Melos: the Hall of the Mystae

In April 1896 Robert Carr Bosanquet described to his sister Caroline the excavations at 'the Hall of the Mystae' on Melos.

A few days later we found a statue, headless alas, lying on its back on the mosaic pavement ...It represents a hierophant ... of Dionysos, probably, and was set up by the Mystae or Initiates. The mosaic is an unusually large one, some 40 feet in length, and 10 feet wide, and on the whole well preserved. Yesterday we finished clearing away the stone dykes and soil that overlay the upper end and were overwhelmed by the beauty of the upper compartment: it has a vine in each corner whose branches spread over the field: among them are birds of gorgeous plumage, pheasants and peacocks, at one side a deer or goat lying down. The colouring is very rich and the design good. It is probably the best mosaic that has been discovered in Greece. I am anxious to arrange for its permanent preservation and am wiring to Cecil Smith, whom I suppose to be in Athens, to that effect. He has left me in charge for over 3 weeks and I have only heard from him once, so I am anxiously awaiting his coming.

The drawing was made by Charles R.R. Clark, the excavation's architect.

Bibliography
Bosanquet, R. C. 1898. "Excavations of the British School at Melos. The Hall of the Mystae." Journal of Hellenic Studies 18: 60-80, pls. i-iii.

David Hogarth on Melos

David Hogarth had excavated at Old Paphos with the Cyprus Exploration Fund (1888) and then at Koptos in Egypt with Flinders Petrie (1894). He then joined the Egypt Exploration Fund's excavation at Deir-el-Bahari (1894), before working at Alexandria with E.F. Benson (1895), a BSA student, and then the Faiyum (1895-96).

Petrie had been the main influence on Hogarth when he went to Phylakopi on Melos to direct the BSA's excavations there. He noted:

The workmen were all native Melians, a singularly honest and industrious lot as compared with many that I have had to do with in excavation work, but possessing little experience and not conspicuous intelligence. Consequently, while they were little likely to steal, they needed constant watching and directing; and I found it not advisable to introduce among them methods that, following Mr. Petrie, I had used from time to time in Egypt, under which the men are left very much to themselves. For instance, payment by cubic metre of earth excavated, which I had contemplated introducing in order not to have to "drive" the gangs, proved not feasible in view of the large quantity of valuable pottery which the soil everywhere contained. It would have been necessary to counteract the tendency to haste, which all metre work induces, by paying a price for countless sherds which up to then had had no money value in the island. Both the disbursement would have been too great for our funds, and an unfortunate precedent would have been introduced to disturb the Aracadian simplicity of the Melians.

Bibliography
Hogarth, D. G. 1897/98. "Excavations in Melos 1898. I. The season's work." Annual of the British School at Athens 4: 1-16.

Melos: the churches

In April 1896 Robert Carr Bosanquet, who had been left in charge of the excavations while Cecil Harcourt-Smith was in Athens, was joined on Melos by two contemporaries from Trinity College, Cambridge: Henry Martineau Fletcher (1870-1953) and Sydney Decimus Kitson (1871-1937). Fletcher and Kitson had both matriculated at Trinity in 1889 (the year above Bosanquet) and were on an extended trip through Italy and Greece. While on Melos they made a study of the Byzantine churches. Neither was admitted as a student of the BSA.

Fletcher had been educated at Marlborough, and had been awarded a first in Part 1 of the Cambridge Classical Tripos (1892). He was articled to Mervyn Macartney. He later worked as an architect (FRIBA 1908) and served as Vice-President (1929-31) Honorary Secretary (1934-39) of RIBA. He helped to design the War Memorial at St John's College, Cambridge.

Kitson had been educated at Charterhouse. Kitson's father, James, was a locomotive engineer; his half-brother was the First Baron Airedale. Kitson was articled to E.J. May in London. He practised as an architect in Leeds as the senior partner of Kitson, Parish, Ledgard and Pyman. Among his designs was the Leeds School of Art. Kitson was an authority of John Sell Cotman and the Norwich School of painting. His collection of Cotman drawings and watercolours were bequeathed to RIBA; a former BSA student, Adolph Paul Oppé, prepared the catalogue.

Reference
Fletcher, H. M., and S. D. Kitson. 1895/6. "The churches of Melos." Annual of the British School at Athens 2: 155-68.

'Trafficking' antiquities from Melos

The issue of looting and the destruction of archaeological sites is not a new one. Cecil Harcourt-Smith, at the Annual Meeting of Subscribers in July 1897 commented about the need for excavation on Melos:

The antiquities of the islands are in many instances still comparatively unexplored, and are subject to the caprice, or even the trafficking, of the ignorant peasantry, and it is therefore highly desirable that, before it is too late, everything that can be done should be done to place on record their valuable but steadily disappearing remains of art and history.

Excavation Equipment: Melos, 1896

Robert Carr Bosanquet described landing on Melos with the project equipment in April 1896:

Then came a mule-ride—that is to say our luggage rode and we walked—of three quarters of an hour up to Trypiti. As the luggage included a bath, 2 cameras, 2 large portmanteaux, 1 Gladstone, 1 hold-all, 1 big roll, 1 bag and 117 small paper parcels, it was rather hard to arrange them all on 2 mules. The one that carried the bath looked like a new kind of tortoise.