Love's Obsession (4 page)

Aged twenty, Eve appeared a serious young woman, beautiful but reserved, with an expression that gave little away until you took in those expressive dark eyes. Hair loosely rolled back from her face replaced childish long plaits. Short and with a tiny waist, she looked more delicate than she was. Although now an adult and free of her grandmother's rule, the habits of a lifetime were established. Eve's thoughts were always her own.

At university, as at school, Eve's academic success was modest but her French was excellent and she had a grasp of the spoken language that her lecturer thought ‘exceptionally good … so much so, that for a time she attended Prose and style lectures for Honours students'.
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She regularly visited France or Belgium and spoke French fluently, idiomatically, and with a good accent. Despite these undoubted skills and a keen intelligence, she worked slowly and her exam results suffered. As she had the School Certificate, Eve sat her final exams twice and her results were disappointing, although the Principal assured her it was ‘a good III'. She took mathematics because it ‘amused her',
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but she struggled with the subject. ‘I wish you could have had a second. I think you know quite enough for a second', wrote one of her teachers. The school principal's reference suggests a solid student, but one who is in no way outstanding:

Miss D.E. Dray is a student in her third year of residence. She passed the Intermediate Arts examination in 1934 and has since read for the B.A. General degree with French, Pure and Applied Mathematics … her French is very good, [and] … in Mathematics she works hard, but slowly, producing a small quantity, of satisfactory quality. Her teachers lay stress on her quick intelligence.

Miss Dray is personally attractive and a pleasant and intelligent companion. She has travelled more widely than most students and has a large range of interests outside her work. She is a good lacrosse player and a member of the college team. She is interested in art and archaeology and has some practical knowledge of the latter. I conceive that she will prove valuable in museum work, while her cultivated background, her charm of manner and her savoir faire seem to fit her admirably for the work of a private secretary.
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It was in London and Dorset that Eve discovered a penchant for practical archaeology. In 1937 Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler had founded the Institute of Archaeology in London. Mortimer Wheeler was one of the most celebrated British archaeologists of the early twentieth century, having worked at the National Commission for Historic Monuments, the National Museum of Wales, and as Keeper of the London Museum. For many years the Wheelers had hoped to create an institute for the study of practical archaeology but without funds, their plans remained in limbo. An anonymous donation of £10,000 to the Egyptologist Sir Matthew Flinders Petrie unexpectedly solved the problem. Flinders Petrie agreed to fund Wheelers' institute if the institute, in turn, would take responsibility for Petrie's archaeological collections from Palestine.
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Mortimer Wheeler believed the institute would professionalise the discipline of archaeology. It would, he hoped, give wings to the creature only just emerging from its chrysalis.
33

Eve attended a series of lectures given by Mortimer Wheeler at the Institute of Archaeology and learned to mend pots and to draw them. Her tendency to slow, careful, methodical work now proved an asset. The institute provided archaeologists with space to work on their collections, and many recognised that this young woman had exceptional technical drawing skills. Wheeler asked her to draw some delicate and beautiful metalwork and she enjoyed the challenge of bringing it to life.
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The institute was one arm of Wheeler's strategy to professionalise archaeology. The other was to increase public support for the discipline, thereby helping to raise funds for the systematic and scientific excavation work he planned to promote. Excavations at the site of Maiden Castle, an Iron Age hill fort in the county of Dorset, became his vehicle for both. The excavation would become an immense training dig where students and public volunteers would learn the principles of the grid-based stratigraphic methods that Wheeler had developed with Kathleen Kenyon. Work began in 1934 and for four seasons hundreds of volunteers and students carefully burrowed long narrow trenches across the massive oval earth mound, stripping away layers to uncover ditches and fortification walls—all clearly evident in the trench walls. Gradually a neat mosaic of grassy strips between chalky excavation pits patterned the slopes. The general public was encouraged to visit the excavations, where student volunteers guided them around the site. Visitors could purchase mementoes of their visit and over 64,000 postcards and 16,000 interim reports were sold, together with ‘trivial oddments such as beach-pebble slingstones, fragments of Roman tile, Roman oyster-shells, scraps of surface-pottery, all marked in Indian ink with the name of the site'.
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In 1936 one of the site supervisors was Joan du Plat Taylor from the Cyprus Museum. On her day off she visited friends from Cyprus, Margery and Eve Dray. ‘Why don't you come over and see if you like archaeology?' Joan suggested to Eve.
36

Eve discovered a flair for the work. Her younger cousin Giles visited the excavations during his school holidays. He made his way past workmen pushing barrows of soil and carrying baskets of pottery sherds to the processing area, teetering on the top of narrow baulks dividing the excavation squares. When he finally tracked Eve down he was astonished to discover his cousin, gentle well-mannered Eve, sitting happily in a muddy trench with a pick and shovel and a row of forty grinning skeletons propped up beside her.
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Chapter 2
England and Cyprus, 1936–39

In 1937, at the end of her university studies, Eve returned to Cyprus to visit her mother. She followed her principal's advice and volunteered at the Cyprus Museum, where she joined her friend Joan du Plat Taylor. Eve spent the weekends in Kyrenia with Margery and lived in Nicosia during the week with Joan and her mother. Joan was eight years older than Eve, thirty-one to Eve's twenty-three. Although she had no formal academic training, Joan was well read and enthusiastic and had arrived in Cyprus in 1926 as archaeological work came to life after the war. At the Cyprus Museum Joan guided tourists through the exhibitions and manned the souvenir shop, putting out duplicate pots for sale to the general public. Gradually she took on more important roles, working closely with the newly appointed Assistant Curator Porphyrios Dikaios. Together they spent hours cataloguing museum objects, Joan typing catalogue cards to Dikaios's dictation. Frequently they were called to investigate reports of finds or newly discovered tombs.

Every morning before breakfast the two young women saddled their horses to go riding before driving to the museum, where Eve worked with two other English volunteers, Judith Dobell and Rowena de Marchemund. The girls helped with ‘rescue' digs or worked on the collection, checking photos, recording and cataloguing stone tools and pottery. Once a week they went to the Club, taking a gramophone and a pile of country dance records. Occasionally there were small dinner parties, and once there was a fancy dress ball. It was a close-knit group and they were a bit suspicious when a new Director, Peter Megaw, arrived to direct the Department of Antiquities.
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Although Eve was new to archaeology, the discipline itself was well established, albeit in a form unlike that practised today. For hundreds of years the standing ruins of the ancient world had beckoned European travellers and scholars clutching battered copies of Homer or Virgil. Everywhere around the shores of the Mediterranean, marble column bases propped open wooden doors of barns, and elegant, if broken, torsos lay in peasant fields. Strange writing on slabs of stone drew philologists to Egypt, Palestine and Persia and copies of these exotic scripts—cuneiform, hieroglyphics—made their way to London or Paris. Collectors scoured the world, buying or stealing whatever they thought valuable or interesting or important: the Elgin Marbles, the Nineveh winged bulls, Sumerian clay tablets, sculptures and pottery of every shape and style. Some of this activity was legal; much of it was not. All of it took little account of local sentiment.

Widespread amateur archaeology and antiquarianism continued well into the early twentieth century, fuelled by popular reports in the
Illustrated London News
and the enthusiasm with which wealthy upper class young men, schooled in the classics, made the Grand Tour to the Mediterranean or the Near East. Even in the nineteenth century, however, a more scientific approach was expected, and many European powers, together with the Americans, established archaeological ‘schools' in Rome and Athens to support scholars and set standards. These and other learned societies attempted to guide the energies of these well-travelled and educated gentlemen. The British Government established an Archaeological Joint Committee, chaired by the British Museum and with representatives from most of the major archaeological societies in England, to provide the government with advice on archaeological issues throughout the Empire. In 1920, on the committee's recommendation, the British Museum published a guide,
How to observe in archaeology
;
Suggestions for travellers in the Near and Middle East
. The Director of the British Museum, Frederick Kenyon, explained the handbook's aim and stressed that travellers should respect the laws of the countries they visited.

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.
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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.
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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 Law
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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.
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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
'
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while sailing to Cyprus with her father. Tom Dray and Routledge became friends, perhaps more.
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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.
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