in the 1901 'Scripta Minoa', is that most of the
symbols for the Phoenician alphabet (abjad) are almost identical to
the many centuries older, 19th century BC, Cretan hieroglyphs.
The basic part of the discussion about Phoenician alphabet in 'Scripta
Minoa, Vol. 1' takes place in the section 'Cretan Philistines and the
Phoenician Alphabet'. Modern scholars now see it as a continuation of
the Proto-Canaanite alphabet from ca. 1400 BC, adapted to writing a
Canaanite (Northwest Semitic) language. The Phoenician alphabet
seamlessly continues the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention
called Phoenician from the mid-11th century, where it is first
attested on inscribed bronze arrowheads.
Evans had no better luck with Linear B, which turned out to be Greek.
Despite decades of theories, Linear A has not been convincingly
deciphered, nor even the language group identified. His
classifications and careful transcriptions have been of great value to
Mycenaean scholars.
Honours
======================================================================
Evans was a member and officer of many learned societies, including
being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1901. He was one
of the founding Fellows of the British Academy in 1901. He was elected
an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1913
and a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1918. He won the Lyell Medal in 1880 and the Copley Medal
in 1936. In 1911, Evans was knighted by King George V for his services
to archaeology and is commemorated both at Knossos and at the
Ashmolean Museum, which holds the largest collection of Minoan
artefacts outside Greece. He received an honorary doctorate (D.Litt.)
from the University of Dublin in June 1901.
Other legacies
======================================================================
In 1913, he paid £100 to double the amount paid with the studentship
in memory of Augustus Wollaston Franks, established jointly by the
University of London and the Society of Antiquaries, which was won
that year by Mortimer Wheeler.
From 1894 until his death in 1941, Evans lived in his house, Youlbury,
which has since been demolished. He had Jarn Mound and its surrounding
wild garden built during the Great Depression to make work for local
out-of-work labourers. The mound and wild garden, with species from
around the world, is now held by the Oxford Preservation Trust.
Evans left part of his estate to the Boy Scouts and Youlbury Camp is
still available for their use.
By Evans
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* [Volume 1, Volume 2 Parts 1&2, Volume 3, Volume 4 Parts
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Further reading
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* Markoe, Glenn E. (2000). 'Phoenicians'. University of California
Press. (hardback).
* Powell, Dilys (1973). 'The Villa Ariadne'. Originally published by
Hodder & Stoughton, London.
* Ross, J. (1990). 'Chronicle of the 20th Century'. Chronicle
Australia Pty Ltd. .
External links
======================================================================
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[
https://archive.org/search?query=%28%28subject%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%2C+Sir%22+OR+subject%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+J.%22+OR+subject%3A%22Sir+Arthur+Evans%22+OR+subject%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%22+OR+subject%3A%22Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+subject%3A%22Sir+Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+subject%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%2C+Sir%22+OR+subject%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%22+OR+subject%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur%22+OR+subject%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur+John%22+OR+creator%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%2C+Sir%22+OR+creator%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+J.%22+OR+creator%3A%22Sir+Arthur+Evans%22+OR+creator%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%22+OR+creator%3A%22Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+creator%3A%22Sir+Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+creator%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%2C+Sir%22+OR+creator%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%22+OR+creator%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur%22+OR+creator%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur+John%22+OR+title%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%2C+Sir%22+OR+title%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+J.%22+OR+title%3A%22Sir+Arthur+Evans%22+OR+title%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%22+OR+title%3A%22Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+title%3A%22Sir+Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+title%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%2C+Sir%22+OR+title%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%22+OR+title%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur%22+OR+title%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur+John%22+OR+description%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%2C+Sir%22+OR+description%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+J.%22+OR+description%3A%22Sir+Arthur+Evans%22+OR+description%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur%22+OR+description%3A%22Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+description%3A%22Sir+Arthur+John+Evans%22+OR+description%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%2C+Sir%22+OR+description%3A%22Evans%2C+Arthur+John%22+OR+description%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur%22+OR+description%3A%22Evans%2C+Sir+Arthur+John%22%29+OR+%28%221851-1941%22+AND+Evans%29%29+AND+%28-mediatype%3Asoftware%29
Works by or about Arthur Evans] at Internet Archive
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https://archives.ucl.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=EVA
Evans (Arthur) Collection] at University College London
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License
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Evans
