Aegeum_18_Program_1

A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE*

Alan Wace,* Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University, taught Aegean prehistory to a small group of third-year students in Classics. His lectures contained the essentials of the Aegean prehistoric sequences, illustrated by boxes of sherds and spiced with stories of travels and adventures in northern Greece. Sesklo, Dhimini, Tsangli Magoula, Lianokhladi were names which we repeated in grave tones, mnemonics for recognition, but they gave no hint of the hazards of site-hunting to come if and when we were lucky enough to get to Greece. We handled Urfirnis, Matt-painted, Grey Minyan (polished like pewter), Palace Style as we traveled in theory to the Peloponnese, over the water to Cycladic Phylakopi, to Palaikastro in Crete, dropping in at Knossos on the way, and to Tell el-Amarna in Egypt where the presence of Late Helladic III sherds made more impact than the information that it was the home of Tutankhamun. Always we were aware that all roads led to Mycenae, and that Alan’s dearest wish was to return to Mycenae to excavate again, and be looked after by the family of the Belle Hélène inn at Kharvati.1 In the menacing autumn of 1938 I became a student at the British School at Athens,2 with instructions to find prehistoric sites in Euboea.3 The way to Athens was by train to Trieste, and then by a Yugoslav ship, calling at Venice, Split and Dubrovnik. At Venice the Piazza San Marco was f looded over ankle deep, but there was no ban on visiting the Duomo where the water was much deeper. The afternoon sun shone through the west door, making the water lap in dazzling wavelets against pillars and moving legs, and creating the dizzy illusion that San Marco was rising out of the sea. The ship coasted round the Peloponnese, and my first view of Greece was the profile of Laconia and Mount Taygetos. Using primitive modern Greek, whose principles I had half-learned from Nick Hammond (Professor N.G.L. Hammond) at Cambridge, I arrived with a large brown school trunk at Odos Speusippou (now Souedias) 52, and was met by Vincent Desborough,* the senior student for that year. In those days Hymettus could be seen from the staircase of the hostel and even from the garden shared with the American School of Classical Studies. The two establishments had many activities in common, and we in the BSA appreciated American hospitality — in the Athenian Agora with Virginia Grace* or Rodney Young,* or at the dig house at Corinth, which was unbelievably comfortable compared with a xenodokheion. We also played tennis together on the communal court, and sometimes poker in the evenings (Saul Weinberg* was the expert). We made trips together, by trains with board seats (usually standing room only). The capacity of the trucks attached to most trains was marked up in white paint — 40 men or 10 horses. Sally Atherton (Professor Sarah Immerwahr) and Marie Farnesworth came with me once to Karystos in Euboea. Marie was collecting samples of marble for the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and wanted cipollino from the Karystos quarries at 2700 feet ASL on Mt. Okha. To make sure of the way we hired a man with a

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Because I could not attend the Conference in person, the organizers indulgently urged me to record my recollections of far-off people and things. I thank them and those who were at the Conference for their interest in a student’s view of those teachers, colleagues and dear friends to whom today we all owe so much. Names followed by * are no longer with us, but are remembered with affection, respect and gratitude. A.J.B. WACE, Mycenae: An Archaeological History and Guide (1949), with references to earlier publications. See also BSA 46 (1951), dedicated to Alan Wace to commemorate fifty years of work in Archaeology. H. WATERHOUSE, The British School at Athens: The First Hundred Years (1986). V. HANKEY, “Late Helladic Tombs at Khalkis,” BSA 47 (1952) 49-95.

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donkey. He knew his mountain, but could not understand why we had to climb so high to remove a few chunks of stone: “If you want stones go to the beach.” Vincent was devoted to the discovery of Protogeometric Greece.4 He combined scholarship with impish humour and great kindness. His Blue for field hockey, and a mini-Blue for table tennis at Oxford made him a fiendish opponent on the tennis court. On his recommendation and the strength of a Blue for field hockey at Cambridge, I was asked to join the all-male team of British Shell. My first match was against Shell Greece on the Panathenaikos football ground. Our Greek centre-half had studied in Germany, and had played for the combined German Universities. He was a believer in athletic terrorism, which meant that whenever he had the ball he ran shouting at full decibel. His tromokratia and Vincent’s cunning passes let me in to score a goal. This disconcerted the home team who, it was said, were not used to seeing their women in anything but wrappers. In December Richard Hutchinson (the Squire),*5 in charge at Knossos, asked for volunteers to help excavate a tomb at Knossos. Vincent and I offered to go, traveled deck on the overnight ferry to Herakleion, and so to Knossos by rickety taxi. The Villa Ariadne, Evans’ home in Crete, was maintained in his absence as though he were about to return. His last visit was in 1935, when he was made an honorary citizen of Candia, and saw the unveiling of his bust on the south side of the West court at the Palace of Minos.6 The dining-room and library were on the ground f loor, and bedrooms were downstairs. Kosta the cook, a mild man with a fierce expression and extravagant moustaches, had ruled the kitchen wing for many years. On occasion he would relate unintelligible stories about Sir Arthur, and recount epics of the war of 1912, in which he claimed fame as a boulgaronktonos. It was rumoured that he regularly saved the leaves of the tea-pot after Sir Arthur had enjoyed his cuppa, dried them on the roof, and re-packeted the product for sale in the market — genuine English tea, as drunk by Kyrios Evans. At dinner we were waited on formally by Kosta and Manoli Markoiannakis, the young factotum at the Villa, both wearing white jackets. I remember geranium or plumbago petals f loating in the polished brass finger-bowls.7 During the dig at the Tholos Tomb8 I learned the form and significance of mantinades, and picked up Cretan dance steps at the wedding of the daughter of the foreman Manolaki Akoumianos (the Wolf), whose archaeology had begun as Evans’ barrow boy. He was devoted to John Pendlebury,* who, he said, knew the whole island like his own hand, spoke Greek like a true Cretan, could make up mantinades all night long, and could drink any Cretan under the table.9 I was in Crete again in the spring of 1939 when John Pendlebury arrived at the Villa, bursting with energy and information. Early in the morning he would stand at the top of the stairs waiting, with a glass of tzigoudhia, to take on an opponent in a pre-breakfast game of tennis on the court built above the Unexplored Mansion. He organized long walks carried out at great speed, a bathing excursion to the little cove at the eastern end of what is now the Airport runway, where he marched into the sea wearing a loose garment of yellow linen embroidered with double axes. In the evening he would sing songs or make up verse to match his favourite tunes, one of which was Lilliburlero, the tune still used to announce a news broadcast on the Overseas Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. I spent a week at

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V.R.d’A. DESBOROUGH, The Last Mycenaeans and their Successors (1964); Idem, The Greek Dark Ages (1972). R.W. HUTCHINSON, Prehistoric Crete (1962). D. POWELL, The Villa Ariadne (1973) 55-56. POWELL (supra n. 6) recalls many episodes of life at the Villa, which she visited with her husband Humfry Payne, Director of the British School from 1929-1936. He died in 1936, and was buried at Mycenae. See also D. POWELL, The Traveller’s Journey is Done (1943). R.W. HUTCHINSON, “A Tholos Tomb on the Kephala,” BSA 51 (1956) 74-80. I also helped the Squire to excavate a LM II chamber tomb near the Temple tomb. See T. DUNBABIN, Archaeology in Greece, 1939-1945 (Annual Report of the Committee of the BSA for 1944 - 1946) 17-18. J.D.S. PENDLEBURY, The Archaeology of Crete: An Introduction (1939); see Archaeology 17, no. 3 (1964) 16268, an account by his widow Hilda Pendlebury of a Cretan journey they both took in May 1929 with Humfry Payne.

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Tzermiado on the Lasithi plain, and joined the race to and from his excavations at Karphi. Mercy Money-Coutts (Seiradaki)*10 was faster uphill, but John was always first home. He took particular delight in the remoteness and inaccessibility of the stark ‘Nail’ defiantly surveying the outside world, and supplied by the spring at the col below where a stone plaque inscribed by Eric Gill had recently been placed. In those days the argument maintained by Alan Wace and Carl Blegen* versus Arthur Evans (seconded by Pendlebury) over Minoan relations with Mycenae seemed to a green student (who never met Evans) to combine an academic sporting event with a serious debate.11 Carl Blegen, a patient and eloquent teacher, scored for Mycenae when in April 1939 he showed me Nestor’s archive at Pylos as it was being excavated. The excavators naturally referred to the spread of tablets as Nestor’s speeches. Travel in Greece was usually slow and unpredictable. On one journey to the Peloponnese a group of itinerant reapers boarded the train at Megara with their sickles. The handles were stuck into their bundles, leaving the sharp, shining curved blades pointing outward, innocently threatening standing passengers with instant decapitation if the owner turned suddenly. Travel meant finding a night’s lodging. Accommodation outside Athens was cheap, but often elusive and impossible to plan because of idiosyncratic bus time-tables and break-downs. Telephones were for official rather than public use, and a walker making interesting detours for the unknown Mycenaean site that would hit the headlines could easily arrive too late for choice. At Pylos the hotel had recently installed a free-standing bath-house, into which I was immediately pushed by friendly hands for a much needed wash after a day’s walk from Sparta to Kalamata (by taxi to end of the road works on the Spartan side well below the pass), a night in a grubby xenodokheion at Kalamata, and slow bus to Pylos. The hotel family stood round this palace of hygiene waiting for praise from the victim within. But although the water was near boiling there was no cold tap, and I emerged unnaturally pink. Return to Athens from the ups and downs of a lengthy and sometimes unsuccessful site-hunt was always celebrated by extra long hot baths at the hostel, a good dinner in town and a happy session at Zonar’s, the Athenian patisserie admired by archaeological zakharoplastikophiloi. In the summer of 1939 Alan’s wish came true. His letter to me, dated 7 June 1939, contains details of the arrangements: “We have now nearly £400 for the dig and so I hope we can dig for 6 weeks. Now I want to write about dig preparations in the hope that you and Stubbings12 may perhaps be able to get things a bit in hand before we arrive. I have written to the Director13 too and he will advise and help you, I feel sure. 1. I enclose a list of equipment. I think we shall need it all. The things ticked in green I hope we can borrow from the School or from the Americans at Corinth. The rest we shall have to buy. Perhaps you and Stubbings could begin to collect things. If you need money I have asked the Director if he’ll advance it and then I can repay him on arrival.

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H.W. PENDLEBURY, J.D.S. PENDLEBURY and M.-B. MONEY-COUTTS, “Excavations at the Plain of Lasithi, III. Karphi: A City of the Early Iron Age in Crete; Excavations by Students of the British School of Archaeology at Athens,” BSA 38 (1937-38) 57-145; M. SEIRADAKI, “Pottery from Karphi,” BSA 55 (1960) 1-37. W.A. MACDONALD, The Discovery of Homeric Greece (1968) gives a fair, readable account of the scholars and their arguments about this subject. Frank Stubbings was also a Wace student, working on Mycenaean pottery in Attica. See F.H. STUBBINGS, “Mycenaean pottery in Attica,” BSA 42 (1947) 1-75; Idem, Mycenaean Pottery from the Levant (1951). Gerard Young; cf. WATERHOUSE (supra n. 2).

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Barrows 6 or 8 Picks 18 - 24 Shovels 18 - 24 Skalisterakia 6 - 8 Dig knives 6-8 Level and staff Prismatic compass Baskets, Lamia type - rush 100 Wooden trays and labels (get made at Mycenae ?) Waterproof ink Nests of pillboxes Acid - a demijohn Shellac - an oke Squeeze paper and brush Drawing paper - Whatman blocks? Notebooks Drawing pins Plumb bobs Metre sticks 20 metre tape Plaster of Paris (fine) plenty 2. Could you warn Orestes at the Inn and Pantelis Christopoulos14 that we are coming out and want to begin to dig about July 10th if possible. We want to be sure of room in the inn.... 3. In the School apotheke there should be an old storebox of mine (green I think), an old suit case, an old typewriter in box and an old rain coat. The box is locked but I think I might be able to find the key. Or we could file through the padlock. In the box are a drawing board, a camera legs and dark slides, some drawing instruments etc. I’d be grateful if you could tell me if any of these are still usable. The typewriter I expect is rusty. The rain coat I expect has gone to rags. The old clothes in the box and suitcase I will sort when I get out. I don’t suppose they can be worn now. We shall be staying in the Hostel and so can then concert dig plans with you all. Helen Thomas15 expects to arrive about the same time as ourselves......... I hope Orestes’ Beehive turns up trumps and also that the grave in Atreus is really there. I am most keen to tackle Schliemann’s dump and see if the MH cemetery goes underneath it. We hope to arrive about July 3rd and I should like to dig by the 10th. I do not know whether the Squire wants me to run over & see his beehive or not. Could you and Stubbings please find out what would be the best way of taking the equipment to Mycenae? Could we get a lorry at a reasonable fare to transport the equipment and all of us to Mycenae or is it better to go by rail?”

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I think he was the Phylax at Mycenae, known to all as Aristotle, who spoke ultra kathareuousa Greek for the benefit of visitors, and so was rather well understood by those who had learned their Greek at school. Sharing a room at the inn marked the beginning of my friendship with Helen Thomas (Lady Waterhouse). She, too, had been a Wace student at Cambridge before me, and had been allotted Laconia in Alan’s plan to find prehistoric sites. See H. WATERHOUSE and R. HOPE SIMPSON, “Prehistoric Laconia I,” BSA 55 (1960) 15-108.

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The dig party walked to and from the dig on most days (occasional motorized visitors were very welcome), Helen dropped off at Atreus to supervise the trenches dug north and south of the dromos walls to discover their date.16 Frank went on up to the citadel summit where the ivory group was found.17 My patch was west of the Lion Gate. Fifteen graves from MH to LH II showed that the Grave Circle was part of a large cemetery cut in two and built over by the later Cyclopean fortification walls.18 Lisa made remarkable finds in Schliemann’s dump. We ate breakfast in the shade of the Lion Gate (Pl. Ib), impossible to imagine today, and waged war to protect the cherry jam from raids by large cataglyph ants. Lunch was spread on the slope in the narrow shade outside the Postern Gate. Usually it was chicken stew brought up by Agamemnon, the lame brother of the foreman Orestes. Agamemnon rode regularly to Argos for fresh supplies, and returned with bunches of birds slung in squawking protest from his saddle. 1939 was a nervous summer so visitors to Mycenae were rare, but the Squire brought Manolaki, in full Cretan dress to admire and comment on the walls and tombs, deciding on good Evans’ principles as he examined them which were earlier and which metagenestera. The heat was tremendous, relieved by one monster thunderstorm, when we stood outside soaking in the delicious cool rain. This was truly a happy summer for Alan, and we celebrated his sixtieth birthday with a midday feast in the Treasury of Atreus (Pl. Ia), with distinguished guests and friends from Athens, including Professors C. Blegen,* B. Hill,* G. Karo,* K. Kourouniotis,* and Sp. Marinatos* (who had given me my permit to study in the Museum at Khalkis). We were photographed ranged across the entrance to the tomb chamber, where afterwards some of us sang folk-songs and rounds. This was interesting. If the singers stood in a circle about 2 metres from the centre, their voices returned immediately, giving a feeling that the sounds had never left the mouth. Move a short distance from the centre, and the sounds came back in normal resonance. Wulf Schäfer, a German architect based at the American School, who came to help in surveying, became more and more gloomy as the days passed, until towards the end of August he and his shepherd dog left to answer call-up orders. We helped to celebrate the christening of a daughter of the house at the Belle Hélène, and a few days later we said goodbye, and left for Nauplion and the hotel with vine-covered restaurant near the quay. The finds were packed away at the Museum, and we returned to Athens. War had been declared against Germany and we all knew that archaeology was over for the duration. Henry Hankey, then Third Secretary in HM Diplomatic Service, and I were married in 1941, and we joined the staff of the British Embassy in Madrid in 1942. Spain was neutral, but Spaniards were swayed one way or the other by bitter memories of their civil war. In 1946 we were transferred to the Embassy in Rome, in a shattered land beginning to recover from Mussolini and the devastation of war. In spare time I transcribed Latin inscriptions from North Africa for John Ward-Perkins,* Director of the British School in Rome, and published the Late Helladic pottery from Khalkis (Euboea). Subsequent diplomatic postings in London, San Francisco, Santiago (Chile), London, Beirut, Panama and again in London ruled out fieldwork, but in Beirut I became a post-graduate student again. Our four children joined in site-hunting, especially in Euboea on long leave, helping to complete the survey of the island.19 Henry recorded sherds, sites and archaeological fiction. I searched for paleolithic sites with Lorraine Copeland, explored Byblos and Eshmoun with Maurice* and Mireille Dunand,* took distinguished visitors to Baalbek, and visited remote Roman temples with John Ward-Perkins. Gerald Lankester Harding,* formerly Director of Antiquities of Jordan, lived in Lebanon, had excavated with Flinders Petrie, and introduced me to the archaeology of Jordan and Palestine

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Summarized in WACE (supra n. 1) Appendix 1, 119-31; excavation report in A.J.B WACE, “Excavations at Mycenae, 1939,” BSA 45 (1950) 203-228. WACE (supra n.1) 83-84. WACE (supra n. 1) 49-51. L.H. SACKETT et al., “Prehistoric Euboea: contributions towards a Survey,” BSA 61 (1966) 33-112.

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as defined in 1962. In 1966 we both helped Basil Hennessy excavate the temple on the airport at Amman (originally uncovered by a bull-dozer in 1955).20 Mycenaean pottery from the Middle East was published from Panama with the help of the library of the Panama Canal Company and of Olga Tufnell in London.21 In 1970 I assisted Gerald Cadogan in the excavation of Myrgos Pyrgos in south Crete, and am now working on Pyrgos pottery of the Late Minoan period, on chronological problems, and on the distribution of Aegean pottery in the Near East. Since 1970 my horizons have been broadened by taking part in conferences, by lecturing to Swan Hellenic travelers cruising in the Mediterranean and on the Nile, and by helping or examining candidates for theses and dissertations. Vronwy HANKEY

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V. HANKEY, “A Late Bronze Age Temple at Amman Airport: Small Finds and Pottery discovered in 1955,” in S. BOURKE and J.- P. DESCOEDRES (eds.), Trade, Contact and the Movement of Peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean: Studies in honour of J. Basil Hennessy (1995) 169-85, with bibliography of previous reports. V. HANKEY, “Mycenaean Pottery in the Middle East: Notes on Finds since 1951,” BSA 62 (1967) 104-147; see O. TUFNELL, “Reminiscences of One of Petrie’s Pups,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly (July - December 1982) 81-86; J.N. TUBB (ed.), Palestine in the Bronze and Iron Ages: Papers in Honour of Olga Tufnell (1985).

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pl. Ia

Pl. Ib Pl. Ic

Alan Wace’s 60th Birthday Party at the Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae, 13 July 1939: (standing, l. to r.) Konstantinos Kourouniotis, Bert Hill, Georg Karo, Spyridon Marinatos, Carl Blegen, Helen Wace; (sitting, l. to r.) Helen Thomas, Elizabeth Wace (French), Vronwy Fisher, Frank Stubbings (photograph by Alan Wace; reproduced by courtesy of Vronwy Hankey and Elizabeth French). Breakfast at the Grave Circle, Mycenae, 1939: (l. to r.) Helen Thomas, Wulf Schäfer, Helen Wace, Elizabeth Wace (French), Alan Wace, Frank Stubbings, Vronwy Fisher (photograph reproduced by courtesy of Vronwy Hankey and Elizabeth French). Tea at the Lion Gate, Mycenae, 1939: (l. to r.) Helen Wace, Elizabeth Wace (French), Alan Wace, Michael Fuller, Helen Thomas (photograph reproduced by courtesy of Vronwy Hankey and Elizabeth French).