SIR ARTHUR EVANS

Family background
Evans was born in Nash Mills, England, the oldest and first child of John Evans and Harriet
Ann Dickinson, the daughter of John's employer, inventor and founder of Messrs John
Dickinson, a paper mill. Harriet was John's first cousin on his mother's side. John, descendant
of a male line that was both educated and kept up a tradition of being intellectually active,
was nevertheless undistinguished by either wealth or aristocratic connection. Starting work at
the family business in lieu of going to college in 1840, he was made a full partner in 1851
after his marriage.[1] Profits from the mill would eventually fund Arthur's excavations and
restorations at Knossos and resulting publications.
While maintaining his status as a chief officer in the company, John became distinguished for
his quasi-professional pursuits in numismatics, geology and archaeology. His interest in
geology came from an assignment by the company to scientifically study water resources in
the area. Streams are often a good source for stone-age artifacts. John had already profited
from the education he did have. He knew Latin and could and did quote the authors. In 1859
he conducted a geological survey of the Somme Valley with Joseph Prestwich and began to
collect and study flint implements. He eventually published works on those topics. He joined
the Royal Society in 1864, serving as various officers, won the Lyell Medal, and was
knighted by Queen Victoria in 1892.
Meanwhile Harriet had a child every year or every other year until she died in 1858 when
Arthur was 7. He had acquired two brothers, Norman and Lewis and two sisters, remaining
on excellent terms with all of them all of his life. He was raised by a stepmother, Fanny, with
whom he also got along very well. She had no children of her own. Later in life, after the
death of Fanny and John's remarriage, they were joined by a half-sister (Joan) by John's third
wife, a classical scholar. John was 70. By the time of John's death in 1908 at 85 and
inheritance by Arthur of a share in the wealth the major work on Knossos had already been
done mainly with funds other than those from the business. However, Arthur had enjoyed the
close support and assistance of his father, who contributed heavily.
Education
Arthur was given every advantage of education. After a childhood stay at Callipers
Preparatory School (no longer extant) he attended Harrow School, becoming co-editor of The
Harrovian in his last year, 1869/70.[2] At Harrow he was friends especially with Francis
Maitland Balfour, with whom he later hiked over Lapland and Finland, and who was killed in
a mountain-climbing incident on Mont Blanc in 1882.[3] Graduating from Harrow Evans
became part of and relied on the Old Harrovian network of acquaintances. Minchin
characterized him as "a philologer and wit" as well as an expert on "the eastern question."
Arthur continued his father's habit of quoting the appropriate Latin author from memory and
knew some poems entirely by heart.
Between 1870 and 1874 Arthur matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford. His housemaster
at Harrow, F. Rendall, had gotten him in with a recommendation that he was "a boy of
powerful original mind." At Brasenose he read modern history, but his summertime activities
were perhaps more definitive to his subsequent career. In 1871 he and Lewis visited Hallstatt
and the Balkans; in 1872 he and Norman adventured in the Carpathians, crossing borders
illegally at high altitudes, pistols at the ready. In 1873 he and Balfour tramped over Sweden,
Finland and Lappland. Everywhere he went he took copious anthropological notes and made
numerous drawings of the people, places and artifacts.[4] During the Christmas holidays of
1873 Evans cataloged a coin collection being bequeathed to Harrow by John Gardner
Wilkinson, who was too ill to work on it himself. The headmaster of Harrow had suggested
"my old pupil, Arthur John Evans - a remarkably able young man."[5]
In April-July 1875 after failing to obtain a fellowship at Oxford Arthur attended a summer
term at the University of Göttingen. He decided not to stay and left there to meet Lewis for
another trip to the Balkans. This was the last of his formal education.
Reporter for the Manchester Guardian
After resolving to leave Göttingen, Arthur and Lewis planned an adventure in Bosnia-
Herzegovina starting immediately (August, 1875). They knew that the region, a part of the
Ottoman empire, was under martial law, and that the Christians (mainly the Serbs) were in a
state of insurrection against the Bosnian muslim beys placed over them. Ottoman troops were
in the country in support of the beys.
The two young men had no problem with either the Serbs or the Ottomans but they did
provoke the neighboring Austro-Hungarian Empire on the border and spent the night in "a
wretched cell." Deciding to lodge in a good hotel in Slavonski Brod (Arthur's "Brood")
because it would have been safer than Bosanski Brod across the Sava River, they were
observed by an officer who saw their sketches and concluded they might be Russian spies.
Politely invited by two other officers to join the police chief and produce passports, Arthur
said "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 suggested he should have
come to the hotel in person to request the passports. The chief in a somewhat less than civil
manner won the argument about whether he had the right to check the passports of
Englishmen by inviting them to spend the night in a cell.
Crete excavations
Before Evans began work in Crete, archaeologist Minos Kalokairinos unearthed two of the
palace’s storerooms in 1878, but the Turkish government interrupted his work before he
could complete excavations. Evans had been deciphering script on seal stones on Crete in
1894 and when the island was declared an independent state in 1900, he purchased the site
and began his excavations of the palace ruins. Arthur Evans found 3,000 clay tablets during
excavations and worked to transcribe them. From the transcriptions it was clear that the
tablets bore traces of more than one script. Evans dated the Linear A Chariot Tablets at
Knossos as immediately prior to the catastrophic Minoan civilization collapse of the 15th
century BC. (Hogan, 2007)
On the basis of the ceramic evidence and stratigraphy, Evans concluded that there was a
civilization on Crete before the civilizations recently brought to light by the adventurer-
archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae and Tiryns. The huge ruin of Knossos
spanned 5 acres (20,000 m2) and had a maze-like quality to it that reminded Evans of the
labyrinth described in Greek mythology as having been built by King Minos to hide his
monstrous child. Thus, Evans dubbed the civilization once inhabiting this great palace the
Minoans. By 1903, most of the palace was excavated, bringing to light an advanced city
containing with artwork and many examples of writing. Painted on the walls of the palace
were numerous scenes depicting bulls, leading Evans to conclude that the Minoans did indeed
worship the bull. In 1905 he finished excavations at Knossos.
Scripta Minoa - The source of the Phoenician alphabet
Evans, in his 1901 work Scripta Minoa, claimed[6] that most of the symbols for the
Phoenician abjad are almost identical to the many centuries older, 19th century BC, Cretan
hieroglyphs.
The basic part of the discussion about Phoenician alphabet in Scripta Minoa, Vol. 1 takes
place in the section Cretan Philistines and the Phoenician Alphabet, pages 77-94. Modern
scholars now see it as a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet from ca. 1400 BC,
adapted to writing a Canaanite (Northwest Semitic) language. The Phoenician alphabet
seamlessly continues the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention called Phoenician from the
mid 11th century, where it is first attested on incribed bronze arrowheads.[7]

The table of p. 87 from Scripta Minoa showing the relation between the Phoenician letters
and the Cretan hieroglpyphs and Linear script. This table is about the Phoenician letters of
which the names have no known meaning in any semitiic language.

The table of p. 89 from Scripta Minoa showing the relation between the Phoenician letters
and the Cretan hieroglpyphs and Linear script. This table is about the Phoenician letters of
which the names have meaning in some semitiic language.