George E. Mylonas

George E. Mylonas
Γεώργιος Εμμανουήλ Μυλωνάς
Mylonas in 1950
Born	Georgios Emmanouel Mylonas December 21 [O.S. December 9] 1898 Smyrna, Ottoman Empire
Died	April 15, 1988(1988-04-15) (aged 89) Athens, Greece
Resting place	Archaeological site of Mycenae
Occupation	Classical archaeologist
Known for	Excavations, including Grave Circle B at Mycenae
Spouse	Lena Papazoglou ​ (m. 1925)​
Awards	Order of George I (Commander) Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America
Academic background
Education	International College of Smyrna University of Athens Johns Hopkins University
Thesis	The Neolithic Period in Greece (1927)
Academic work
Institutions	Washington University in St. Louis University of Illinois University of Chicago
Notable students	Michael Cosmopoulos
Military career
Allegiance	Kingdom of Greece
Service / branch	Hellenic Army
Years of service	1919–1923
Wars	Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922)

George Emmanuel Mylonas (Greek: Γεώργιος Εμμανουήλ Μυλωνάς, romanized: Georgios Emmanouel Mylonas; December 21 [O.S. December 9] 1898 – April 15, 1988) was a Greek archaeologist of ancient Greece and Aegean prehistory. He is known for the excavation of Grave Circle B at Mycenae.

Early life

George Emmanuel Mylonas was born on December 21 [O.S. December 9] 1898 to a Greek-speaking family in Smyrna in Ionia, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He attended the city's Evangelical School, considered the most important Greek school in the city, until 1915, He subsequently graduated with a bachelor's degree from the American-run International College of Smyrna, before entering the University of Athens at the age of seventeen to study classics. He was a classmate of John Papadimitriou, later an archaeologist with the Greek Archaeological Service, and was taught by the archaeologist Christos Tsountas, who had excavated at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae and at prehistoric sites throughout Greece.

While a student in Athens during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, Mylonas joined the Greek Army and was deployed to Asia Minor. He was in Smyrna when the city was destroyed by the Turks in September 1922. He delivered a Christian sermon in Greek on the morning on Sunday, September 10 [O.S. August 28], for refugees who had sheltered in the chapel of the International College. During the war, he was taken prisoner twice, an experience which almost proved fatal. He escaped his first period of captivity, during which he was tortured, but was recaptured. He was helped to survive by American friends, his former teachers at the International College, who raised money for him to pay bribes to secure his release in 1923.

Academic career

After his release, Mylonas returned to Athens. According to Michael Cosmopoulos, who later studied under Mylonas, he may have suffered from post-traumatic stress in the early years after his release. In the second half of 1924, he was hired as a translator and a bursar at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA), one of Greece's foreign schools of archaeology. The ASCSA had assisted in the evacuation and resettlement of Greek refugees from Ionia and employed many of them in the construction of its Gennadius Library, conducted under the architect W. Stuart Thompson between September 1923 and 1925. According to Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, later the archivist of the ASCSA, Mylonas may have been introduced to the school by Hazel Dorothy Hansen, an American archaeologist who probably studied with Mylonas at Athens. He acted as an interpreter for Thompson and wrote his doctoral dissertation, The Neolithic Period in Greece, in his free time.

Mylonas worked on the excavations of Corinth under the ASCSA's director Bert Hodge Hill, who led them until 1926. During the 1920s and 1930s, he worked on the Greek-led excavations at Mycenae and the American-led excavations at Nemea and Aghiorghitika. He received his Ph.D summa cum laude from the University of Athens in 1927, and taught at the same institution. In 1928 he emigrated to America to study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore under David Moore Robinson, the excavator of the ancient Greek site of Olynthus in the Chalkidiki region of northern Greece. He was awarded a second Ph.D in 1928; his dissertation was published as the first volume in the series presenting the results of the Olynthus excavations.

Mylonas was at Olynthus with Robinson for the 1931 excavation season; he took a series of temporary teaching positions in the United States afterwards, working at the universities of Illinois and Chicago. In 1933, he was hired on a permanent basis at Washington University in St. Louis as an assistant professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology. Robinson had previously tried to manoeuvre another of his students, James Walter Graham, into the position. Mylonas wrote to Robinson, crediting him with securing him the position through his influence and contacts. By 1938, Mylonas had been promoted to full professor.

Mylonas excavated at Eleusis in 1934, and became a naturalized US citizen in 1937, though spent most of his time in Greece. He returned to Olynthus as co-director of the excavation with Robinson in 1938, and became chair of Washington's Department of Art History and Archaeology in 1939. He was later promoted to Distinguished University Professor. During the Second World War, he worked for the Greek War Relief Organization. He also delivered lessons to officers of the United States Army on the Eastern Mediterranean, and wrote An Introduction to the History of the Balkan States, which aimed to make a historical case against the legitimacy of the annexation of Greek Macedonia by Bulgaria and was published in 1946.

In July 1952, along with John Papadimitriou, he began the excavation of Grave Circle B at Mycenae, which had been discovered the previous year during restoration of the nearby Tomb of Clytemnestra. Between 1952 and 1957, he directed the excavation of Eleusis; from 1957 until his death in 1985, he directed excavations at Mycenae. He re-excavated most of the acropolis of the site; Tsountas had cleared it in the late nineteenth century, but died before publishing the results of his work. Much of Mylonas's work on the acropolis concerned the establishment of a chronological sequence for its various constructions, particularly the palace and the fortifications surrounded it; he traced the initial fortification of the site to the fourteenth century BCE, with further development throughout the thirteenth century. He also investigated the site's Cult Center and areas of settlement to the north and west of the citadel.

Mylonas served as president of the Archaeological Institute of America between 1957 and 1960. He stepped down as department chair in 1964, and made the inaugural Rosa May Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in 1965. He retired from Washington in 1969 and returned to Greece, where he was Secretary General of the Archaeological Society of Athens from 1979 until 1987. He also served as chairman of the Committee for the Preservation of the Acropolis Monuments, a pressure group which aimed to raise official awareness of the threat from air pollution to the monuments of the Acropolis of Athens, between 1978 and 1986.

In Old Phaleron/Acromycenae, where he lived, in addition to bringing tourists, he researched and restored the old spring that had served the area for thousands of years, bringing water to the local area. The valve for the spring was in his back yard and for a time his wife undertook the duty of making certain that the water flowed every night.

Mylonas is well known for his fieldwork at Olynthus as well as investigations at Mycenae, Nemea and Corinth. During 1951 and 1952, he led the important excavation of Grave Circle B at Mycenae (c. 1650-1550 BCE, Middle Helladic III to Late Helladic I), and succeeded in establishing that it pre-dated Heinrich Schliemann's Grave Circle A.

He also briefly appeared in parts one and four of Michael Wood's televised series, In Search of the Trojan War (1985). In an interview conducted at the citadel of Mycenae, Mylonas, with a chuckle and a twinkle in his eye, speaks of Agamemnon, with whom he converses "all the time". He once said that the task of the archaeologist was to "infer from withered flowers the hour of their bloom".

Mylonas died in Athens, two weeks after suffering a heart attack at his home, on April 15, 1988. He was buried at the archaeological site of Mycenae.

Personal life

Mylonas met Lena Papazoglou, another Greek refugee from Ionia, shortly after his return to Greece in 1923; the couple married in 1925. Mylonas remained a friend of Robinson, his former doctoral advisor, throughout his life; upon his death in 1958, Robinson left Mylonas a Greek vase from his collection and $20,000 (equivalent to $211,211 in 2023) towards his research. According to the Canadian archaeologist Mary Ross Ellingson, who excavated with Mylonas at Olynthus, he was formal and aloof in his manners, preferring to address fellow excavation staff by their surnames and as "Mr." or "Miss."

Mylonas had three daughters, of whom one, Ione Mylonas Shear, also became an archaeologist. Another daughter, Eunice Hale, married the artist and teacher Robert Beverly Hale, and they had two children, Alexander Hale and Evelyn Hale.

Honors

Mylonas was awarded honorary degrees by Washington University, Ohio University and by Southern Illinois University. In 1955, he was made a Commander of the Order of George I by King Paul of Greece. He was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America's Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement in 1970, and was elected an honorary fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1978. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A scholarship for undergraduate humanities majors at Washington University is named in Mylonas's honor.

Selected works

As author

• Mylonas, George E. (1947) [1946]. The Balkan States: An Introduction to Their History. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press. hdl:2027/mdp.39015014645280.
• Mycenae: The Capital City of Agamemnon (1957)
• Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (1961)
• Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age (1966)
• Grave Circle B of Mycenae (1972)
• — (1980). Ἁναστυλώτικαι ἐργασίαι εἰς τὴν Ακρόπολιν [Restoration Works on the Acropolis]. Πρακτικά της Ακαδημίας Αθηνών [Proceedings of the Academy of Athens] (in Greek). 55 (2): 26–58. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
• Mycenae, A Guide to Its Ruins and Its History (1981)
• Mycenae Rich in Gold (1983)

As editor

• Mylonas, George E.; Raymond, Doris, eds. (1951–1953). Studies Presented to David Moore Robinson on His Seventieth Birthday. St. Louis: Washington University. OCLC 427342596.

Works cited

• Cosmopoulos, Michael B. (2013). Ο Γεώργιος Μυλωνᾶς στὸ St. Louis [George Mylonas at St. Louis]. In Petrakos, Vasileios (ed.). Γεώργιος Εμμ. Μυλωνάς: Βίος και έργο 1898–1988 [George Emm. Mylonas: His Life and Work 1898–1988]. Library of the Archaeological Society of Athens (in Greek). Athens: Archaeological Society of Athens. pp. 11–18. ISBN 9786185047092.
• Cosmopoulos, Michael B. (2015). Bronze Age Eleusis and the Origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107010994.
• Coulson, William D. E. (1996). "Greek Archaeological Society". In de Grummond, Nancy (ed.). An Encyclopaedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 536–537. ISBN 1-884964 80 X.
• Daleziou, Eleftheria (2013). "'Adjuster and Negotiator': Bert Hodge Hill and the Greek Refugee Crisis, 1918–1928". Hesperia. 82 (1): 49–65. doi:10.2972/hesperia.82.1.0049. JSTOR 10.2972/hesperia.82.1.0049.
• de Grummond, Nancy (1996). "Mylonas, George Emmanuel (1898–1988)". In de Grummond, Nancy (ed.). An Encyclopaedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 789–790. ISBN 1-884964 80 X.
• Ecenbarger, William (October 31, 1999). "Getting More out of Greece". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
• Filetici, Maria Grazia, ed. (2003). I restauri dell'Acropoli di Atene: 1975–2003 [The Restorations of the Acropolis of Athens: 1975–2003] (in Italian). Rome: Gangemi. ISBN 9788849205169.
• Georgiadou, Maria (2004). Constantin Carathéodory: Mathematics and Politics in Turbulent Times. Berlin: Springer. ISBN 9783540203520.
• Iakovidis, Spyridon (1989). "George Emmanuel Mylonas, 1898–1988". American Journal of Archaeology. 93 (2): 235–237. doi:10.1086/AJS505090. JSTOR 505090. S2CID 245264983.
• Kaiser, Alan (2023). Archaeology, Sexism, and Scandal: The Long-Suppressed Story of One Woman's Discoveries and the Man Who Stole Credit for Them (2nd ed.). London: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 9781538174982.
• Kiminas, Demetrius (2009). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. San Bernardino: The Borgo Press. ISBN 978-1-4344-5876-6.
• MacLachlan, Alexander (1937). A Potpourri of Shadows and Sidelights from Turkey. Kingston. OCLC 933157359.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Muskett, Georgia (2014). "The Aegean World". In Bahn, Paul (ed.). The History of Archaeology: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. pp. 39–56. ISBN 9781317999423.
• Robinson, Betsy Ann (2011). Histories of Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millennia. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. ISBN 9780876619650.
• Schofield, Louise (2007). The Mycenaeans. New York: J. Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 9780892368679.
• Shelton, Kim (2006). "The Long Lasting Effect of Tsountas on the Study of Mycenae". In Darcque, Pascal; Fotiadis, Michael; Polychronopoulou, Olga (eds.). Mythos: La préhistoire égéenne du XIXe au XXIe siècle après J.-C. Actes de la table ronde internationale d’Athènes (21-2 novembre 2002). Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique Suppléments. Vol. 46. Athens: French School at Athens. pp. 159–164. ISBN 2869581955.
• Shelton, Kim (2010). "Mycenae: Archaeology of Mycenae". In Gagarin, Michael (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 23–28. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001. ISBN 9780195170726.
• Vogeikoff-Brogan, Natalia (April 19, 2020). "Forgotten Friend of Skyros: Hazel Dorothy Hansen (Part I)". From the Archivist's Notebook. Retrieved January 11, 2024.

Further reading

• "Science: Diggers". Time. August 3, 1953.
• Fuller, Neathery, "Professor George E. Mylonas: Expedition to Mycenae", (October 2, 2006).
• Carl W. Conrad, Department of Classics/Washington University (October 2, 2006).
• Personal archives and cross-references at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens: http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/george-mylonas-papers