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WELCOMING REMARKS

Helene J. Kantor was, for all intents and purposes, the first American scholar to publish a book on Aegean international contacts in the Bronze Age: The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium B.C. (1947). This will be obvious from her footnotes, which almost always refer only to the primary sources (e.g. the tomb publications from Egypt, the site reports from Greece), rather than to secondary sources and other scholars’ opinions (with the obvious exception of Axel Persson,1 whose book had appeared while Kantor was working on her dissertation, and by whom she was heavily inf luenced, if only to disagree with his hypotheses). Born in Chicago, Kantor graduated at age 19 from Indiana University and received her Ph.D. from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago in 1945, when she was 25 years old. Her dissertation topic was “Plant Ornament: Its Origin and Development in the Ancient Near East.” She then joined the faculty of the Oriental Institute as a Research Assistant and, two years later, published The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium B.C., which was culled from portions of her dissertation. This appeared first as a long article in AJA and was then reproduced as the first in the original Monograph Series of the Archaeological Institute of America. Kantor never published another book during her lifetime, although her jointly-authored volume on Chogha Mish has just appeared posthumously. Instead, she concentrated on a series of articles in JNES entitled “Oriental Institute Museum Notes.” She is also known for her articles on the Megiddo ivories, on chronology in the ancient world, and on the site of Chogha Mish. Following the publication of her groundbreaking monograph, she was promoted to Instructor of Archaeology in 1948 and promoted again to Professor in 1963. She did fieldwork as well, excavating at Khirbet Kerak in Israel during the 1960s and at Chogha Mish in Iran during the 1970s, with additional research in Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Georgia, and Armenia. She taught at the Oriental Institute for more than 40 years, until she retired in 1989, and inf luenced literally generations of students. When she died on 13 January 1993, at the age of 73, she was mourned by the international archaeological community.2 Kantor was both an archaeologist and an art historian, which is clearly ref lected in her monograph. It should be remembered that, although it was a groundbreaking piece of work, the monograph is far from perfect. Even when originally published, there were some problems and areas with which other scholars disagreed,3 and now today, with 50 more years of data and interpretation to add in, it is quite outdated in places. However, it has always been very thought-provoking and can led us in some interesting directions if we focus on the task of updating her text. Thus, the speakers in today’s sessions were asked to update Kantor’s chapters where appropriate, by including discussions of what has been found in the past 50 years and by considering how Kantor’s original monograph should be revised, updated or

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A.W. PERSSON, New Tombs at Dendra Near Midea (Lund 1942). See Necrologies published in IEJ 43 (1993) 269-70 and JARCE 30 (1993) ix-xi; also P.R.S. MOOREY’s review of A. LEONARD, JR. and B.B. WILLIAMS (eds.), Essays in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helene J. Kantor (1989), in JNES 52 (1993) 49-51. See reviews of Kantor’s monograph by S.A. IMMERWAHR, AJA 56 (1952) 89-91, and J. VERCOUTTER, JNES 10 (1951) 205-212.

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Eric H. CLINE

even discarded. We thought it particularly appropriate that today, as we head towards the third millennium, we should look back at our accomplishments during the second millennium AD, in an effort to uncover further information about the second millennium BC. Without further ado, let me thank you all for attending the conference and declare it officially open. Let us begin the proceedings. Eric H. CLINE