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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Four letters written in 1879, 1880, and 1884, by Thomas B. Sandwith, the British Consul in Crete, to the British Museum throw light on the early history of the site of the Bronze Age palace at Knossos. The first of these letters (1879) contains a brief eyewitness account of the excavations of Minos Kalokairinos there in the winter of 1878–9 and urges the British Museum to continue his work. The two later letters (1884) deal with his gift of a pithos from the palace excavations to the Museum. The letters also refer to clandestine excavations in the Sanctuary of Demeter at Knossos.
Acknowledgements. I am deeply grateful to Dr Brian Cook, Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, for allowing me access to these letters which are published here with his encouragement and by courtesy of the Trustees. Dr Cook further helped me with the definition of ‘Phoenician ware’ as Mycenaean. I am much indebted to Mr D. M. Bailey for information about the bronze mirror which reached the Museum from Sandwith, and to Dr Reynold Higgins for allowing me to quote his expert opinion in connection with terracotta figurines, now in the Louvre, and originating perhaps from the Sanctuary of Demeter at Knossos. Dr Geoffrey Waywell has twice come to my rescue with interesting information and references which suggest the discovery of marble statues in the Demeter Sanctuary in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mrs Ann Brown most kindly provided me with the typescript of her forthcoming article ‘I Propose to Begin at Gnossos’, and supplied references and useful information about the background of the period of the letters. I am very much obliged to M. Alain Pasquier, Conservateur en Chef at the Louvre, and to members of his staff for allowing me to study the superb fragments of Palace Style amphorae from the excavations of Minos Kalokairinos in the collections there and for searching the archives for possible information about them and about the terracotta figurines that appear to resemble ones from the Sanctuary of Demeter at Knossos.
1 Evans, Joan, Time and Chance. The Story of Arthur Evans and his Forebears (1943) 310–14.Google Scholar
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4 BCH 4 (1880) 125 n. 1.
5 Aposkitou, Martha, ‘Μίνως Καλοκαιρινός: ἒκατο χρόνια ὰπὸ την πρώτηἀγνασκαφὴ τῆς Κνωσσοὒ,’ Κρητολογια 8 (1979) 81–94.Google Scholar According to her sources the excavations began in December 1878 and continued until April of the following year (not the end of February, as stated by Haussoullier, , BCH 4 (1880)125).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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12 Hood, S. and Taylor, W., The Bronze Age Palace at Knossos. Plan and Sections (1981) 18 no. 124.Google Scholar Stillman, op. cit. (see n. 9 above) 47 pl. i fig. iii.
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14 Dr Geoffrey Waywell kindly tells me that the only possible candidate for this piece known to him in Vienna is a statuette of Demeter formerly in the collection at Catajo in northern Italy where it was catalogued in 1882 (Dütschke, H., Bildwerk in Oberitalien v (1882) 245 no. 612).Google Scholar The collection at Catajo belonged to an Austrian Archduke and was later incorporated in the Vienna Museum. Sandwith's account of how the statue was ‘sold to the Museum of Vienna’ might be a false memory of, or an inference from, a report of a sale to an Austrian royal collection. The statuette in question is stylistically close to the Grimani group of marble figures which reached Venice from Crete back in the sixteenth century. L. Beschi has shown that there is reason to think that these figures might have come from the Sanctuary of Demeter at Knossos (ASAtene 50–1, NS 34–5 (1972–3) 479–502 and 498 n. 4 for the Catajo statuette). Sandwith's letter indicates that the statue to which he refers was found some three years before the time of writing in April 1879; the clandestine excavations which he describes as taking place on what appears to be the site of the Sanctuary of Demeter may well have begun earlier, and it is therefore possible that the statue came from the Demeter Sanctuary, especially if it is in fact the statuette from the Catajo collection now in Vienna.
15 The term ‘Phoenician ware’ was still being used at this time for the pottery which eventually came to be known as Mycenaean (including Late Minoan). Dr Brian Cook has kindly drawn my attention to a report of 6 October 1868 from Newton to the Trustees of the British Museum announcing the receipt of cases of ‘Graeco-Phoenician’ pottery from ‘Mr Vice-Consul Biliotti’. The pottery in question is Mycenaean from the tombs at Ialysos in Rhodes.
16 Hazzidakis, Iosif, Περιήγησις εἰς Κρήτην Κρήτην (έν Ἑρμοπόλει 1881) 15Google Scholar, describes other smaller vases (amphoras) holding lentils (φακάς) and beans (κυάμους). Haussoullier, , BCH 4 (1880) 127 n. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reports carbonized beans (fèves) and peas found near the pithoi. Cf. Evans, , PM iv. 621.Google Scholar
17 Mr D. M. Bailey has kindly brought to my notice a fine bronze mirror case of c.300 BC from Crete (Walters, H. B., Catalogue of the Bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan, in the British Museum (1899) 376 f. no. 3211 pl. xxxii).Google Scholar According to the Museum's records this mirror case was ‘purchased of T. B. Sandwith Esq., CB’, and it is tempting to think that it might be the same as the ‘mirror’ to which he refers in his letter of April 1879; but it was only acquired by the Museum in 1898 nearly twenty years later.
18 This is implied by Minos Kalokairinos himself writing in 1901 about his excavations of 1878–9 (see Aposkitou, op. cit. (n. 5 above) 87).
19 Hazzidakis, op. cit. (see n. 16 above) 15 f.
20 For a vivid account of the oppressiveness of Turkish rule on the eve of the great revolt of 1866–9 see Stillman, W. J., The Autobiography of a Journalist (London: Grant Richards 1901) ii ch. xxi.Google Scholar
21 See the report from the newspaper ‘Κρήτη’ for 26.4.1879 quoted by Aposkitou, op. cit. (see n. 5 above) 83.
22 Haussoullier, B., ‘Vases peints archaiques découverts à Knossos (Crète)’, BCH 4 (1880) 124–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted with illustrations in RA 1880, ii. 359–61 pl. xxiii.
23 See his autobiography, Stillman, op. cit. (see n. 20 above) chs. xxi–xxiii. Arnakis, G. G., ‘Consul Stillman and the Cretan Revolution of 1866’, Acts of the Second International Cretological Congress (Athens 1969) iv. 99–106.Google ScholarMarcoglou, E. E., The American Interest in the Cretan Revolution, 1866–69 (Athens 1971) 58 ff.Google Scholar
24 Stillman, op. cit. (see n. 20 above) 216–18.
25 Coldstream, op. cit. (see n. 13 above) 4, 6.
26 In this connection it is interesting to note his severe judgement on the art of the Mycenae shaft graves published this same year (Newton, C. T., Essays on Art (1880) 271–3).Google Scholar
27 Compare some of the figurines in the Louvre in Mollard-Besques, Simone, Catalogue raisonnée des figurines et reliefs en terre-cuite i (1954)Google Scholar and ii (1963) (hereafter LC i and ii) with ones from the Sanctuary of Demeter at Knossos in Coldstream, op. cit. (seen. 13above) (hereafter DS). DrHiggins notes that LC i C 115–22 are correctly ascribed to Crete, and are surely Knossian and probably from the Sanctuary of Demeter on Gypsades there. In addition, LC i C 175 (hydrophoros) cf. DS 68 no. 63; LC i C 116 and LC ii LY 1620 (woman seated) cf. DS 78 f. nos. 153–5. Note also LC ii MYRINA 1153 (woman standing) cf. DS 61 no. 27; Bo 104 (woman standing with child) cf. DS 66 no. 60; Bo 154 (woman seated) cf. DS 79 nos. 159–61.
28 PM iv. 621 f. E. Forsdyke, J., Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum i pt. 1 Prehistoric Aegean Pottery (1925) 123 f. fig. 165: A 739.Google Scholar
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31 Aposkitou, op. cit. (see n. 5 above) 91: HM Clay 1174–6.
32 Borda, M., Arte cretesa-micenea nel Museo Pigorini di Roma (Rome 1946) 106 (inv. no. 65507) pl. xxx.Google Scholar Cf. Di Vita, A.et al., Creta Antica: Cento anni di archeologia italiana (1884–1084) (Rome: de Luca 1984) 214 fig. 374.Google Scholar
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35 See n. 29 above.
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40 See n. 15 above.
41 Stoll, op. cit. (see n. 37 above) 66 f.
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45 Halbherr, op. cit. (see n. 44 above) 111, writes in 1893 that he understands that ‘the French School of Athens seems likely to take the matter in hand' of excavating the palace site at Knossos.
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50 Ann Brown will shortly publish an account of these journeys of Evans based upon his original notebooks.
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