Arthur Evans

British archaeologist

• Born: July 8, 1851
• Birthplace: Nash Mills, Hertfordshire, England
• Died: July 11, 1941
• Place of death: Youlbury, near Oxford, England

Evans is best known for his excavation of the Bronze Age site of Knossos on the island of Crete, where he discovered the remains of an advanced culture that he called “Minoan” after the legendary King Minos.

Early Life

Arthur Evans was the oldest of five children. His mother, Harriet Dickinson Evans, died when he was six, leaving a vacuum in his early life. His father, Sir John Evans, ran a prosperous paper manufacturing business but was more distinguished as an archaeologist, numismatist, antiquarian, and collector. Young Arthur shared his father’s interests and accompanied him on archaeological quests. He was educated at Harrow School and from 1870 to 1874 attended Brasenose College in Oxford, where he received a degree in history.

Throughout his youth, Evans traveled widely, visiting sites in Europe, Finland, and Russian Lapland. Upon completion of his schooling, he toured the Balkans, the mountainous area north of Greece. There he pursued his interests in archaeology by locating and identifying ancient Roman roads and architectural sites. His studies led to a series of early scholarly works.

Life’s Work

In 1878, Evans settled in the Dalmatian port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) and married Margaret Freeman. He came to be regarded as an expert on the Balkan region, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. He openly sympathized with local Slavs who were rising against Turkish oppression and served as correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In 1882, he was charged with complicity in a local insurrection and was arrested and imprisoned. When he was released seven weeks later, he was expelled from the region. He then returned to England with his wife and made Oxford his home. In 1884, he accepted the position of keeper of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum of art and archaeology, beginning an association that would continue for almost sixty years.

Continuing their travels, Evans and his wife visited Greece. There they met archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who had located and excavated Troy in Asia Minor and the palace at Mycenae in southern Greece. During the nineteenth century, little was known about the origins of the classical world. Although most scholars believed that early Greek narratives were purely mythological, Schliemann successfully pursued clues from ancient literature to locate early historical sites.

Schliemann’s discoveries opened to Evans new perspectives on the distant past. Evans believed that the origins of the Mycenaean culture of the Greek mainland could be traced to the island of Crete, where ancient sealstones engraved with unknown symbols had been found. He thought the markings were an early form of Mycenaean writing. He first visited Crete in 1894, the year after his wife died, and repeatedly returned to the island to search for evidence of ancient writing.

Evans was familiar with the tradition that Knossos, the palace of the kings of Crete, stood on Kephala, the low hill near Candia (now Heraklion). He studied visible ruins at the site and met the Greek businessperson Minos Kalokairinos, who had uncovered ancient storage jars (pithoi) in that area. Evans began negotiations with local officials who had halted archaeological excavations, fearing that the island’s Turkish rulers would confiscate valuable finds. In 1900, after Crete was freed from Turkish domination, Evans completed the purchase of Kephala Hill and obtained permission to excavate.

With the help of hired workers and the Scottish archaeologist Duncan Mackenzie, Evans began excavating on March 23, 1900. Financing the project with his own inherited family wealth, he began digging where Kalokairinos had worked. As the site had not been built over in later times, ancient remains were generally undisturbed and close to the surface. The dig produced results that were both immediate and astonishing. The very first day of digging revealed artifacts and remains of buildings. By the end of the first week, Evans had found inscribed clay tablets, fulfilling his goal of discovering early writing.

The site that Evans excavated at Knossos had been occupied in Neolithic times and had been built over with a series of Bronze Age palaces during the second millennium b.c.e. After an earthquake around the year 1700 b.c.e. damaged existing structures, rebuilding began. The new palace was a flat-roofed, multistory structure supported by wooden columns that tapered toward the bottom. It was organized around a stone-paved central court from which radiated a maze of passageways, including a three-story staircase. These led to additional courtyards, chambers, ritual areas, administrative areas, and storerooms. Sunlight and fresh air entered through transoms, shafts, staggered levels, and open stairways. A subterranean network of terra-cotta pipes provided an advanced plumbing system. Many of the plastered walls were painted with richly colored murals revealing major artistic motifs: double-bladed axes, horned bulls, bull leapers, women with snakes, and plant and animal life. The site encompassed six acres and fourteen hundred rooms. After Mycenaeans took over around the year 1450 b.c.e., Knossos remained in use for two more centuries.

Although Evans originally believed that Knossos represented an early Cretan counterpart of the Mycenaean civilization, it became apparent that he had discovered a culture that was both older and distinct from that which Schliemann had uncovered on the Greek mainland. The mazelike pattern of rooms, corridors, and courtyards at Knossos reminded Evans of the labyrinth of Greek mythology: according to ancient narratives, Crete was the stronghold of King Minos, who, according to legend, kept the half-man/half-bull Minotaur in a labyrinth in his palace. This prompted Evans to describe his excavation as the “Palace of Minos” and to give the name “Minoan” to its civilization.

As a result of Evans’s spectacular find, his honors were numerous. In 1901 he was elected a fellow of Great Britain’s prestigious Royal Society. After receiving a large inheritance in 1908, he resigned his position at the Ashmolean Museum and was appointed the museum’s honorary keeper with a seat on its Board of Visitors. He was also appointed professor of prehistoric archaeology at Oxford the following year. In 1911 he was knighted. From 1914 to 1919, he served as president of both the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Numismatic Society. In addition, he was president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science from 1916 to 1919.

Meanwhile, Evans continued to devote himself to Minoan research. Pursuing his interest in ancient writing, he published the first volume of Scripta Minoa in 1909. (The second volume, edited by Sir John Myres, was published in 1952.) In 1921 the first volume of his monumental The Palace of Minos was published. It provided an encyclopedic account of everything then known about Minoan Crete. Additional volumes, in 1928, 1930, and 1935, recorded new material and updated earlier interpretations.

Evans also reconstructed parts of ancient Knossos that had fallen into ruin. Foundations and partial walls marked dimensions of chambers. Selected rooms, passageways, and frescoes were restored and repainted. Some reconstruction was necessary to protect uncovered remains from weathering and collapse; some was undertaken to offer visitors glimpses of the later palace as it may have appeared in ancient times. In 1927, Evans donated the site to the British School at Athens in 1927.

In 1938 failing health forced Evans into retirement at his estate at Youlbury, near Oxford. He died on July 11, 1941, three days after his ninetieth birthday.

Significance

Sir Arthur Evans’s accomplishments were numerous. His early explorations in the Balkans provided the basis for later archaeological studies of Roman roads and sites, many of which had been built over or destroyed. He also revitalized Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, vastly expanding the institution’s holdings. His major accomplishment, however, was his discovery at Knossos.

Some of Evans’s work has been controversial. Rather than serving as a dispassionate chronicler, it has been suggested that he projected his own vision onto his finds. For example, he identified his discovery as the Palace of Minos even though he found no evidence of King Minos or his legendary labyrinth at the site. He also referred to rooms as royal apartments without real evidence of their use. Although evidence of weaponry and stone fortifications has been uncovered, Evans created the widespread perception that Minoans were pleasure-loving people who lived peacefully on their unfortified island. Some of Evans’s reconstructions at Knossos were necessary for preservation, but he and his restorers worked from fragmentary remains and created reconstructions that introduced new inaccuracies.

Nevertheless, Evans showed Knossos to be one of the most important sites of the Aegean region’s Bronze Age. Using stratigraphy—identifying age of materials by the layers of earth in which they appear—he developed a broad chronology of Minoan history. His publications identified unique Minoan architectural features. He recovered frescoes and artifacts that revealed Minoan artistic and cultural characteristics. His careful excavation and documentation laid the foundation for study of this newly discovered civilization.

Evans also discovered previously unknown forms of ancient writing. In addition to pictorial writing, he uncovered two varieties of symbols arranged in rows, which he called Linear A and Linear B script. Linear B, which was later found to be an early form of ancient Greek that was used for administrative records, was deciphered in 1952. Linear A, which is thought to be the written form of Minoan language, remains undeciphered. Because of the failure to decipher Linear B, much about Minoan daily life and culture remains unknown.

Evans went to Crete in pursuit of ancient writing, but he looked far beyond. His discovery of Minoan Crete as a sea empire with contacts throughout the Mediterranean world revealed a unique chapter in ancient history. He recovered a lost civilization of unexpected size and richness.

Bibliography

Evans, Arthur. The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos. 4 vols. New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1964. Complete edition of Evans’s writings about Knossos.

Fitton, J. Lesley. The Discovery of the Greek Bronze Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Well-illustrated book that traces archaeological discoveries relating to Bronze Age Greece.

Harden, D. B. Sir Arthur Evans, 1851-1941. Oxford, England: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 1983. Biography of Evans that includes a useful chronology of his life.

Macgillivray, Joseph Alexander. Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth. London: Random House, 2001. Biography that suggests that Evans anticipated his discoveries in Crete.

Sherratt, Susan. Arthur Evans, Knossos, and the Priest-King. Oxford, England: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 2000. History of the excavation at Knossos and examination of the famous “priest-king” fresco image. Notes and photographs.