Speech by the President of the Hellenic Republic Constantine An. Tassoulas on the topic “In Crete I found the oldest cradle of European civilization[1]” : The contribution of foreign Archaeological Schools to the promotion of ancient Greek civilization, at the British School of Athens

The President of the Hellenic Republic Constantine An. Tassoulas, was the keynote speaker at the event organized at the initiative of the Chair of Council of the British School at Athens, Professor Sir Roderick Beaton, at the library of the institution.

Mr. Tassoulas’s speech follows:

Ladies and gentlemen,

The first traveler in the Greek region, the one who sought to bring to life “the breath of the ruins” at a time when antiquity was nothing more than a collection of names, words and aphorisms, completely detached from its material form, was undoubtedly the traveler Ciriaco d’ Ancona. He was the first European, along with the Florentine monk Christoforo Buondelmonti, to visit, in the mid-15th century, areas forgotten for centuries.

But Europe’s substantive acquaintance with modern Hellenism would take place in the 18th century, during the Age of Enlightenment.

It is the era of the grand tour, the “great tour,” the escape from the gloomy North. Magnates, nobles, wealthy bourgeois, adventurers, teachers, doctors, artists and scientists are heading to the South. They were seeking in Greece and Rome the key to understanding “what the ancient Greeks so beautifully defined as eudaimonia,”. That’s what Gustave Flaubert would later write.

The travelers who arrived in the country had their spirits inflamed by their reverence for classical civilization. They were seeking to follow in the footsteps of Pausanias, Herodotus and Pliny. But they encountered a people impoverished, destitute and indifferent to their own monuments. They seemed ignorant of their glorious past.

“Antiquity-loving travelers are saddened to see the ancient marble … used now to support dry-stone walls and village stables … the sarcophagi used as watering troughs … the rotten, moldy and dust-covered manuscripts in the monastery libraries,” notes Kyriakos Simopoulos in his monumental work “Foreign Travelers in Greece”.

But there are also those who do not give up their enthusiasm and under the influence of world-historical events such as the Declaration of American Independence (1776) and the French Revolution (1789), turn to the ancient Greeks to found the values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

We are at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment and the emergence of the Neoclassical movement, which dominated Europe, particularly during the second half of the 18th century. The first, timid steps toward a more scientific approach to antiquity have begun.

And while European architects, painters and engravers depict Greek monuments, often with the aid of their imagination, as material evidence of the high values and noble grandeur of the Greco-Roman world, archaeologists, led by the Austrian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the father of classical archaeology, focused on their systematic approach to highlighting the superiority of ancient Greek art.

“Good aesthetics and taste were born under the Greek sky”, wrote Winckelmann in his work “Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works of Painting and Sculpture” (1755).

And when, two decades later, one of the most popular books of the era would be published, the monumental historical-travel novel “Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece” (1788) by the French abbot Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, which describes the journey of a real Scythian philosopher from the 6th century B.C. through 4th-century B.C. Greece, Europeans would be seized by a frenzy that would aptly be called “Graecomania.”

“Periegesis” would go through more than forty editions in Europe, part of it will be translated by Rigas Feraios and it will sow the seeds of the Philhellenic movement.

The major qualitative change comes at the end of the 18th century. For the enlightened Europe, Greece is not only the cradle of a vanished, supremely glorious world. It is also a national entity, a living presence on the eve of a liberating uprising. Optimism and faith in “the destinies of the race” were added to the daydreams of antiquity enthusiasts.

Lord Byron’s descent to Greece seals this transformation of sentiments and perceptions. He was the first traveler of the pre-revolutionary period to discover the Greek people. He pointed out our flaws and recognized our virtues. Along with his friend P.B. Shelley, he raised the torch that kindles the philhellenic fire, on the ground of an ever-expanding love of antiquity.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As the nation awakened, the interest of the Greeks in protecting and preserving their cultural heritage was growing ever stronger. Adamantios Korais was the first to address the issue in 1807. He was prompted by the purchase and export from the country of a significant number of manuscripts from the Monastery of Patmos. Therefore, he proposed, among other things, the creation of a Greek museum.

In 1827, the Constitution of Troezen explicitly prohibited the sale or export of antiquities from Greek territory without government permission. Ancient objects are now considered “the national property of all Greeks” and not private property.

In 1829, the first archaeological museum was founded in Aegina under the direction of Andreas Moustoxydis. Moustoxydis drafted the first circular on the protection and recording of antiquities.

In 1834, the country’s first comprehensive archaeological law was enacted (Its title: “On the Discovery and Preservation of Antiquities and Their Use”). It led to the creation of the General Ephorate of Antiquities. The German philologist Ludwig Ross was appointed as its first general ephor. He was later succeeded by Kyriakos Pittakis.

The Archaeological Society of Athens was founded by Alexandros Rangavis and Kyriakos Pittakis in 1837. Its mission was “to assist in the discovery, erection and completion of antiquities in Greece.” Its first session was held on April 28, 1837, on the crepis of the Parthenon. It was a symbolic gesture. The intention was to emphasize this remarkable message: “to these stones we owe in large part our political rebirth”.

The ground is now ripe for the establishment of the first foreign archaeological schools in Greece. The Greek territory, with its scattered remains, became the land of classical heritage. This classical heritage could be seen as an ecumenical ideal and as the matrix of a European identity.

However, the motivation of the establishment of archaeological schools was not only due to Europe’s need to seek its roots in classical antiquity. It also served the scientific ambition for archaeology to be organized as a discipline with methodology, documentation and international cooperation.

The foreign archaeological schools became research centers and, at the same time, laboratories of identity for Europe and the West. They all constitute a collective institution. An institution that began with philhellenism, matured through science, and today functions as a global community of memory and knowledge.

Serving as bridges between Greek antiquity and the international scientific community, they came to influence over time the ethics of science. In the 19th century, archaeology was often associated with the notion of collection, export and appropriation. In the 20th and 21st centuries, foreign schools—in cooperation with the Greek Archaeological Service, which early on established standards considered self-evident today—would contribute to the transition toward a new perception. According to this perspective:

– artifacts belong to their place of origin.
– research must be conducted with transparency and its conclusions must be shared.
– Documentation is always an act of responsibility.

After the Second World War, the number of foreign archaeological schools multiplied. Today they are 19. They are arks of knowledge and experience.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Despite the impressive progress, archaeology remains, in my opinion, a science that is not only technical but also poetic. One often thinks of those visionary archaeologists who came to our homeland in search of ancient sites. They were “ignoring the scorching heat, the cold, hunger, or exposure to the elements of nature, like hunting dogs hot on the trail of their prey”.

That’s what the British historian Arnold Toynbee wrote about the archaeologist and former director of the British School, Alan Wace (Άλαν Γουέις), and his friend and colleague Maurice Thompson. Wace and Thompson jointly studied Prehistoric Thessaly.

In 1952 Michael Ventris announced that he had deciphered Linear B. He proved that it is an early, archaic form of the Greek language. A few months afterwards Wace was excavating in Mycenae and he brought to light new Linear B tablets that confirmed his long-held (yet for decades contested) belief that the Mycenaean civilization of mainland Greece was independent and sovereign, and not merely a “colony” of the Minoans of Crete. This fact was, of course, contrary to what the excavator of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, had maintained. But Evans was right when he was saying that “In Crete I found the oldest cradle of European civilization”.

Evans’ words can be connected with the belief of American professor F.M. Cross. F.M. Cross argued about something fundamental regarding Greek language, history and culture.

He maintained that on the 11th-century bronze cup found during the excavation by the British School of Archaeology at Tekke (today’s Alatsata) in Crete, near Knossos, in 1977, the 12 engraved letters were not Phoenician but Greek.

He confirmed the existence of a Greek alphabet nearly three centuries before the Early Iron Age (800–750 B.C.). Until then, the prevailing view was that the Greek alphabet was based on the Phoenician writing system.

Therefore, the cradle of European civilization could really be confirmed that it was found in Crete and generally in Greece.

We can also imagine the enthusiasm of an era in which the archaeological spade and linguistic analysis worked in harmony to rewrite the history of the Aegean.

And perhaps we might feel a little envious when we consider the aesthetic emotion and spiritual exaltation with which, at every excavation, the ordinary Greek workers gazed upon, the “wonderful relics of antiquity” that came to light in the newly liberated Greece.

As Andreas Karkavitsas so beautifully wrote in his novella “The Archaeologist.”: “A single little stone was enough to bring the work of art before them, intact and alive; and that, in turn, was enough to reveal to them the ancestral soul in motion”.

Because, even today, it is as if the “vigor of life” of the ancient gods passes over the excavation sites. As Kavafis wrote: “even though we have broken their statues, even though we drove them out of their temples, in no wise did the gods die for all that.”

Speaking about broken statues, the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures will be a gesture of great significance. Can you imagine the magnitude of the actual reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures following the magnitude of such an agreement ? If we accept that the Parthenon is the beacon of the European spirit and Western thought, we cannot accept that it should remain indefinitely without its own Sculptures.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The foreign Archaeological Schools to whom we are grateful, have significantly contributed to the rebuilding of Greece’s and Europe’s memory. They have contributed greatly to the revitalization of our identity and culture – and they continue to do so. Therefore, we have now at hand all the elements for building the future. Because the seeds of the future are found in the memory of the past.

Thank you.

[1]   Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941)