#vogeikoff

[elladastinkardiamou]

“The Four in Crete”: A Travel Book Leads to an Archival Adventure

New entry from the Natalia Vogeikoff blogsite From the Archivist's Notebook.

Gertrude Harper Beggs’s The Four in Crete, published in 1915 (New York: Abingdon Press), tells the story of four traveling companions identified only by nicknames: the Western Woman, the Coffee Angel, the Scholar and the Sage. The narrative begins and ends in Athens, but otherwise focuses on their journey to archeological sites on Crete, which at the time of their visit was not yet technically part of Greece. Beggs employs some standard devices of travelogues of the era. She illustrates the rigors and exoticism of travel through amusing reports of sea sickness, flea infested bedding, and the anxieties of the customs house.

...But she also tells in detail of visiting Knossos and the Candia museum, of being guided across rough Cretan terrain on horseback, of what the four saw and discussed at Gortyn, Phaestos and Hagia Triada, and how a seemingly chance encounter in the village of Vori led to a sumptuous dinner as guests of Federico Halbherr (1857-1930), the Italian archaeologist who discovered the famous Gortyn Code in 1884 (pp. 162-165). Halbherr’s diaries have recently become available on the Italian Archaeological School’s webpage.

[elladastinkardiamou]

Θριαμβεύοντας στο χρόνο ~ Triumph over time

In 1947, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens commissioned a color movie entitled Triumph over Time to accompany its fundraising campaign. Directed by the archaeologist Oscar Broneer and produced by numismatist Margaret Thompson with the aid of staff from Fox Studios, the documentary shows Greece rebounding from the horrors of World War II and the staff of the American School hard at work preparing archaeological sites for presentation to post-war tourists. Footage of excavations at the Athenian Agora and Ancient Corinth are mixed with scenes from everyday agricultural life. Famous people in the history of the School and Greece move in and out of the film's frames: King Paul and Queen Frederica attend a public lecture; the Librarian of the Gennadius Library, Shirley H. Weber, shows donor Helene Stathatou some of its priceless manuscripts; Homer A. Thompson, newly appointed Director of the Agora Excavations, displays treasures from the site. Such scenes from the American School's academic and social year show an institution at the forefront of Greece's march back to normality after almost a decade of unrest. In an accompanying essay, Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, the American School's Archivist, describes the making of the movie, the historical background to its production, and its place in both the institutional history of the ASCSA and the political history of Greece. She presents fascinating excerpts from previously unpublished correspondence and memoirs, as well as contemporary photographs.

[elladastinkardiamou]

Anna Apostolaki: A Forgotten Pioneer of Women’s Emancipation in Greece

Post from Natalia Vogeikoff's blog: From the Archivist's Notebook

“Anna Apostolaki was born in Margarites (near Rethymnon) in 1881. Storm clouds from 19th century Cretan revolutions forced her family to flee first to Piraeus, then to Athens. The difficulties of refugee life and the loss of her father probably contributed to her decision to enroll in the School of the Society for the Promotion of Education and Learning (Αρσάκειο). At the end of the 19th century, she graduated from there as a teacher.

In those years acquiring a teacher’s diploma was almost the only possibility that most women had to earn a living and their only hope of escaping life as a housewife. Apostolaki worked as a tutor for some twenty-five years, but after 1903 she nourished her intellect by enrolling in the Philosophical School of the University of Athens. While a student she worked at the Numismatic Museum as an assistant to Ioannis Svoronos, director of the museum; he was first to instill in her a passion for scientific investigation. It was probably her association with Svoronos that guaranteed that she in 1906 was elected the first woman member of the Archaeological Society at Athens, more than sixty years after the foundation of that institution in 1837.

Apostolaki finished her studies in 1909, one of the first ten female graduates of the University of Athens and the first from Crete. Newspaper headlines commented on her graduation:

“Women are victorious. The Greek world has a new woman doctor as of yesterday…”

“Αι γυναίκες νικούν. Μια νέα δοκτρέσσα έχει από της χθες ο γυναικείος κόσμος της Ελλάδος…”

The need for such a panegyric implicitly acknowledges the difficulties that Apostolaki had faced in navigating an educational system dominated by men. She was a typical emancipated woman of her time, working to earn a livelihood while studying. Emancipation “through education and work” (δια της εκπαιδεύσεως και της εργασίας) would, in fact, be embedded in the charter of the Lyceum Club of Greek Women, founded in 1911 by journalist and writer, as well as the founder of the feminist movement in Greece, Kalliroi Parren (1861-1940).”