John L. Myres: 'the passionate ubiquity of the Flying Dutchman'

In March 1917 John L. Myres, who had been conducting raids on the Anatolian coast, was posted to Syra. Compton Mackenzie (Aegean Memories, 1940) described his arrival:

A scholar of mundane reputation before the war, Professor J.L. Myres was now a Lieutenant-Commander in the R.N.V.R. In appearance he resembled some Assyrian king with more than a suggestion of the pirate Teach, and to such an outward form were added the passionate ubiquity of the Flying Dutchman and the fierce concentration of Captain Ahab. During the previous year he had organized a series of cattle raids on the Anatolian seaboard which in the end were stopped because it was alleged that they were doing more harm to the Greek population in Asia Minor than to their Turkish masters.

Oxford Students at the BSA Before Completing Studies

Oxford students were normally admitted to the BSA after completing their studies. However, like Cambridge, there were exceptions.

• Rupert Charles Clarke (1866-1912), Exeter College. Class. mod. 2nd (1886); admitted to BSA 1886/87 (under Francis C. Penrose); Lit. Hum. 2nd (1888).
  
• Oswald Hutton Parry (1868-1936), Magdalen College. Class. mod. 2nd (1889); admitted to BSA 1889/90 (under Ernest A. Gardner); Lit. Hum. 3rd (1891).
  
• John George Smith (J.G. Piddington) (b. 1869). Magdalen College. Class. mod. 2nd (1890); admitted to BSA 1891/92 (under Ernest A. Gardner); Lit. Hum. 3rd (1892).

Smith was re-admitted as assistant to the director, Cecil Harcourt-Smith, in 1895/96.

Towards a Bibliography for the History of the British School at Athens

The Annual of the British School at Athens and the Journal of Hellenic Studies are important sources of information about the early history of the British School at Athens. But what studies have been published? What about the people? The excavations?

I have posted a (working) and preliminary list here. This will indicate the closest copy to your location (type in your postcode or zipcode). The list can also be downloaded.

Readers are welcome to leave suggestions (as a comment) or to send me an email. The list can then be updated.

Gallipoli: Remembering Lives Lost

Today, April 25, is ANZAC Day when we remember the fallen at Gallipoli during the First World War. Two BSA students were killed during the campaign (see "BSA Deaths in the First World War"): Lieutenant George Leonard Cheesman, Hampshire Regiment, fell on 10 August 1915 during the surprise attack on Chunuk Bairun, and Captain William Loring, 2nd Scottish Horse, died of his wounds on the hospital ship Devanha on 24 October 1915. Loring's brother, Captain Ernest Loring RN, also served aboard ship at Gallipoli; two further brothers, Lt.-Col. Walter Latham Loring, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and Major Charles Buxton Loring, 37th Lancers (Baluch Horse) had been killed on the Western Front in October and December 1914.

At least two other former BSA students took part in an intelligence role (see "BSA Students and the First World War: Harry Pirie-Gordon"). Lt. Commander David Hogarth RNVR, working for the Arab Bureau in Cairo, was at Gallipoli in August 1915 interrogating Turkish prisoners of war. Lt. Harry Pirie-Gordon RNVR (Magdalen College, Oxford, like Hogarth) arrived at Gallipoli at the start of the landings but was evacuated on health grounds ('ptomaine poisoning') in May. He returned in the autumn and worked with Captain Ian Smith of the Royal Engineers (his former colleague from 1911-12 when they surveyed the area round the port of Alexandretta) on interrogation. Among the prisoners was Sharif Muhammad al Faruqi, an officer of the Ottoman army, who was interviewed in October 1915. Faruqi was recruited for the Arab Bureau operating as ‘G’, and serving as a go-between for Cairo and the Sharif of Mecca.

Students at the British School at Athens (1886-1914)

Gill, D. W. J. 2008. Students at the British School at Athens (1886-1914). Swansea: Ostraka Press.

ISBN 978-0-9558498-0-0.
Cost: £5.95.

72 pages, 6" x 9", perfect binding, cream interior paper (60# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), full-colour exterior ink.

This volume provides indexes for more than 130 students admitted to the British School at Athens from its establishment in 1886 to the outbreak of the First World War. There is a short introductory essay with bibliography.

Contents

A. Introduction

B. School Backgrounds

C. Cambridge Colleges

D. Oxford Colleges

E. Universities and Educational Establishments in England

F. Universities and Educational Establishments in Scotland

G. University and Educational Establishments in Ireland

H. Universities and Educational Establishments Outside Great Britain

I. Fellowships at Cambridge Colleges

J. Fellowships at Oxford Colleges

K. Students by Year of Admission at the BSA

L. Directors and Students Listed in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)

M. Alphabetical List of Students

• Purchase from Amazon.co.uk
• Purchase from Amazon.com
  

The Ptolemaic Base of Arsinoe-Methana

An overview of the Ptolemaic occupation of the Methana peninsula in the Peloponnese has now appeared. Discussion includes the fortified naval base on the Nissaki as well as the topographical features of the isthmus connecting the peninsula with the Troezenia (and featuring in a number of border disputes known from inscriptions recovered from Epidauros). Methana, renamed Arsinoe, was one of a series of Ptolemaic bases in the Aegean.

This study builds on the earlier BSA / Liverpool University survey of the peninsula.

Reference
Gill, D. W. J. 2007. "Arsinoe in the Peloponnese: the Ptolemaic base on the Methana peninsula." In Egyptian Stories: a British Egyptological tribute to Alan B. Lloyd, edited by T. Schneider and K. Szpakowska, pp. 87-110. Alter Orient und Altes Testament, vol. 347. Munster: Ugarit-Verlag. [Publisher]

Image
The fortified naval base on the Nissaki. © David Gill.

'Maghoula-hunting' in Thessaly

Excavations by the Greek Archaeological Service had drawn attention to the potential of Thessaly.

Alan J.B. Wace and A.W. Van Buren (of the American Academy at Rome) invesitigated the Magnesian peninsula in April 1905. They identified a possible site for excavation at Kato Georgi near Cape Sopias; this site, designated as Theotokou, was excavated by Wace and John P. Droop in 1907.

Wace and Droop had hoped to find remains of a Doric temple but were disappointed. They went 'maghoula-hunting' and identified a prehistoric mound at Zerelia near Almyros; this was excavated in 1908, with Maurice S. Thompson joining the team.

Wace and Thompson were joined in 1909 by T. Eric Peet. They worked on two sites: Palaeomylos near Lianokladi, in the Spercheios Valley, and Tzani Maghoula near Sophades. This work suggested to them that there were no clear links between the cultures of the Aegean and Central Europe.

Wace and Thompson excavated at Tsangli in 1910. Wynfrid Duckworth, who had worked with the BSA at Palaikastro, examined a skull found in one of the Neolithic levels. A second site was excavated at Rachmani, to the north-west of Larisa.

References
Bosanquet, R. C. 1902. "Thessaly. Prehistoric villages in Thessaly." Man 2: 106-07. [JSTOR]
Wace, A. J. B. 1906. "The topography of Pelion and Magnesia." Journal of Hellenic Studies 26: 143-68. [JSTOR]
—. 1908. "Topography of Pelion and Magnesia - Addenda." Journal of Hellenic Studies 28: 337. [JSTOR]
Wace, A. J. B., and J. P. Droop. 1906/07. "Excavations at Theotokou, Thessaly." Annual of the British School at Athens 13: 308-27.
Wace, A. J. B., J. P. Droop, and M. S. Thompson. 1907/08. "Excavations at Zerélia, Thessaly." Annual of the British School at Athens 14: 197-223.
Peet, T. E., A. J. B. Wace, and M. S. Thompson. 1908. "The connection of the Aegean civilization with Central Europe." Classical Review 22: 233-38. [JSTOR]
Vassits, M. M. 1907/08. "South-eastern elements in the pre-historic civilization of Servia." Annual of the British School at Athens 14: 319-42.
Thompson, M. S., and A. J. B. Wace. 1909. "The connection of the Aegean culture with Servia." Classical Review 23: 209-12. [JSTOR]
Wace, A. J. B., and M. S. Thompson. 1910. "Excavations in Thessaly, 1910." Man 10: 159-60. [JSTOR]
Duckworth, W. L. H. 1911. "35. Report on a Human Skull from Thessaly (Now in the Cambridge University Anatomical Museum)." Man 11: 49-50. [JSTOR]
Wace, A. J. B., and M. S. Thompson. 1911. "The distribution of early civilization in northern Greece." Geographical Journal 37: 631-36. [JSTOR]
Wace, A. J. B., and M. S. Thompson. 1912. Prehistoric Thessaly: being some account of recent excavations and explorations in north-eastern Greece from Lake Kopais to the borders of Macedonia. Cambridge archaeological and ethnological series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Woodward, A. M. 1913. "Inscriptions from Thessaly and Macedonia." Journal of Hellenic Studies 33: 313-46. [JSTOR]

Image
Skull from Neolithic layer at Tsangli.

Piet de Jong: Architect and Archaeological Illustrator

Piet de Jong (1887-1967) is described in this new collection of his work as “one of the great archaeological illustrators of the 20th century” (Papadopoulos 2007: xix). Although the focus is on the American work in the Athenian agora, de Jong started his association with the British School at Athens on Alan J.B. Wace's excavations at Mycenae. He then worked with Sir Arthur Evans on Crete, Arthur M. Woodward at Sparta, and Humfry G.G. Payne at Perachora (see the caricatures in Hood 1998). De Jong also designed extensions to the BSA Hostel and Library.

• Review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review (David W.J. Gill)
• Greek edition
  

Reference
Hood, R. 1998. Faces of archaeology in Greece: caricatures by Piet de Jong. Oxford: Leopard's Head Press. [Worldcat]
Papadopoulos, J. K. Editor. 2007. The art of antiquity: Piet de Jong and the Athenian Agora. Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. [Worldcat]

Directors: the Transition from Dawkins to Wace

Richard M. Dawkins was due to complete his term of office as director at the end of September 1913. However in this was extended for an additional year (in spite of the suggestion in Helen Waterhouse that his term of office came to an end in 1913). Alan J.B. Wace was offered the directorship in the autumn of 1913, to start from October 1914.

Dawkins felt he could resign due to the death of his mother's cousin, the historian John Andrew Doyle (1844-1907). Dawkins inherited Doyle's two houses in Wales: Plas Dulas in Denbighshire and Pendarren near Crickhowell. Dawkins' mother, Mary Louisa, was a granddaughter of Sir John Easthope (1784-1865).

One of Dawkins' neighbours in Crickhowell was Harry Pirie-Gordon who was admitted as a student in 1908.

Reference
Waterhouse, H. 1986. The British School at Athens: the first hundred years. British School at Athens supplementary volume, vol. 19. London: Thames & Hudson.

Cretan Exploration Fund: Anthropology

Human and animal remains from excavations of the Cretan Exploration Fund were send to Professor William Boyd Dawkins (1837-1929) of Manchester University. Boyd Dawkins was a friend of Evans and was invited to Knossos. He had worked on cave deposits in England, notably Wookey Hole and Cresswell Crags, and was thus a natural choice to advise Hogarth for the interpretation of animal remains from the Dictaean Cave. He also made comments on the skulls found during Hogarth's excavations at Kato Zakro.

Bosanquet wrote about the human remains from Palaikastro:

Old C---'s [presumably Charles Comyn] fondness for skulls is notorious; to-day he packed 13 of them in two large mule-paniers and sent them off to the Museum at Candia, hoping they may arrive there in time to be measured and reported on by Body-Dawkins. B.-D. is the author of a sporting book on 'Cave-hunting,' and what he doesn't know about bones isn't worth knowing. Also he's a pal of Evans', and is coming to Cnossos to stay with E. [April 21, 1902]

The following season Wynfrid L.H. Duckworth, Cambridge university lecturer in physical anthropology, joined the team to work on the remains found in the ossuaries. As he was a qualified medical doctor (St Bartholomew's Hospital in London) he was able to meet the medical needs of the local community.

Duckworth has a lot of doctoring to do and is very good and patient. Our drugs, sufficient for my modest practice, aren't enough for his, but that's just as well, for we have no business to take the place of the local doctors and chemists by a too wholesale distribution of medicines. [March 28, 1903]

Charles H. Hawes of Trinity College, Cambridge, joined the project in 1905 to continue this work.

References
Boyd Dawkins, W. 1900/01. "Skulls from cave burials at Zakro." Annual of the British School at Athens 7: 150-56. [See comment by J.L. Myres, Man 2 [1902] 122-23.]
Boyd Dawkins, W. 1902. "Remains of animals found in the Dictaean Cave in 1901." Man 2: 162-65. [JSTOR]
Duckworth, W. L. H. 1902/03a. "Excavations at Palaikastro. II. § 11. Human remains at Hagios Nikolaos." Annual of the British School at Athens 9: 344-50.
—. 1902/03b. "Excavations at Palaikastro. II. § 12. Ossuaries at Roussolakkos." Annual of the British School at Athens 9: 350-55.
Hawes, C. H. 1904/05. "Excavations at Palaikastro. IV. § 7. Larnax burials at Sarandari." Annual of the British School at Athens 11: 293-97.

Image
Skull from Zakro.