ARCHAEOLOGISTS OF RENOWN

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27303, 20 March 1954, Page 3

ARCHAEOLOGISTS OF RENOWN

HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN AND HENRY EVANS The Bull of Minos. By Leonard Cottrell. Introduction by Professor Alan Wace, M.A., Litt. D., F.8.A., F.S.A.; Professor of Classics and Archaeology, Farouk I University of 1943-1952. Evans. 219 pp. Leonard Cottrell, a Senior Writer and Producer in the 8.8. C., has already achieved a well-deserved reputation as. a lively and sound populariser of archaeological subjects with his excellent book on egyptology, “The Lost Pharaohs.” The discoveries of the great archaeologists of Greece and Crete—Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans—are just as dramatic and fascinating as those of Sir Howard Carter in Egypt, and Mr Cottrell in his new book shows once again that he has a fine feeling for the romance and adventure of such discoveries and an admirable capacity for informing himself accurately on the detail surrounding them. He is highly recommended toMhe reader by the eminent scholar who introduces his book. The opening section of the book outlines the epics of Homer and the state of academic opinion on their supposedly legendary basis until the time of Schliemann, whose discoveries at Troy, Tiryns and Mycenae burst upon the educated public like a senes of bombshells in 1876 and the years following. The career of Schliemann, a self-made merchant whose lifelong devotion to Homer caused him to spend his fortune and. all the energies of his later life passionately digging in Greece in the company of his young Greek wife, is a romance in itself, and Mr Cottrell makes the most of it.

The discoveries of Schliemann having proved not only that the Homeric heroes had really lived, but that Greek history extended back into time far further than had hitherto been imagined, Mr Cottrell proceeds to an account of the life and i achievement of Sir Arthur Evans, who discovered the Minoan civilisation in Crete (twice as old as that of Hellas), thus solving many of the. problems raised by Schliemann’s discoveries. Sir Arthur’s personality was as strong as Schliemann’s but more sophisticated and complex, and like Schliemann he was a wealthy man and had had a successful career in other fields before he turned to archaeology. The wonders he uncovered at the Palace of Knossos were even more sensational and more beautiful—the products of a higher civilisation—than Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycenae in the Citadel of the Atridae. (Mr Cottrell’s many photographs provide splendid illustrations of both). And it now became obvious that the strange features in Mycenean art which puzzled scholars were derived from Minoan culture Many fascinating problems were solved by Sir Arthur Evans: many still remain to' be solved, but Mr Cottrell’s comment on the future of archaeology is a melancholy one: The Schliemanns and the Evanses, men who had the leisure arid the wealth to preserve knowledge for its own sake, are dead; their successors, working with far more limited resources, are doing fine work. . . But how much more remains to be learned I The mysterious Minoan writing, which Evans went to Crete in the hope of deciphering, remains still a mystery: and in Crete, in spite of the work of scholars and archaeologists from Britain. France, America, Italy and elsewhere. more remains beneath the soil than has yet been taken out of it. The- valley in which the Palace of Minos stands, could, if excavated, perhaps yield tombs and treasures equal to Egypt's "Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.” But how is such work* to be done today? Where is the man of wealth—who is also a man of genius—who could finance, let alone plan, such work? What Government would dare tc ask for a vote of £250,000 fox- excavating and rebuilding a 3000-year-old Palace? One is left sadly wondering how many years must pass before the world is settled, and civilised, enough to carry on the great work which Schliemann and Evans began.