77 Facts About Arthur Evans

Sir Arthur John Evans was a British archaeologist and pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the Bronze Age.

Arthur Evans is most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete.

Arthur Evans was the first to define Cretan scripts Linear A and Linear B, as well as an earlier pictographic writing.

Arthur Evans was born in Nash Mills, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England, the first child of John Evans, the daughter of John's employer, John Dickinson, the inventor and founder of Messrs John Dickinson, a paper mill.

John Arthur Evans came from a family of men who were both educated and intellectually active but undistinguished by either wealth or aristocratic connection.

Arthur Evans married his first cousin, Harriet, in 1850, which entitled him, in 1851, to a junior partnership in the family business.

Arthur Evans was more interested in the stone-age artefacts he was discovering while mapping stream beds.

Arthur Evans had two brothers, Lewis and Philip Norman, and two sisters, Harriet and Alice.

Arthur Evans would remain on excellent terms with all of them all of his life.

Arthur Evans was raised by a stepmother, Fanny, nee Phelps, with whom he got along very well.

Arthur Evans had no children of her own and predeceased her husband.

Arthur Evans's wit was very sharp, too sharp for the administration, which stopped a periodical he had started, The Pen-Viper, after the first issue.

Arthur Evans matriculated on 9 June 1870 and attended Brasenose College, Oxford.

Arthur Evans had been told at the French border to remove the dark cape he was wearing so that he would not be shot for a spy.

Arthur Evans bought a set of clothes of a wealthy Turkish man, complete with red fez, baggy trousers and embroidered, short-sleeved tunic.

Arthur Evans graduated from Oxford at the age of 24 in 1874, but his career had come near to floundering during the final examinations on modern history.

Arthur Evans was to study with Reinhold Pauli, who had spent some years in Britain, and was a friend of Green.

Arthur Evans had noticed that the tombs were being plundered surreptitiously.

Arthur Evans's quarters were stuffy, and the topics were of little interest to him, as he had already demonstrated.

Arthur Evans's letters speak mainly of the discrepancy between the poor peasants of the countryside and the institution of the wealthy in the town.

Arthur Evans was simply an adventurous young man bored with poring through books in a career into which he had been pushed against his real interests.

Arthur Evans sought and obtained permission to travel in Bosnia from its Turkish military governor.

Politely invited by two other officers to join the police chief and produce passports, Arthur Evans replied, "Tell him that we are Englishmen and are not accustomed to being treated in this way".

The officers insisted and, interrupting the chief at dinner, Arthur Evans suggested he should have come to the hotel in person to request the passports.

Arthur Evans threatened the authorities in the name of the British fleet, which, he asserted, would sail up the Sava river.

Home again, Arthur Evans wrote of his experiences, working from his extensive notes and drawings, publishing Through Bosnia and Herzegovina, which came out in two editions, 1876 and 1877.

Arthur Evans reported on the suppression of the Christian insurrectionists by the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire, and yet was treated by that empire as though he were an ambassador, despite his anti-Turkish sentiments.

Arthur Evans collected portable artefacts, especially sealstones, at every opportunity, between sending back article after article to The Guardian.

Arthur Evans visited the Freemans in Sarajevo whenever he could.

In 1878 Arthur Evans proposed to Margaret Freeman, three years his senior, an educated and literate woman, and until now secretary for her father.

Arthur Evans's continued stance in favour of native government led to a condition of unacceptability to the local regime within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Arthur Evans did not see Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia and Herzegovina as an improvement over Ottoman.

Finally Arthur Evans wrote some public letters in favour of an insurrection.

Arthur Evans was arrested in 1882, to be put on trial as a British agent provocateur stirring up further insurrection.

Arthur Evans spent six weeks in prison awaiting trial, but at the trial nothing definitive could be proved.

Arthur Evans found most offensive the reading of her love letters before her eyes by a hostile police agent.

The Arthur Evans's returned home to rent a house in Oxford, abandoning their villa, which became a hotel.

Arthur Evans was invited later to play a role in the formation of the pre-Yugoslav state.

Arthur Evans completed his articles on Roman roads and cities there.

Arthur Evans wrote to Freeman that to confine archaeology to classics was an absurdity.

Margaret and Sophia had a visit for several hours, during which Arthur Evans examined the Mycenaean antiquities at hand with Heinrich.

In November 1883, Fortnum wrote to Arthur Evans asking for his assistance in locating some letters in the Bodleian Library that would help to validate a noted ring in his collection; he did so on the advice of John Arthur Evans of the Society of Antiquaries.

Unable to find the letters, Arthur Evans suggested Fortnum visit Oxford.

Arthur Evans held a grand inauguration at which he outlined his planned changes, publishing it as The Ashmolean as a Home of Archaeology in Oxford.

Arthur Evans took it in the direction of being an archaeology museum.

Arthur Evans insisted the artefacts be transferred back to the museum, negotiated for and succeeded in acquiring Fortnum's collections, later gave his father's collections to the museum, and finally, bequeathed his own Minoan collections, not without the intended effect.

Arthur Evans gave the Ilchester Lectures for 1884 on the Slavonic conquest of Illyricum, which remained unpublished.

Arthur Evans wanted to buy 60 acres to build a home for Margaret on the hill.

Arthur Evans approved the location, so he convinced his father to put up the money.

Arthur Evans's intent was to keep her from the cold, damp ground.

Arthur Evans purchased some seal stones inscribed with a mysterious writing, said to have come from Crete.

Arthur Evans went ahead with the mansion he had planned to build for Margaret on Boars Hill, against the advice of his father, who regarded it as wasteful and useless.

Arthur Evans called it Youlbury, after the name of the locality.

Arthur Evans complained to Fortnum in a late, childish display of sibling rivalry, that his father had had another child, his half-sister Joan.

In 1894, Arthur Evans became intrigued by the idea that the script engraved on the stones he had purchased before Margaret's death might be Cretan, and steamed off to Heraklion to join the circle of watchers.

Arthur Evans announced that he had concluded to a Mycenaean hieroglyphic script of about 60 characters.

Arthur Evans used the Cretan Exploration Fund, devised on the model of the Palestine Exploration Fund, to acquire the site.

Apparently Arthur Evans did not bother to explain that he was the only contributor.

Arthur Evans returned to London to wind up his affairs there and make sure the Ashmolean had suitable direction in the event of his further absence.

Arthur Evans took a combative stance in his journalism, criticising the Ottoman Empire for its 'corruption' and the British empire for 'collaborating with the Ottomans.

Arthur Evans accused these officials of being part of "the Turco-British regime".

Arthur Evans deplored religiously motivated violence, be it from Muslims or Christians.

Arthur Evans saw that the Muslim population was now on the decline, some being massacred, and some abandoning the island.

Arthur Evans hired two foremen, and they hired 32 diggers.

Arthur Evans started work on the flower-covered hill in March 1900.

Arthur Evans dubbed the civilisation once inhabiting this great palace the Minoan civilisation.

Arthur Evans then proceeded to have the room called the throne room repainted by a father-and-son team of Swiss artists, the Emile Gillieron Junior and Senior.

Arthur Evans thus played a major role in the history of the British Museum as well as in the history of the Ashmolean Museum.

Arthur Evans perceived that the scripts were two different and mutually exclusive writing systems, which later he termed into Linear A and Linear B The A script appeared to have preceded the B Evans dated the Linear B Chariot Tablets, so called from their depictions of chariots, at Knossos to immediately prior to the catastrophic Minoan civilisation collapse of the 15th century BC.

Arthur Evans had no better luck with Linear B, which turned out to be Greek.

Arthur Evans was a member and officer of many learned societies, including being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1901.

Arthur Evans was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1918.

Arthur Evans won the Lyell Medal in 1880 and the Copley Medal in 1936.

In 1911, Arthur Evans was knighted by King George V for his services to archaeology and is commemorated both at Knossos and at the Ashmolean Museum, which holds the largest collection of Minoan artefacts outside of Greece.

From 1894 until his death in 1941, Arthur Evans lived in his house, Youlbury, which has since been demolished.

Arthur Evans had Jarn Mound and its surrounding wild garden built during the Great Depression to make work for local out-of-work labourers.

Arthur Evans left part of his estate to the Boy Scouts and Youlbury Camp is still available for their use.