Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth

Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth.

Author: Peter Warren

Addison Wesley Longman Higher Education

Issue: Sept, 2001

Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth. By ALEXANDER J. MACGILLIVRAY (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000; pp. 373. 20 [pounds sterling]).

SIR Arthur Evans (1851-1941) began his inaugural lecture as Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in 1884 `Our theme is History, the history of the rise and succession of human Arts, Institutions and Beliefs'. His towering achievements, first in elucidating the archaeology and topography of the Balkans in the 1870s, together with his humanitarian and practical role in helping to alleviate the miseries of war in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian border lands of the Austro-Hungarian and Othoman empires; and later as chief discoverer of the Minoan civilization of Crete, again alongside his humanitarian actions in the confused circumstances (the Cretan Question) of the final years of the Othoman occupation of the island (1890s) (a role fully appreciated by Cretan scholars today); in his influential activities on behalf of the formation of Yugoslavia after 1918; and finally in his prolific publications not only in the above fields but also in numismatics and Celtic art, all these achievements reflect a Leitmotif or central objective, namely the pursuit of historical truth, of the myriad complex causes and results of long-, medium- and short-term processes and single events. The materials for his work were largely the products of archaeology. It is singular good fortune that the constantly repeated technical and aesthetic brilliance of what he found in Crete matched his own highly developed aesthetic as well as his historical sense.

Alexander MacGillivray's biography (at least the seventh, if one includes substantial memoirs, not the first as the dust-jacket claims), despite its extensive, detailed and informative research, does little to appreciate this objective of historical truth. It follows the contemporary fashion of cultural and historical relativism, denying absolute historical truth (yet did not a multiplicity of events and processes actually occur and do they not have recoverable causes and consequences?), combined with the explication of achievement (or failure to achieve) through psychological drives or suppression of them. It is therefore unsurprising that MacGillivray sees our picture of Minoan civilization as essentially a fabrication of Evans. While Evans's model, like any other, is by definition a construct, the author rarely faces the consequent and fundamental question of whether that picture is historically true; indeed `fabrication' appears implicitly to deny it. Many would support a verdict that while Evans's theories have been shown to be invalid in some cases (Mycenaean Greek rulers at Knossos in its final stage, Shaft Graves-tholos tomb sequence at Mycenae) and while the ceaseless rate of rich new discoveries brings wholly unsuspected dimensions in many other instances, these subsequent discoveries have supported the theories, not least in the broad structure of Minoan religion, that there would be Minoan writing systems, on the degree of contact with Egypt, in the relative chronology and ceramic sequence Evans constructed with Duncan Mackenzie.

The book has merits. Together with its depth and breadth of biographical and background research, MacGillivray provides an excellent bibliography and list of Evans's publications. Evans's support for Slav causes during and after the First World War is brought out in detail.

Other matters are open to criticism. If it is incumbent on biographies, especially warts-and-all biographies as this one is, to strike a balance in character assessment and achievement appropriate to the subject, this one singularly fails to do so. While acknowledging Evans's achievements, the author at the same time takes every opportunity to assign or impute the worst, meanest or crudest motives to Evans's actions. So we end up with an unjustifiable and unpersuasive picture of an unpleasant high achiever. Instances are far too many for the limits of this review, but one in particular may be discussed. This is the imputation that Evans was a racist, believing in Aryan or Teutonic superiority (pp. 38, 50, 142, 193 (there is no mention of `proto-Aryans' in the text of Joan Evans referred to, Time and Chance (1943) 389, 253). Even without its problem of anachronism the imputation is without foundation. There is not a single reference to Aryans or Aryanism or associated terms either in Evans's first two Cretan books, where the multitude of comparanda might well have included them, or in The Palace of Minos. In the former, Semitic connections are much emphasized; in the magnum opus, Egyptian. Nor is any evidence for his supposed Aryan racism cited elsewhere. Little or nothing should be built on a single comment on inferior races and their extermination by a twenty-five year old adjusting to the rigours of Balkan life. In fact if the whole passage is read from which this comment is excerpted one finds that an altogether more considered view is being expressed by Evans (Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot (1876) 310). In any case Evans's own humanitarian activities in the Balkans and all his late pro-Slav work belied his comment. Finally, it is impermissible to assume that by association Evans held the Aryan views of his father-in-law, Edward Freeman.

A selection of smaller points. P. 55: Evans's anti-Austrian position in 1882, because of their oppression of the Slavs, clearly does not fit the Aryanism attributed to him by MacGillivray. So we are invited to believe that for Evans the local Austrian military were different from the noble Prussians. Such fine distinctions are not needed; Evans was pro-Slav simply for reasons of natural justice. P. 55: a ridiculous undervaluation of Evans's huge articles in Archaeologia on his Illyrian researches. All this creates a picture of a man with definite qualities, but generally unattractive, racist and academically mediocre. Each of these suppositions is far wide of the mark. P. 67: Evans `pulled the right strings' and so got the Ashmolean Keepership; there is no recognition here of his considerable merits for the job. P. 121, top: a truly remarkable statement that Evans held a `long-standing disrespect for self-made men who took to science'. On this basis Evans would have had no respect for his father. The reverse is the case, as too with the entirely unwarranted notions of a failed journalist and a failed husband (p. 107). P. 180: despite MacGillivray's chiding and patronizing tone on Evans's description of the first appearance of the throne room and its adjacent lustral basin at Knossos as Ariadne's throne and bath, Evans prophetically anticipates the current view of Reusch and others that the throne was that of a female (priestess, goddess impersonator or queen). Pp. 184-5: MacGillivray quotes Evans's epoch-making, first summary of the Linear B tablets and their significance, every word of which is accurate, and then airily remarks that Evans would have done well to leave his premature ideas behind. P. 193: this constant tone extends to comments on Evans's exercise of his imagination on his first season's finds in 1900, as if it were somehow out of order, mere fantasizing, to refer to the framework of Greek myths for early Crete. P. 247: an outrageously ungenerous comment on Evans's motives for his supplementation of a scholarship awarded to Mortimer Wheeler (who never himself referred to this as other than Evans's generosity). P. 254: the (anachronistic) view is offered that for Evans women could not have held positions of authority in Minoan society because they did not in the Britain of Evans's day, such a concept being `beyond Evans's imagination' -- this despite MacGillivray's own earlier remarks on Evans's interpretation of Minoan female figures. P. 264 bottom: it is wrong to suggest that Evans considered others' opinions needless and basically incorrect; behind the splendid quotations here from his British Association presidential address in the middle of the First World War lie scores of citations of others' work and many more were to follow in his published works. Pp. 281-2: gratuitous and pointless speculations in erecting a psychosexual edifice for Evans's whole life, with a guilt complex, on the basis of a single incident of indecency, the details of which are in any case obscure. Apropos this matter, the most senior archaeologist in Crete, who remembers Evans, recently remarked to the reviewer that Evans's position in Crete at the Villa Ariadne would have given him ample opportunities for pederasty and that knowledge of it locally would have been certain; yet never once was there any such knowledge, or rumour, or suggestion. P. 294: R. G. Collingwood, used to the mathematical perfection of Classical architecture, harshly criticized that of the Knossos palace. MacGillivray comments that Collingwood failed to realize he was criticizing not Minoan architecture but Evans's recreation of it, and that, as such, his criticism was `exactly to the point'. But Evans and his architects very carefully reconstituted parts of the palace from the direct evidence of the surviving remains, especially the superbly engineered Grand Staircase. Since they were true to their originals, where does this leave Collingwood and MacGillivray on `garages and public lavatories'? Pp. 307-8: the author's final verdict on Evans is not wholly ungenerous, `his strength of character, his stamina in the face of contrary circumstances or opinion, and, above all, his enormous creative ability'. In reaching this verdict, however, he criticizes Joan Evans's Time and Chance (1943), as sanitized and lacking in depth. Such criticisms are wholly unworthy of a biography which remains persuasive and authoritative, as well as beautifully written. Evans's adoption of James Candy should have been included therein; whether reference to the incident of indecency referred to above should have been, in 1943, is open to question -- the exploitation of it by MacGillivray is wholly unconvincing. Joan Evans's attribution of much to her half-brother's powers of intuition was a positive appreciation, not in any way a downgrading of his achievement.

This review joins not a few others which are critical of MacGillivray's book. He himself has carried out good and successful archaeology at Minoan Palaikastro. He built his earlier research career largely on materials found by Evans and has held academic positions created by Evans and the British School at Athens. As for Evans himself, the founder of the subject, whether or not one cares to read Alexander MacGillivray's biography, one should certainly still read that of Joan Evans.

PETER WARREN

University of Bristol