Arthur Evans
Arthur John Evans (born July 8, 1851 – died July 11, 1941) was a British archaeologist, best remembered for uncovering, at the island of Crete, previously unknown Minoan civilization.
Life
Arthur Evans was born in Nash Mills, England. He was the eldest son of Sir John Evans, a paper manufacturer and amateur archaeologist of Welsh descent, who evoked in his son interest for archeology. Evans was educated at Harrow School, at Brasenose College, Oxford, and at the University of Göttingen, where he studied and obtained degree in history. In 1878 he married Margaret Freeman, who became his companion and a partner in his work, until her death in 1893.
After graduation Evans traveled to Bosnia and Macedonia to study ancient Roman sites. At the same time he was working as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in the Balkans and a secretary of the British Fund for Balkan Refugees. However, due to his critical position toward local government he made himself lot of enemies. In 1882 he was accused of being a spy, arrested and expelled out of the country.
In 1884 he became curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the position he carried until 1908. He was made a professor of prehistoric archeology at Oxford in 1908. In 1901 he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1911 he received a knighthood. He served as president of the Society of Antiquities from 1914 to 1919, and president of the British Association from 1916 to 1919.
Evans however remains famous for his archeological excavations on the island of Crete. He visited Crete for the first time in 1894, when the unknown script, made out on seal stones, was found together with some unidentified coins. After he studied the sites on Crete, he proposed the explanation that pre-classical Mycenaean civilization of the Greece originated in Crete. He published his ideas in the Cretan Pictographs and Pre-Phoenician Script in 1895. Four years later, for the sole purpose of excavations, he purchased the site of Knossos, which soon became the golden potluck of various finds. Evans there uncovered the ruins of a palace, on which restoration he spent the rest of his life. After the Greek legend of the Cretan king Minos and a beast called Minotaur, Evans coined the name Minoan and gave it to this newly found civilization. By 1903 most of the palace was excavated, revealing the beauty of Minoan artwork, through hundreds of artifacts and writings found. Evans described his work on excavations in his 4 volume The Palace of Minos at Knossos which he published from 1921 to 1935.
He continued with excavations until he was 84 years old. He died in a small town of Youlbury near Oxford in 1941.
Work
Evans' interest for the island of Crete, which according to the Greek legends hosted an ancient civilization of Minoans, was sparked by Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of legendary Troy. Same as Schliemann, Evans was an amateur archeologist, driven by his passion for mythology of the ancient world. He believed that King Minos, described in some of the Greek stories, was real, and that Crete was home of once great civilization. This conviction led him to invest all his inheritance, purchasing a great piece of land, including the ruins of the palace of Knossos, where he started with excavations.
Knossoss
After unearthing the remains of the city and its palace, including the structure of a labyrinth, Evans was convinced that he finally found the Kingdom of king Minos and its legendary half-bull-half-man beast Minotaur. Not only did he discover these remains and publish them in four volumes The Palace of Minos at Knossos (1921–1935), a classic of archaeology, but he substantially restored and partially reconstructed them, using some foreign materials like concrete that are offensive to purists but help the average visitor "read" the site. While many of his contemporaries were interested in removing items of interest from the sites they uncovered, Evans wanted to turn Knossos into a museum where Minoan culture could become tangible, as he was far more interested in building a whole vision of the past than simply displaying its riches.
Linear A and Linear B
Though deciphering and translating the scripts found on the site always eluded him, Evans recognized that they were in two scripts, which he dubbed "Linear A" and "Linear B". He – correctly, as it turned out – suggested that Linear B was written in a language that used inflection.
Evans, however, should also be remembered for his own irrationally obstinate Creto-centrism, which led to unfriendly debate between himself and the mainland archaeologists Carl Blegen and Alan Wace. Evans' insistence upon a single timeline of development, climax, and decay for Bronze-Age Greek civilization based upon his dating of Knossos and other Minoan palaces ran contrary to Wace's dating of Mycenae, which saw its heyday in the midst of Knossos' decline, as well as Blegen's discovery of Linear B tablets at Pylos, which he (correctly) speculated were, in fact, Greek. Nevertheless, Evans generated strange and convoluted explanations for these findings, and in enmity, he actually used his influence to have Wace removed from his tenured position at the British School of Archaeology in Athens. He also used contemporary material to reconstruct the old ruins, on the way he thought those ruins would look like. This draw serious criticism from contemporary scholars, but Evans seemingly didn’t pay much attention to it. He rebuilt what looked like to be a labyrinth, and build numerous new structures on the old ones, following his own vision of Minoan architecture. On that way he blended old and new constructions, only a trained eye being able to see the difference. This practice is strongly condemned by modern archeologists.
Legacy
Arthur Evans is one of the most well-known archeologists in history. He was knighted in 1911 for his services to archaeology, and is commemorated both at Knossos and at the Ashmolean Museum. The timeline of Minoan civilization, which he constructed, although slightly revised and updated, is still considered rather accurate. The excavation at the site of Knossos has been continued to the present day by the British School of Archaeology, Athens.
Bibliography
- Evans, Arthur J. 1883. Review of Schliemann’s Troja. Academy, 24, 437-39.
- Evans, Arthur J. 1889. Stonehenge. Archaeological Review, 2, 312-30.
- Evans, Arthur J. 1896. Pillar and Tree-Worship in Mycenaean Greece. Proceedings of the British Association (Liverpool), 934.
- Evans, Arthur J. 1905. Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos. Archaeologia, 59, 391-562.
- Evans, Arthur J. 1915. Cretan Analogies for the Origin Alphabet. Proceedings of the British Association (Manchester), 667.
- Evans, Arthur J. 1919. The Palace of Minos and the Prehistoric Civilization of Crete. Proceedings of the British Association (Bournenouth), 416-17.
- Evans, Arthur J. 1925. The ‘Ring of Nestor’: a Glimpse Into the Minoan After-World. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 45, 1-75.
- Evans, Arthur J. 1929. The Shaft-Graves and Bee-Hive Tombs of Mycenae and Their Inter-relations, London, Macmillan
- Evans, Arthur J. 1921-1935. The Palace of Minos at Knossos (4 Vols.). London: Macmillan
- Evans, Arthur J. 1938. An Illustrative Selections of Greek and Greco-Roman Gems. Oxford University Press.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Brown, Ann C. 1993. Before Knossos: Arthur Evans Travels in the Balkans and Crete. Ashmolean Museum. ISBN 1854440306
- Horowitz, Sylvia L. 2001. Phoenix: The Find of a Lifetime: Sir Arthur Evans and the Discovery of Knossos. Phoenix Press. ISBN 1842122215
- Macgillivray, J. A. 2000. Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth. Hill & Wang, ISBN 0809030357
External Links
- Sir Arthur Evans and the Excavation of the Palace at Knossos – Article from Athena Review in 2003
- Bio-bibliography – Short biography with bibliography
- Biography - Short biography
- Palace at Knossos - Website with photos of the palace of Knossos
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