Love's Obsession Page 4
Most, if not all, of the countries with which we are concerned, have their Laws of Antiquities. It cannot be too strongly insisted that those laws, even if they might be better than they are, should be obeyed by the traveller … The traveller who makes it his object to loot a country of its antiquities, smuggling objects out of it and disguising the sources from which they are obtained, does a distinct dis-service to archaeological science. Although he may enrich collections, public or private, half or more than half of the scientific value of his acquisitions is destroyed by the fact that their provenance is kept secret or falsely stated. Such action is equivalent to tearing out whole pages from a history and destroying them forever, for each antiquity, whatever it may be, is in its way a part of history, whether of politics, arts, or civilization. For the same reason anything like unauthorized excavation, especially by unskilled hands, is gravely to be deprecated. To dig an ancient site unskilfully or without keeping a proper record is to obliterate part of a manuscript which no one else will ever be able to read.2
The British Museum’s attempts to regulate the collecting of antiquities were in part a response to the unprecedented looting and pillaging that occurred during the nineteenth century. On Cyprus, for example, the American consul, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, amassed an astonishing collection of Cypriot antiquities during the 1860s—over thirty thousand objects—most with dubious provenance, which he proceeded to offer for sale: first to the French, then to the Russians and, finally, after a public exhibition in England aroused interest, to the newly created Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where he supervised the collection’s installation and took a place on the museum’s board. In 1880 he became Director of the Met. When Cesnola published an atlas of the collection, the book aroused interest in the history of Cyprus and led to an increase in legitimate archaeological excavations. The uncomfortable nexus between collecting, looting, publicity and increased excavation are all a part of the Cesnola story.3
Archaeologists profess an interest in the lives of the people and in the histories of the places they excavate, rather than simply a desire for the objects unearthed. In the 1930s, however, with no scientific methods to determine the age of either excavated settlements or objects, there were few ways to understand the histories of many excavated sites. The technique of radiocarbon dating to determine the absolute age of organic material would not be developed until 1949 and was not in widespread use until a decade later. In the absence of reliable methods to give the precise age of excavated material, the only way to understand the past was by using historical records where they existed or, in the case of prehistoric societies without written records, by comparing evidence within a site or across a region in order to estimate the relative age of places, to put events in order. Stratigraphy became the key to this understanding.
When people live in one place for a long time they discard rubbish, abandon buildings, reuse stone or mudbrick or timber, and over hundreds of years complex layers of history accumulate. It is the job of archaeologists to methodically strip away these layers, revealing older periods of history with each successive unpeeling. Objects found in an upper layer—a pot, a metal blade, a marble figurine—must be younger, say the rules of stratigraphy, than similar objects found in lower or older layers. Archaeologists construct relative chronologies this way, not just of a single site but of objects across sites. Complex ‘typologies’ based on the results of stratigraphy show how the shape or decoration of an object changes over time and when an object has no context—someone brings it to a museum, or finds it lying in their fields—it can be fitted into this chronological sequence. Because pottery was in such widespread use in the ancient world but is easily broken and frequently replaced, pottery typologies became the sine qua non of archaeological interpretation.
When the British assumed control of Cyprus in 1878 they were slow to protect the island’s antiquities, although they did build a museum and in 1899 the British archaeologist Sir John Myers prepared a catalogue of its collection. Not until 1905 did a new Antiquities Law4 replace the earlier Ottoman one. This new law established a committee, chaired by the High Commissioner, to administer the Cyprus Museum. Archaeologists would have to obtain permits to excavate and could keep only artefacts the committee declared not essential for the museum. As a result of this law the collections of the museum expanded, and in 1908 authorities began work on a new museum in the capital, Nicosia.
In Cyprus, as in many other countries in the Near East, excavators operated under a system of ‘partage’ or ‘division’, which encouraged systematic excavation by promising a share of the finds to the sponsors of excavations. Archaeologists argued that without such agreements they would find it impossible to raise money for excavation work and, in any case, poor countries had few resources to mount scientific excavations of their own. Without a division of the finds to encourage scientific archaeology, they argued, looting would continue and information be irretrievably lost. Under the system, foreign archaeologists raised money for excavations by promising museum-quality material to financial backers, and poor countries without the means to mount their own archaeological work obtained material to showcase in national museums. The system did, of course, encourage excavators to concentrate on ‘rich’ sites, and on Cyprus this meant tombs.
Joan often talked about the time when the Swedish Cyprus Expedition had conducted excavations all over the island and she spoke fondly of one of the young members of the group, Alfred Westholm, who the Cypriots affectionately named Alfirios. The story of the expedition was already becoming part of Cypriot myth and Eve had heard it often. Its beginning could easily have been lifted from an Agatha Christie thriller involving, as it did, a chance meeting on a train, the loan of money, royal patronage, and a group of young men eager for adventure in exotic locations. Remarkably, the story is true, and best told by its principal protagonist, Einar Gjerstad.5
[In March 1922] Professor Avel W Persson of Uppsala was travelling to Greece. In a railway station in Serbia he struck up a conversation with a lively and nervous, somewhat oriental-looking man in his fifties. He asked the professor’s destination, and was told that Persson was on his way to Asine in Greece to conduct archaeological excavations.
‘I am absolutely mad about archaeology’, exclaimed this new found acquaintance. ‘What nationality are you, Professor?’
When he learned that Professor Persson was from Sweden, he became a volcano of cordiality, embraced Persson and cried: ‘Well then we are almost compatriots. You see I am the Swedish consul in Cyprus! My name is Luke Zenon Pierides.’
After some further conversation, the consul suddenly asked, ‘Could you let me borrow five pounds, Professor Persson? I ran into some bad luck. The Serbian Customs took all my money and I can’t get any more until I reach Constantinople.’
A further ten pounds was borrowed and the conversation continued. With little confidence that he would ever see his money again, Professor Persson found to his amazement that fifteen pounds was indeed waiting for him in Athens, together with a letter encouraging him to send an archaeological expedition to Cyprus. And so the Swedish Cyprus Expedition was born. Persson’s student Einar Gjerstad would direct it and the Crown Prince, an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist and later King Gustaf VI Adolf, gave the expedition royal patronage.
Between 1927 and 1931 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition excavated, in meticulous detail, important sites across the whole of the island, covering every period from prehistoric to Roman times. The exuberant, youthful energy of its members—archaeologists Einar Gjerstad, Alfirios Westholm, Erik Sjöqvist and the architect John Lindros—was contagious. The expedition brought a wealth of antiquities to the notice of the public and enlarged the collections of the Cyprus Museum. When work was completed, officials loaded 771 packing crates of antiquities at the harbour at Famagusta for shipping to Sweden.
It is against this background that Peter Megaw arrived in 1936 as the new Director of Antiquities. Born in Dublin and an architect
by training, the twenty-six-year-old Megaw was already developing into a Byzantine scholar of distinction and an able administrator. A student of the British School at Athens, he had worked with the brilliant young archaeologist Humphrey Payne in Greece, where he had also met his artist wife, Elektra Mangoletsi. One of his first actions as director was to overhaul the protection of antiquities and ancient monuments in Cyprus.
He began by moving to regulate the sale and export of antiquities and placed public notices in hotels frequented by foreign tourists.
Visitors are urgently requested to purchase antiquities only from dealers displaying a license from the Department of Antiquities … To neglect this precaution is directly to encourage illegal excavation, which destroys much archaeological evidence and many objects of interest and value. The public is warned that imitations of antiquities are made and circulate in the island. In case of doubt the Department of Antiquities will gladly give an opinion, but can accept no responsibility.6
When tourists complained that it took too long to travel from the port of Famagusta to Nicosia for the necessary export licences, Megaw began to regularly check the stock of licensed traders to identify and approve artefacts for sale and export. He warned tourists against buying material that was not approved, but believed that it was ‘in the interests of the Department to stimulate the trade in antiquities through the authorised channels’. One of the three people who Megaw licensed as an approved antiquities dealer was Petro Colocassides. Eve would come to know him well.
In the same year that Megaw arrived, William Scorsby Routledge, an Australian, retired to Cyprus. Eve remembered meeting ‘a nice elderly gentleman’7 while sailing to Cyprus with her father. Tom Dray and Routledge became friends, perhaps more.8 Routledge and his wife Kathleen were explorers and adventurers who had studied the Kikuyu in Kenya and led an expedition to Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, in 1913, sailing there in their purpose-built ninety-foot schooner Mana. It was not a happy voyage and Routledge was a difficult man. One of the expedition members, a young Osbert (O.G.S.) Crawford, who would later found the journal Antiquity and pioneer aerial archaeology, found conditions impossible and jumped ship when they reached the Virgin Islands.9
By 1936 Kathleen was dead, Routledge had inherited her considerable wealth, and he was looking for somewhere to retire. Tom left the family home and moved with Routledge into a comfortable three-storeyed house on the outskirts of Kyrenia. While each continued separately to accumulate land and property, they agreed that whoever died first would inherit the other’s estate.10 Routledge died in 1939 and Tom Dray moved to Tjiklos, a forty-acre property situated on a plateau overlooking Kyrenia.
Eve’s mother lived at one end of the town and Tom at the other. It was, Eve thought, an amicable separation.
Joan continued to assume more responsibilities at the museum and was by now an experienced excavator. She had spent four seasons working with Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler in England, had worked alongside Porphyrios Dikaios at the Neolithic site of Khirokitia in the south of Cyprus and had wide and varied experience undertaking rescue digs across the island. Now she would direct excavations on the northern shore of the remote Karpas Peninsula, where the discovery of a patterned marble floor near a small church had held up plans for tourist developments in the area. For three seasons, Joan was the Department of Antiquities representative at the excavations at Ayios Philon, work that was sponsored by the Cyprus Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Both institutions would share the excavated finds.
The Orthodox church of Ayios Philon sits facing a small ancient harbour and the setting sun. Along the shoreline the remains of a Roman jetty enclose a tiny harbour and stone blocks fitted together with sockets for iron clamps lie just above the high tide mark. Rock-cut tombs from all periods line the shoreline to either side. This is the site of Carpasia, said to be founded by the Phoenician, Pygmalion of Sidon. Archaeological investigations would span periods from the Bronze Age to the fifteenth century CE but primarily focus on the Early Christian basilica.
In the spring of 1937 Eve joined Joan for the third season of excavations. Judith Dobell teamed up with the two friends and with another of Eve’s pals from London and Maiden Castle, the Australian Margaret (Kim) Collingridge. For the girls this was a great adventure. They lived in a two-storeyed house that was let out to English holiday-makers in the summer, furnishing the downstairs room with camp beds and tables and chairs. The ceiling was made of matting and an odd assortment of small creatures, centipedes or spiders, often dropped onto them at night. There was an outside ‘convenience’ and in the evenings their cook brought a large tin tub of hot water to their bedrooms so they could bathe.
Judith worked with Joan at Ayios Philon, while Eve and Kim worked at a nearby site, Aphendrika, excavating Hellenistic tombs. They rode to the site each morning on their donkeys, with bundles of fresh lucerne attached to their saddles. The return trip, with cardboard boxes full of pots tied onto the wooden saddles, was decidedly less comfortable.11 Eve and Kim excavated with twelve workmen who had, they laughed, ‘improbable-sounding names such as Sophocles’. The girls giggled at the incongruity of instructions to their workmen. ‘Pericles, your work is very bad!’12
On the last day at Ayios Philon the boxes of pots and the beds and other furniture from the camp were loaded on a truck for Nicosia, while the girls spent their last night in the inn at the village of Rizokarpasso. As honoured guests they were given the best hand-woven sheets whose geometric patterns in green, red and yellow camouflaged the fact that the beds harboured fleas. As Judith crossed the landing to get the tin of Keating’s Powder (in those days used for protection from fleas) from Joan, she found the landing outside their room ‘carpeted’ with half a dozen sleeping men!13
As she had in London, Eve found work drawing archaeological material. Her drafting was skilful and in demand. Soon she began drawing for a young couple excavating a large cemetery called Vounous, near Bellapais, only a few miles from Kyrenia. Jim Stewart was Australian, his wife Eleanor English. The Stewarts were both aged twenty-four and well travelled. This was their second visit to Cyprus. In 1935, en route to Turkey, they had stopped to visit friends. Both fell in love with the island, its history and landscapes and they left determined to return. When not travelling or working abroad, Jim and Eleanor lived not far from Eve’s English family, at Park Cottage in Somerset. Now in Cyprus, Eve and her mother became the couple’s friends.
Eve, Jim and Eleanor were close in age and background. Except that one was blonde and the other brunette, Eve and Eleanor might have been sisters, both short and slim waisted, quietly spoken, well mannered and educated. Jim was the boldest of the three. Short and gangly he had the sort of Celtic complexion that suffers in the Australian climate, or in a Cypriot summer. A square jaw gave him a seriousness that his grin dispelled. Like Eve, he loved animals and adopted cats wherever he went. He knew his mind and did not take kindly to orders.
Chapter 3
England, Cyprus and the Near East, 1930–38
Jim Stewart sat with his luggage in the foyer of the Grand Hotel in Bombay, waiting for the Thomas Cook guide to take him to the railway station. After Jim’s bags had been loaded into the car they sped through crowds of men, women, children, cows and goats towards that grand building. People spilled over into the street and the guide pushed men and children aside, with Jim clutching his bags to his chest as they both leapt into the railway carriage. He gasped with delight when he saw the beautifully outfitted first class cabin on the Gujerat Mail. This was English Imperial India at its best, he thought, as he ran his hands over the leather seats and investigated the reading lights and fan, toilet, shower and adjoining accommodation for servants. But no bedding! His Trinity Hall scarf and overcoat across the seat became his bedding and his attaché case his pillow. Unorthodox certainly, but comfortable. He sat down, opened his writing case, and filed away the train’s menu to be included later in a letter to his father.
At Karachi he added pho
tos, which he cross-referenced, and a list of his luggage, all forty-four pounds of it, including pyjamas, plus fours and dinner suits. As the train rattled through a landscape of peacocks and monkeys Jim noticed that the fences were stone, unlike the familiar timber ones he knew in Australia. A scrabbling at his window shutter alarmed him and he was glad he carried a pistol to scare off intruders. Jim Stewart was ready for anything.
Born in Australia, Jim Stewart had spent much of his childhood in Europe, his adulthood in England, and was well versed in travel between Australia and Europe. His family had money and influence, and as an only child Jim enjoyed the benefits of both.
After completing secondary school in Australia he had enrolled in 1930, aged seventeen, at The Leys School in Cambridge, where he spent two summer terms in preparation for entry to the University of Cambridge. Both his father and uncle were old boys of the school and had business connections with one of the school’s founders. Jim brought with him a reference from the headmaster of his Australian school, who recommended Jim as ‘a boy of excellent character and of more than average ability’,1 although his school report from The Leys provides a more measured view of his abilities. His history master thought that ‘for one so widely read, such work of his as I have seen, has been a little disappointing’, adding that ‘one has seen enough of it to be sure that he will do well at the Varsity and later on’. According to his English teacher, his writing was ‘clumsy’ and he was ‘far too confident and slapdash in his literary judgements … If he read more receptively and were a little humbler in his attitude, his work would gain immensely’.2 Jim’s life at The Leys scarcely rated a mention in the school’s records. He shot at the rifle competition in Bisley in 1931 but his personal score was the lowest of the team.3