text:
With spears and arrows, atl-atls and slings, the people of the New World fought to defend themselves against European invasion and conquest. Over a century of scholarship on warfare has substantially enhanced our understanding of the scope and scale of violent conflict in Pre-Columbian America. Yet we still struggle to understand the nuances of indigenous warfare and its importance for native politics and society. This volume sheds new light on the nature of war in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Relying on methodological and theoretical developments in anthropological archaeology, bioarchaeology, and ethnohistory, contributors highlight the particularities of warfare in indigenous societies and examine the commonalities of warfare in cross-cultural perspective. Their essays focus on place and the body, as they explore the importance of captive-taking, sacrifice, performance, and political history in the conduct of war.
Observers have debated whether the indigenous peoples of the Americas were distinctly noble or frightfully savage in their way of war. This volume shows that such polarized positions are unfounded. By focusing on the nuances of indigenous violent conflict, the contributors demonstrate that war in the Americas was much like war elsewhere in the ancient and modern world: strategic, political, bloody, socially productive, yet terribly destructive.]]>
GV: My name is Günder Varinlioğlu. The date is May 19, 2011. I have the pleasure of interviewing Ercüment Atabay, a former professor in the Department of Western Languages and Civilizations at Bogazici University. This work of oral history is a joınt project between the two departments of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, located in Washington D.C.: namely, the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives and the Dumbarton Oaks Archives. Before we begin, do I have your permission to record this interview?
EA: With certain reservations, yes, you do.
GV: Alright. Could you tell us your name for the record?
EA: Mehmet Ercüment Atabay.
GV: Thank you. Where and when were you born?
EA: I was born in Besiktas in 1338 of the old style and 1922 of the new style. July 25, that is.
GV: Where were your parents from? And what were their professions?
EA: My mother was a house wife, and my father was a merchant.
GV: Were they from Istanbul, too?
EA: My father is from Crimea and my mother is from Istanbul.
GV: Do you have any siblings?
EA: No, I'm the only child.
GV: Alright. Are you married? And do you have children?
EA: I'm married and I have three children: An elder daughter, a son and a younger daughter.
GV: What are their professions?
EA: This is a difficult one. My elder daughter is a Professor of English, my son is a business man and my younger daughter works for the United Nations.
GV: Can you tell us about your education?
EA: I can. First I went to the English High School for Boys in 1929. That was where I learned how to read and write and the rest. Then I passed the University of London's Matriculation in 1939. For the first semester of 1939, I was a student at Robert College. But, because I had gotten accepted to the Faculty of Literature at Istanbul University, I studied there with Mrs. Halide Edip until 1942. In the year 1942, the British Council gave me a scholarship for the United Kingdom. And so, I went from Turkey to Britain during the war in 1942. The way I went was – first from here to Egypt, then I flew from Egypt to South Africa, and after travelling from South Africa by ship for three months, I finally arrived in the UK. The university that I went to is St. Andrews, currently a famous university. This here is the tie of that university.
GV: Is it?
EA: This – anyway, I arrived there. I graduated from the History Department of St. Andrews in 1945. I returned to Istanbul in '45. I worked as Mrs. Halide Edip's assistant in the Department of English Philology of the Faculty of Literature until 1950–51 and taught classes on English Literature. I finished my Ph.D. in the year 1950 with high honors. I went to Robert College as a professor of humanities at the beginning of the year of 1951. And then, after a while Robert College – I worked there, at Robert College, until 1971, when it was closed, that is when it was renamed "Girls' College." And it was transformed into – it reopened under the name of Bogazici University. I continued teaching there. It was in 1982, I think, when I retired. This means that the total of the number of years I taught at Robert College and Bogazici amounts, more or less, to fifty.
GV: Did you do your Ph.D. with Halide Edip Adivar?
EA: Yes, I did my Ph.D. with Mrs. Halide Edip.
GV: What was the topic?
EA: The topic was "Classicism in Edmund Spenser's Work" –Edmund Spenser, the poet, of course.
GV: What courses did you teach at Bogazici University?
EA: Many –
GV: So many?
EA: I taught 26 different courses. And so let's not get into that.
GV: Let's not get into it – alright.
EA: Suffice it to say I taught courses on English Literature and European History, if you will.
GV: Alright. Let's get into Byzantium. When did you start to get interested in Byzantium?
EA: I have no personal interest in Byzantium. Mine is more – I'm interested in archaeology. I met Mr. Paul Underwood. Well, it indeed happened more like this: It was in 1947, I think. No, either in '47 or '48. There was this Professor Muller, H. J Muller. Van Nice was working in Hagia Sophia. Together with Muller, I tried recording the masons' marks there in order to help Van Nice. It was a long time – for fun, you know. During that time I was seeing Mr. Whittemore coming and going. I don't personally know Whittemore. Whittemore was such a, well, mysterious person. He would come and he would go. Nobody knew from where he collected the money. He would show up, just like that, for a while, and would not talk. He would wander around Hagia Sophia with his hat on, would sometimes chat with us, and leave. And so thereafter, as a result of our work together, Van Nice recommended me to Paul Underwood, telling him that I was his friend. When, later, Paul Underwood came here, we became friends. We were friends for a long time. After 1955 – anyhow, after Whittemore died, the Byzantine Institute, which had been a private institution to begin with, disappeared all of a sudden. Its name persisted for a while. Its works were taken over by Dumbarton Oaks. And then Underwood requested me to help him in '55, and I accepted it. From then on, until, well, until his death, I did certain jobs for him while he was a field director here. I tried acquiring the necessary permissions from the government, and, together with this, this guy, I took care of relations in Hagia Sophia, etc.
GV: So, how did you meet Van Nice?
EA: Van Nice – well, he was doing these things at Hagia Sophia. He was friends with this Mr. Muller. I met him through Professor Muller.
GV: Yes, we know about that project. How did you meet Muller, then? I mean, how did you get involved in this project?
EA: How did I meet Muller? Muller was – well, H. J. Muller was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Literature, where I was an assistant. That is how we met.
GV: Because of your interest in archaeology?
EA: No, no, not at all. I'm only curious because I am a historian; that's why.
GV: And so, this "masons' marks" was –
EA: No, we did it together for fun!
GV: Yes, I think you have recorded fifteen hundred masons' marks.
EA: Yes, well, more or less. It is written there, isn't it?
GV: Yes, it is. I saw it written in a correspondence. So, you never spoke with Whittemore? Only –
EA: We were only introduced once. I do not know much about Whittemore. He had a friend here, living somewhere on the Bosphorus. I cannot recall his name at all right now.
GV: I can tell you: Archibald Walker.
EA: Yes, Walker, that's it! He used to stay at his place. They used to be very good friends. I mean, Walker used to like Whittemore a lot. Walker used to praise his knowledge of English Literature highly. Walker and I – I only saw him a couple of times on occasion; he wasn't someone I knew. Also, he had an apartment on the Bosphorus and he used to help out Whittemore in certain things. He used to stay with him.
GV: Did Walker use to visit frequent –
EA: No, no, no, no, no. He was just a friend of Whittemore's.
GV: Yes, but you do know about his staying at his apartment.
EA: Sure, he used to stay at his apartment.
GV: Yes. So, did you have relations with anybody else working at the Byzantine Institute?
EA: Yes, I did. Byzantine Institute, wait, where? Here?
GV: Here.
EA: Its head, if you will, was Ernest Hawkins. Ernest Hawkins – he later on continued at Dumbarton Oaks. He was a sort of, a very learned, very knowing man. And so, he used to take care of all the business with the workers, etc. He would always help with projects like the uncovering of the mosaics. Also, Paul Underwood – well, not much. He used to visit frequently. And Larry Majewski! Lawrence Majewski. He took on the project as the field director or the assistant field director. One person who worked with him was Mr. Carroll Wales. He worked on the frescoes. Four, five, or six workers, most of whom were Greek, worked on cleaning the mosaics and, well, uncovering the frescoes.
GV: It seems there weren't many Turkish workers, were there?
EA: There were Turkish workers and Greek workers. Turkish workers would be hired more for – well, as masons.
GV: But it was predominantly Greeks who worked –
EA: Well, they were more – well, it was more or less equal – more or less. There was no specific discrimination, anyway.
GV: Were there any Russians?
EA: No, none.
GV: No Russians. How about any other nationality that you remember?
EA: No, there was nobody.
GV: Were the ones that you call Greek from Istanbul?
EA: Yes, yes, from Istanbul.
GV: They didn't come from abroad?
EA: No, no, they were from Istanbul. Let me try to remember something here – an American lady, who was visiting, told me how she had always wanted to see – Americans tend to be naïve like that – a Byzantine mason. I told her that if she really wanted to see one that much, I could show her one. She told me she would be grateful. "Well then," I said, "Yusuf come over here." There was this Yusuf. I told her, "Here! A Byzantine mason was just like this one." She did not get the joke but – anyway, so it was.
GV: I will not ask who Yusuf was. I presume, he was one of those who worked there.
EA: One of those who worked there.
GV: Now, to continue with my questions concerning the Byzantine Institute: Do you know about Foto Iskender?
EA: Yes, my dear, I do. There used to be some – Sebah Joaillier, and it is their – at the turn of the century – well, it is the most famous photographer here, this Sebah Joaillier. So, much that they had also taken our school pictures at the time and everything. Photography, then, used to be –
GV: You mean when you were in Robert College?
EA: No, this was at the English High School.
GV: English High School.
EA: They were taken when I was there. That's not important. They were the ones who took them. He did not do anything with anyone anymore after the cameras were brought. I mean, Majewski would take the photographs and we would print them, ourselves, at the apartment in, in Cihangir.
GV: I asked, because in our records it is written that all of the photographs of the Byzantine Institute were taken by Foto Iskender.
EA: It may well be the case.
GV: Could it?
EA: Yes, because they were the one during the time of the Byzantine Institute. It was after Dumbarton Oaks took over that they were let go. Only then did we start to take photographs ourselves. I could not, but Majewski took photographs.
GV: Yes. This one will be a bit of a side question but, do you know anyone by the name of Nicholas Victor Artamonoff?
EA: By the name of what?
GV: Artamonoff.
EA: No.
GV: Nicholas Artamonoff.
EA: I don't know him.
GV: You don't know him. You were a student of Sven Larsen. Have you ever – because Sven Larsen was also very interested in Byzantium, in archaeology.
EA: Well, Larsen. The year 1939 – Mr. Larsen was my mathematics teacher during the first semester of the '39–'40 academic year, when I was a student at Robert College. I don't know how interested he was. I only have this one memory of him: One day I was at the Hagia Sofia Mosque, where I used to go pretty frequently, anyway. He came up and I remember him shouting: "This wonderful space!"
GV: You have already mentioned him but, how did you meet Underwood? Did Van Nice –
EA: Through Van Nice. He gave him my name when he was coming here. We met. We came home. We were friends for a long time. I started helping them out with work after '55, anyhow.
GV: Do you have any other, more personal, memories of Underwood that you would like to share? What was the nature of your friendship? How was Underwood's personality?
EA: He was, really, very nice! How shall I say? It is difficult to answer such kind of questions. He was a little timid – I don't know. He was a very loving person. He did not have much to tell. He trusted me. Together, we – so, I was helping him. In certain respects, he was a bit too – for example, he would let things out. Like, for example, when he would be talking to the Director of the Hagia Sophia Museum, and I would be translating, for example, and even when the Director would prefer to not hear something, he would keep on telling it. I would then work on saving the situation, etc. We quite often had anecdotes like that.
GV: Was this with Muzaffer Ramazanoglu?
EA: No, dear, not with Ramazanoglu. This is before Ramazanoglu, with Feridun Dirimtekin.
GV: Now, I think you were playing a major role in the bureaucratic procedures during the abandonment of this Byzantine Institute and its transformation into Dumbarton Oaks. There is a correspondence where you tell Paul Underwood not to change the name Byzantine Institute. You advise them that, even if they do change the name, they should at least keep the term "Byzantine" in the new institutional title. You tell them that it should be so because the Byzantine Institute had managed to establish a good place, a good reputation in Turkey; should there be such a transformation, the new institution should sustain ties with the Byzantine Institute.
EA: Yes, exactly. That is correct – because the other one was Ataturk. Mr. Whittemore had talked to Ataturk. There is a document by Ataturk that states the mosaics to be uncovered. This document was lost by Dumbarton Oaks.
GV: I was about to ask that –
EA: That, that –
GV: We never saw this document.
EA: It must have lost it. This is a fundamental mistake. And then, later, approximately – well, I do not remember its date, and I never cut it out to keep it. But this Turkish – Ataturk Foundation would issue a different calendar each year with different photographs from Ataturk's life. I think it was ten years from now, that they included a photograph talking to Whittemore. It was a large photograph. Not many people knew it. It was, of course, only me who understood who that was.
GV: Yes, so there was a single document. And that was probably given to Whittemore and then got lost –
EA: That must have been lost.
GV: Yes. So, as you have already mentioned, your affiliation with Dumbarton Oaks started in 1955.
EA: Approximately.
GV: Approximately…It seems to have intensified in the '60s.
EA: Well, it continued, like that, until – until Underwood died. After him Cyril Mango became the, well, the field director. Lawrence Majewski was responsible for the field direction here. Later he left to teach at New York University. It all started to bog down slowly thereafter coinciding with the time of Cyril Mango. The name remained for a while. The closing down of the apartment in Cihangir, I think, was in 1974. The director of Dumbarton Oaks around that time was Bill Tyler. It was Bill Tyler. His son – well, his daughter and son-in-law were working here at the consulate. The name – it'll come to me now. At any rate, I packed away the furniture in the apartment in Cihangir. There was a library there. We had bought this library from the renowned, well, the renowned Byzantine scholar Mambouri many years ago during the time of Underwood. I think it was bought for something like two thousand dollars at the time. This library had been set up in the apartment in Cihangir. Some of the books there – Dumbarton Oaks wanted some of them, which we then sent. The remaining ones were donated to ARIT, the American Research Institute here.
GV: Yes. How about – you have done many things for Dumbarton Oaks, but how about your actual responsibilities.
EA: Honestly, my responsibility was utterly ambiguous, meaning subjective. Whenever there was like – for example, if there was need for a new tire, and at the time it was a bit – well, I would go to the distributor, talk to them about it, and get the tire. I mean, I had such kinds of responsibilities, as well. Or, for example, there would be a need for permission from the Directorate of Museums, and I would help the correspondence therewith. So, such kinds of things.
GV: But there is no written contract or document defining your responsibilities?
EA: No, no, no, no, no, entirely subjective. I mean with – I was only helping Paul. That's all.
GV: So, always through Paul Underwood?
EA: I was helping Paul Underwood. We would also go when he was not here. I would go to Kariye Mosque and would relate the necessary instructions to the masons, etc. Paul Underwood would stay here for very short periods, and so I was spending more time with Majewski.
GV: Meaning, you were not responsible to a specific person? It was more of a friendship?
EA: Yes, okay, that is it.
GV: So, there was no official contract?
EA: No, no, no, there was no such thing.
GV: I read another correspondence between you and Paul Underwood in 1962, whereby you write: "I am not concerned by your calling me "the secretary." "But so far," you state, "…I have always helped Dumbarton Oaks in a subjective manner until now." You wrote that in '62, and two years later, in 1964, there still isn't a trace of this official title of yours. And yet, you also tell Underwood that he had better avoid referring to you as 'secretary' or 'translator' in his official correspondence with Turkish authorities, since that may create certain problems.
EA: That is correct.
GV: Well, why is that? Can you, please, explain?
EA: No, well, I did not have any official – I actually don't really remember the circumstances then. That was long, I don't know, about fifty years, ago.
GV: Yes. But, I mean, how did the Turkish authorities recognize you?
EA: The Turkish authorities? Well, I was friends with the director of Hagia Sofia, anyway, and work was completely on Hagia Sophia. Both Kariye and Fethiye were connected to Hagia Sophia. And even though Fenari Isa was itself not connected, the excavation there, too, was connected to it. And I – I was friends with Mr. Feridun. In cases of need for correspondence I would be the one to get through to him.
GV: Yes. So, for the Turkish authorities you were only a help.
EA: They would not even know my name.
GV: Interesting.
EA: No, I mean there was no – we didn't have much to do with Turkish authorities at any rate.
GV: So, only when acquiring permission.
EA: Permission – well, the permission had been granted to begin with, and was still valid. And there was no other.
GV: How about your friendship with Feridun Dirimtekin? I mean –
EA: He was the director of Hagia Sophia. We met there. We became friends.
GV: Yes. Alright then, we will talk a little bit about money now. You seem to have been responsible for the management of Dumbarton Oaks's funds, as well. As far as I understand, this money couldn't be transferred to an account under your name. Instead, it was brought to you by Hawkins or another person who would be coming here at the beginning of the season.
EA: Now, here is how it was: The Greek workers were paid in the winter, as well. Because the rest were day-laborers, their work would be terminated by the winter. They would leave the bulk sum of their salaries to me. I would distribute the salaries at the beginning of each month. That was all there was to it.
GV: Why were they transferring the money to your account, but coming to you, as such, with cash? Is there –
EA: No. At the time there was a strange – I don't comprehend the way they dealt with money.
GV: I mean, is the way they would bring such a bulk of money to you about transfer –
EA: Like – that's – nothing difficult. It's a simple matter. A certain amount of money would be – well, a "gratuitous bailee" – that is how they call that, you know. They would leave it. I would then make the monthly payments from this sum. This is all.
GV: Why were the Greeks paid in the winter while the Turks were day-laborers?
EA: Well, they were – Turks. There was no such discrimination. The others – they were artists. They were hired for a year. They would clean mosaics, etc. The others were laborers. That is to say they would lift masonry, and such – whatever there would be. It wasn't because of some discrimination between Turks and Greeks. Some were artists, others were not.
GV: So, Dumbarton Oaks would pay a pension then? A retirement and –
EA: No, no retirement or anything. Everyone's tax was paid. I mean, there was nothing – well, nothing unlawful would be carried out. There was this Mr. Emcet, who was a lawyer, and he would do their – the records of all of them were held at the Eminonu Taxation Office. Their employment history would be recorded in these official cards. So it was –
GV: While you are at it can you mention more about Mr. Emcet?
EA: Emcet Agis.
GV: Emcet Agis.
EA: Lawyer.
GV: But, apparently, also this – Archibald Walker was Socony-Vacuum Oil's –
EA: He was the former director of it.
GV: Yes, and Mr. Emcet, their lawyer –
EA: He was the lawyer of Socony. That was how they met each other to begin with. They must have met so.
GV: So, must they have met through Walker?
EA: I do not know, dear, I do not know.
GV: You do not know this. Yes, alright then, let's get into this apartment in Cihangir called Yildiz. Did you rent this? Did you see about this apartment? Was it you who found it?
EA: Honestly, let me tell you this: When Paul Underwood first came here, we rented, from a friend, this apartment right across here. This one right here. They were friends of ours.
GV: Right here?
EA: Right over here.
GV: On Husrevgerede?
EA: Yeah, over here. Anyway – but then around that time there was a – a sad situation. Let's leave that. Let's leave the private life aside. After then there – I'll tell you about it off-the-record. Anyway, they found the apartment in Cihangir. Paul Underwood found it. I don't know how he found it. I had nothing to do with that.
GV: But you were – well, you prepared it for the visitors, members of the team or, at any rate, for –
EA: I mean, the apartment – I would have the key when they would not be here. For example, Striker would come and stay there. And he would stay, and then leave, and then if another one of them – he would come and stay. There was, well, David Oates. Professor David Oates stayed. George Forsyth stayed, too.
GV: And what did Saban Kolat do?
EA: Saban? Well now, Saban is a mystery. Saban, you see, was the "all around man." He was there at the time of Whittemore, as well. He was Hawkins's man. It is not possible to explain what he – well, what Saban was doing. He was – well, he was our connection man. One would give him the money and have him get things, or ask him to fetch a specific artisan. He was a man like that. Exactly like that. It would be a lie if I said his job there was clear-cut.
GV: What was he doing exactly? What are certain things in your mind?
EA: It really is very difficult! I don't know – say, he would find the artisans and the foremen, or he would send out payments and things – and things like that.
GV: Would he work as a laborer, too?
EA: No, no, no. Saban would be wearing a tie with his shirt, he was no laborer.
GV: He was not a laborer, but he was also not an educated –
EA: He was a – a trusted friend, if you will.
GV: He was so, but didn't have a profession?
EA: No, no, he didn't have a profession.
GV: Yes.
EA: He was a corsair during World War Two – One – Two.
GV: World War Two?
EA: [Laughs]
GV: Yes. Saban Kolat, isn't it?
EA: Kolat, that's right.
GV: Kolat is his last name. You are saying that it was Whittemore who found him?
EA: He was Whittemore's man to begin with. He later stayed on.
GV: When did he pass away?
EA: I don't remember.
GV: You do not remember. You mentioned an apartment near here. Was it this – I came across, in the documents, a place called Pansiyon Villa Rest on Kalipci Street at Apartment 104 – Hawkins and Cyril Mango had stayed there. It says that –
EA: I do not know this one.
GV: You don't know this one. Alright. Providing the journals and books from here was among the duties that you fulfilled for Dumbarton Oaks, I think. I've come across one entitled "Belle –"
EA: Belleten! I don't know what happened to it.
GV: And so, were you finding –
EA: I just was at booksellers – I would purchase books for libraries. I would –
GV: For the one in Deniz Apartment or for the one at Dumbarton Oaks?
EA: For the one here. I was buying them here. Dumbarton Oaks, later on took some books and they – we had bought, this, Mambouri's library as a whole. And then later with Paul Underwood – you have heard the name Mambouri, haven't you?
GV: Of course I have.
EA: We bought it and put it there. Actually when the library was dismantled I took most of those custom-made shelves there. The salvaged shelves are here at home. After that Dumbarton Oaks asked for some of those books. I mailed them to them. The ones that were left – well, Robert College wanted some, and they were donated to Robert College. And well, the rest – No, they were not! Robert College bought those! The college paid the money to, well, Dumbarton Oaks. The rest – I the rest were reference books. And so – was it the year of '74? – I think it was '74, when we were moving out of the apartment. Thereafter, I – Loerke was working there at the time as – as the field – well, director of studies. W. C. Loerke. Thereafter, I met with – I knew him very little. He was not a very nice person, anyway. Did you know him?
GV: I did not.
EA: That's good. You didn't miss much. Don't put this in, it's off the record.
GV: [Laughs] Alright.
EA: After that they told me to give them to ARIT, to the American Research Institute. So I gave all the books to – well, to the director there, who was Lowry, Heath Lowry. The one who is currently working at Princeton University as – well, he is a professor. He used to be the director of that. I gave all of those books to them. I took them there.
GV: Yes. Were you, perhaps, living on Akaretler at some point?
EA: Me? No! I am still living where I was born, my child. I live approximately – I was born ten meters below here.
GV: Yes. Were you organizing parties or dinners here for the Dumbarton Oaks affiliates?
EA: No, my friends would come over for dinner.
GV: So, normal – nothing special. I will now go back to the year of 1956. Again, in a document I read you write to Underwood, "I want to use equipment belonging to Dumbarton Oaks in Hagia Sofia and Kariye." You ask for permission to do so. Was that for your own research? Given that you asked for Underwood's permission, it must have been for a project unrelated to Dumbarton Oaks.
EA: Honestly, you are right. But I really don't remember.
GV: We have already talked a little bit about this, but, so Underwood consults you about both field work and plans for future projects. And you were also – you would visit certain sites in the winter and write your impressions of the works of Turkish specialists to Underwood. Have you ever – were you ever present at works undertaken by Dumbarton Oaks in Kariye or Fenari Isa? I mean, did you work there or would you just be visiting?
EA: No, I would work there. I was going every day. I was going in the day time and, you know, checking things. But, I mean, of course, I was not actually doing anything. I would talk to the workers if need be and whatever. It was like that. I was Underwood's – when he was away we were with Majewski, who doesn't speak Turkish.
GV: Did Underwood speak Turkish?
EA: No.
GV: Hawkins?
EA: Hawkins? Well, he knew some nonsensical things. He was a little – put colloquially, he was a little out of it. I mean –
GV: His mind?
EA: But he knew his job well. He was good. In that respect he had a bit of an inferiority complex, thinking, well, that he didn't have a degree. And yet he would outdo many degree-holders in his knowledge.
GV: Yes, but, it seems Turkish people liked Hawkins very much.
EA: They did. So they did – Ernest Hawkins.
GV: Apparently you had also conducted photographic recording projects.
EA: What, dear?
GV: The project of photographing.
Atabey: Honestly I – I would help him – I was not photographing.
GV: But it seems you were organizing their production?
EA: They were taking them themselves. Majewski used to take all the photographs.
GV: Alright. Have you ever come across Yani Makridis?
EA: Yani Makridis? Well, now – his name would be written there.
GV: Yes.
EA: He was working mainly on the frescoes as an assistant to Carroll Wales. Later on, Carroll Wales left here and went to Boston. He opened a studio there – for restoration work. And his, well, his Greek friend – his name was not Yani, though. Help me out here. It was –
GV: Koco?
EA: Koco! Koco. Koco was his name. He –
GV: Is Koco another person?
EA: There were two Kocos. This one was – he was Carroll Wales's friend. And he used to do – cleaning frescoes. Later on they left for Boston together. He helped him in a studio. Later on – after a while he died of cancer.
GV: Do you know Koco's last name?
EA: I can't recall right now.
GV: Who was the other Koco, then?
EA: He used to work on – well, on mosaics.
GV: Do you mean he was cleaning them?
EA: Cleaning mosaics.
GV: So Yani Makridis is –
EA: Yani is someone else. He was like that, too. He was also mosaic – they would do mosaic and fresco cleaning.
GV: He was not a photographer, then?
EA: No, no, he was not a photographer. Larry Majewski would take all the photographs.
GV: We saw his name in the context of a photography project and wondered if he did photographing –
EA: No, dear, he was not. He did not take photographs.
GV: Yes. So, you were also doing, well, you were taking the foreign visitors and –
EA: The visitors – I would greet – well, like a protocol. When an important person would come – I met Igor Stravinsky. It was me who showed Katherine Hepburn around. It was me who showed Bernstein around. It was me who showed Adenauer around – I mean Chancellor Adenaur – together with Adnan Menderes, I did his – I mean everyone would go there. I even made a list of people that I'd met.
GV: You have a list of that here at home?
EA: It is here. Now – of the ones I remember.
GV: Is there anything that you would like to tell us about them? – any anecdotes?
EA: There's this one, where Adenauer asked me, "What do you do?" I said that I was, well, I said I was a professor. He responded, "How I wish that I, too, stayed that way." This is all.
GV: Yes. Well, you were helping Dumbarton Oaks to get work permits.
EA: My child, this business of getting permissions of Turkish authorities is a sensitive issue. Let me tell you one: Ševčenko is a little obstinate. He likes himself a lot. He came here – I mean several times. He even told me once, while we were walking on the street, "I am headless." And I told him, "You do have a head, it is just that it does not work." He could not say a word. Anyway – he wanted to get this one permission. He said that he had written to the museum in Ankara and got a response the following day. "See," he said, "This is a record!" "What was the response?" I asked. "No!" Well, now – [Laughs]. He resumed silence. They wrote such nonsense that Ankara, without giving it much thought, sent away the rejection – there are three ways of acquiring, or well, getting a response from Turkish authorities. You write to them: In one kind of case they say "yes", that is fine. Another one is that they say "no," and that is fine, too. Yet another one comes about when they don't respond. When they don't respond, one shouldn't push it. If you push it, it resolves into a "no." And if you wait it resolves into a "yes." This – well, I was the only person actually doing this. These Americans tend to be a bit tactless. They, themselves – poor Paul was like that, too, and that was why he used to trust me in these matters.
GV: Would you travel to Ankara?
EA: No, no, no, no, not at all! – only from here by mail.
GV: By mail.
EA: No, no – not so – no such thing.
GV: Were you translating the documents, as well? Because the permissions were likely to have been written in Turkish.
EA: It was no big deal. A document would be written in Turkish, signed, and posted. Not much of a – we did not have much to do. The permission had already been granted and it went on being valid.
GV: Yes. I have a question about the Kariye Mosque project, now.
EA: Go ahead, dear.
GV: Now – Dumbarton Oaks was having made the canvas replicas of these frescoes –
EA: They made a replica of it.
GV: A replica.
EA: Carroll Wales made it. One of them – it was sent to Dumbarton Oaks. The one that went there, by the way is of, well, when Jesus went down to Hell, and, well, the one with him resurrecting Mary and Adam. They asked for permission to send it abroad. The permission for this was my – the dean of the Academy of Fine Arts was a friend of mine. I went there, got it signed, took it, and we sent it away.
GV: Carroll Wales did not do it himself, it seems.
EA: Carroll Wales – he made the replica.
GV: So he made it? There was also mention of Charles Compton.
EA: Ah, yes, sorry! Compton made it. It was Compton who made it. Carroll Wales did the cleaning – Compton made it. That is correct, I am sorry.
GV: Alright. Then there is this issue of – to our knowledge it was made in the 1950s. But it only reaches Dumbarton Oaks, much later, in 1963.
EA: It wasn't until the '60s?
GV: Not until the '60s.
EA: The replica was made slowly by Philip Compton. Philip Compton was – he was making these replicas for a long time at the – and then he left to work at the British Museum. Thereafter he went to the Ashmolean Museum as a restorer.
GV: So, where were these replicas kept in the winter? They are quite large and –
EA: What?
GV: These replicas –
EA: Honestly, I think they were at –
GV: – they are said to have remained in Turkey for about a year.
EA: They were not that large. They were stored in the, well, this southwest room, also known as the priests' room. It must be mentioned there.
GV: So, that room was in use?
EA: Yes, it was.
GV: Alright, let's now talk about Turks. I have a question about Semavi Eyice.
EA: Go ahead, dear.
GV: Once again, this is something that I have come across in the correspondences. Coinciding with the correspondence between you and Underwood in 1963, Underwood was planning on working in Fenari Isa Mosque. You tell him that he can see Semavi Eyice, who is a friend of yours, about it. You tell him that he could, well, you tell him that you will let him know of his response. How was your relationship with Semavi Eyice?
EA: Semavi, dear, is a professor at Istanbul University. He is still alive.
GV: I know.
EA: Anyway, he was a friend of mine from Istanbul University – because, well, I knew most of the people who worked at the Archaeological Museum. I would visit frequently since childhood. And so, Semavi was there and also – anyway, it'll come to me now. That is how I knew him.
GV: Was he a close friend of yours?
EA: No, he was not. I visited his apartment a couple of times. I mean, he was not especially a good friend. He had given me his books as presents, and things like that.
GV: But Mr. Semavi had no affiliation to Dumbarton Oaks?
EA: No, he has no affiliation.
GV: Yes, so, I will now get into the projects of Sarachane and Kalenderhane.
EA: Harrison!
GV: Yes. I –
EA: This is what you just got into: Harrison.
GV: Martin Harrison.
EA: Martin Harrison.
GV: And Lee Striker, of course, first in Bodrum Mosque, and later in Kalenderhane. This –
EA: Lee Striker. Do you know Lee Striker?
GV: Lee Striker is my thesis advisor. I did my Ph.D. with Lee Striker.
EA: Okay, then, in that case.
GV: No, no, please, do tell!
EA: If you know him, then there's no need.
GV: Yes, but this will be recorded.
EA: Don't record it.
GV: Why not?
EA: Nothing. It's alright. Don't worry.
GV: [Laughs] I wish I hadn't told you.
EA: No.
GV: How about Martin Harrison?
EA: Martin Harrison, my child, was – I think he was at the University of Manchester, I am not sure. He was doing the excavations at Kalenderhane. No, no, not at Kalenderhane, at Sarachane. He didn't have much to do with, well, with Dumbarton Oaks. And that was all there was. We didn't have much to do with each other. I think I was the one who got their permission. I helped him out, etc. And then he, the poor soul, died.
GV: Yes. But it seems that you had also helped Lee Striker – in Bodrum Mosque.
EA: As well as in Kalenderhane.
GV: So, did you use to visit those sites?
EA: No, no, he would work there by himself. I mean I had helped Lee Striker, sort of, indirectly.
GV: Yes.
EA: He is alive, isn't he?
GV: Yes, he is.
EA: How old is he now?
GV: How old?
EA: He must be in his late seventies.
GV: He is in his late seventiess right now, yes. Yes. So, you helped in the acquisition of the permission for this Sarachane project, as you have mentioned.
EA: Yes I did.
GV: But you were also helping to provide work force and equipment.
EA: No, I did not help out in Sarachane. That, Harrison used to do by himself.
GV: He did himself – but then how about the supplement of the missing photographs, payments? Did you not have anything to do with those?
EA: No. Well, you mean for Sarachane, don't you?
GV: For Sarachane.
EA: No, no.
GV: Nothing to do there, either, then.
EA: And then there is this Zeyrek Mosque. You haven't gotten to that yet.
GV: If you could tell us about it now that you have mentioned it – and that you have said you didn't do much at Sarachane.
EA: No. In Zeyrek Mosque, it was Peter Megaw. His name should be mentioned there.
GV: Yes.
EA: His real name was Arsenal Megaw, but they called him Peter.
GV: Why is that?
EA: I don't know.
GV: Nobody knows.
EA: Peter's real name was Arsenal Megaw. He came here for a year as an assistant to – I do not know for what. It was at the – the floor of Zeyrek Mosque was uncovered. The floor there was this very beautiful – there is a term for it, "opus sectile," or something. They uncovered that floor. Many glass, stained glass, were found there. This stained glass is very important. Peter worked on those there for a long time – because, in that period – apparently, it was thought that stained glass had not yet existed in that period. So, that was something. And then something rather strange happened. It was in the Kariye mosque. George Forsyth came and did an excavation there in the – this excavation revealed the – the reliquary box there. So, the reliquary box was found. It was, like, a lead box. The same excavation also revealed some of this stained class. I am not sure if it was that they couldn't understand the value of these – this stained glass. I kept some eight to ten kinds, or pieces, of that glass because I am a collector. That is, I took them. The rest were all thrown away. They were chucked away like that. And then later on when they found out that this was very important I gave the pieces I had to Peter Megaw. And so, it was revealed in Kariye that stained glass did exist in that period.
GV: Yes. Anything else that you may remember about Zeyrek?
EA: Honestly, there is – there is another thing I remember from Zeyrek! They excavated this large marble thing with a relief, whose shape I don't remember exactly. But through that it was understood to have been taken from Sarachane.
GV: How about works at Fenari Isa, did you ever visit –
EA: I know that one, too. There at the Fenari Isa site – there were not many mosaics uncovered there. Some frescoes were found. There, they did – I mean, it was a functioning mosque, anyway. No such big project was carried out there. Only a few frescoes were revealed. For example, here, let me give you one off-the-record: Now, we were doing certain things without asking permission. Because I was friends with Mr. Feridun. Now, for permission, Mr. Feridun didn't want to know, because if he did he would have to act. He didn't want to know; he condoned. Now, for example, Paul, tactless as usual, would tell him, we are doing these things because you gave permission! Mr. Feridun would turn a blind eye. And so, I would negotiate between the two of them.
GV: Were these happening in Fenari Isa?
EA: This would be happening more generally.
GV: In general.
EA: In general.
GV: Since you know Majewski, did you also help him with the discovery and transportation of this – this well-known fresco? It was a very small project.
EA: I must have. I don't really remember.
GV: Okay, so who else do you remember from that time? How about Cyril Mango?
EA: Cyril Mango was a friend of mine from high school. We were in high school – I graduated from the English High School for Boys here, and so did Cyril Mango. He is a high a school friend of mine. Later on, I went to St. Andrews University and Cyril Mango did so too, after me. Anyway, so – he would visit here. He would come and go and when he would come I would see him, etc. He is younger than me. He is 82 years old, and I am 89.
GV: So you are old friends?
EA: Well, old acquaintances. He is a very good scholar.
GV: Is there anything else that you would like to mention about Cyril Mango?
EA: No, nothing. He was, like, cynical and extremely intelligent. And so – A very good scholar.
GV: You have mentioned Ihor Ševčenko.
EA: Ševčenko. Ševčenko is strange – the way he is.
GV: Yes. And Martin Harrison?
EA: To be honest, he was like, well, a happy school-boy! [Laughs] He was a very nice gentleman. We did not have much of a friendship.
GV: Megaw?
EA: Megaw was a typical "English civil servant." He had worked as the director of a museum in Cyprus at some point. What else – he used to find our work a little strange. He would – "It's rather a strange institution," he would say, and could never figure it out.
GV: How about David Winfield?
EA: David Winfiled. He never worked with us. He had worked mainly in the Sumela Monastery. Anyway – he came here. He is a bit of a bad lot. Well, I mean, I say this off-the-record. There – I will not say any more.
GV: And Robin Cormack? Did you ever run into him?
EA: No, never. I am not sure if he visited here.
GV: He had worked at Hagia Sofia with Hawkins for a short period of time.
EA: That must have been before me.
GV: He was –
EA: I don't know him.
GV: Alright. And you will not say anything about Lee Striker?
EA: No, there's nothing to be said! You know him very well, at any rate.
GV: We were curious about what you might know.
EA: No, that's alright.
GV: Alright.
EA: For example – let's take, for instance, the apartment in Cihangir. I was responsible for its – he would call from there to tell me how it had not been properly cleaned. I mean, he is a bit of a rude one.
GV: Now, about Van Nice – I think you were pretty close. You were communicating with each other very frequently.
EA: Honestly, it was through him that I had gotten involved with Dumbarton Oaks to begin with.
GV: What was he like? What were the things that he –
EA: Well, he was working in Hagia Sophia on the – he was making plans. There is not much to say. He had worked, I think, in Iran, before.
GV: In Isfahan.
EA: In Isfahan. He had worked in Isfahan. He had a friend, who – this friend of ours would always tell him "When you were in Abyssinia…," and he would respond "I was not in Abyssinia, I was in Isfahan." A couple of months would pass by, and then again: "When you were in Abyssinia…" "I was not." He would forget and respond. We were, well, we didn't have much to do with each other. We knew each other. It was because of his friendship with Herbert Muller that we went to do the masons' marks, in the first place.
GV: And so this work of yours – did Muller take it or –
EA: Muller.
GV: – or was it given to Van Nice?
EA: Nobody was given anything. Van Nice was asking for this, I mean, to be done. And Muller was interested – Muller is a historian. I have some eight or nine books of his. We had travelled together in Anatolia and things like that. He is not an archaeologist at all. We were doing that – recording the masons' marks for fun.
GV: No, but this "masons' marks" document is in our archives. I don't think that there are any names written on it. So, apparently, you made it together with Muller.
EA: I made it with Muller.
GV: There is a draft of it there.
EA: We would do this thing with this black material on paper, and the mark would come out.
GV: Yes, so you were doing that. Alright. Did you meet Van Nice's family? Were they –
EA: Yes, I met them. But I can't remember, really.
GV: You don't remember much.
EA: Her name was Betty, wasn't it?
GV: Betty Van Nice.
EA: Betty Van Nice.
GV: But they seem to have stayed here for a while and their children went to Robert College.
EA: That may be right.
GV: You don't remember them. Then, now, quite a number of students from, well, from Robert College seem to have worked at projects of Dumbarton Oaks, especially those of Van Nice. Did you help organize –
EA: No, I never helped with that.
GV: You never helped Van Nice?
EA: No, not that. I knew some of those students; they were my students. I mean, that was a coincidence. It had nothing to with me finding them or anything.
GV: Who are they? – their names.
EA: I don't remember at all.
GV: You don't remember. But, from what we see in the correspondence, you would go and visit the works of Turkish archaeologists. And then you would write your impressions of them to Van Nice. Among these commentaries, the one that attracted my attention the most was Muzaffer Ramazanoglu's work. You didn't –
EA: Well, Ramazanoglu was the director of Hagia Sofia. He was a strange man. He was a very vain and rude man! We didn't have much to do with each other. I tend to avoid conflict with people. We didn't have much in common. And so, he was, at some point – Paul and I would go and we would sit there. Ramazanoglu hadn't started working at Hagia Sophia, yet. He would come by and – strike dully into conversation and leave like that. I mean, I didn't have much to do with him.
GV: Alright.
EA: I knew Mr. Feridun better. Feridun Dirimtekin, that is. Feridun Dirimtekin was a former military officer. And also – I mean, he was a military officer in the old days. But he was interested in things Byzantine. He even published a book entitled "Fortifications of Istanbul."
GV: And so, these visits of yours to excavation sites – from what I can gather you were visiting them regularly over the winter. You were checking what was being done and how these buildings were. Was that a result of your own personal interest?
EA: Well, I mean, like, it was help. I was a full-time professor here in the winter, anyway. I would go and have a look on some Tuesday afternoons, when I would be free.
GV: Alright. I had seen, on a letter that you had written to Underwood, "Ercument Atabay, Pantologist" in the letterhead section.
EA: Pantologist. [Laughs]
GV: What's the story behind that?
EA: Well, I came up with this made-up word, "pantologist," on my own. It means "a person who deals with all things." I came up with that word. I had even had it printed on paper – I got printed this mailing paper that read "Humanistic Studies Research Institute, Ercument Atabay, Pantologist." There are some interesting anecdotes about that. [Laughs] So, this is how it came about.
GV: What are the stories?
EA: I don't mean any story as such. But, for example, we needed this one book by Oxford Press. And they would not give it to us – I mean, sell it. And so I removed this "pantologist." I'll show you.
GV: Sure.
EA: Instead I wrote…I sent it as just "Humanistic Studies Research Institute." And they sent it. They sent the book.
GV: [Laughs] When did you adopt this – this title? When did you declare yourself a "pantologist"?
EA: My child, this was sixty years ago. [Laughs] sixty to seventy.
GV: We were very intrigued by it.
EA: And no one would know what it does there, because I made it up.
GV: [Laughs]
EA: You know there is this word "polymath." "Pantologist" corresponds to that.
GV: Have you ever visited Dumbarton Oaks?
EA: Yes, I have.
GV: Would you tell us about it?
EA: In 1966 –
GV: Yes? Were you invited?
EA: No, dear. Robert College had sent me for a conference. It was at Bennington College. And that was my first time in the United States. That was also when I went to Washington to see Paul. He was – I visited the Dumbarton Oaks building. It was – well, it was Grierson who showed me around the building.
GV: Philip Grierson.
EA: Philip Grierson that is.
GV: Who did you meet while you were there?
EA: I didn't meet anyone.
GV: What were your impressions of Dumbarton Oaks?
EA: Well, Philip Grierson was an English person with a wonderful sense of humor. "Look," he said, "let me show you the most crucial section of this building." And he took me to the boiler room of the building. "Here is something that you cannot find anywhere else," he told me, "you can leave out the rest." Because, really, it was something – like a factory.
GV: Alright, but you had helped Dumbarton Oaks substantially, and yet, they never officially invited you?
EA: No, no, no, what would they do that for? I didn't have anything to – I mean I was not a scholar or anything. My – well, my degree is in medieval history.
GV: Alright. I have a couple of more personal questions. Again related to something that I'd come across in a correspondence, something that involves both Ernest Hawkins and Dumbarton Oaks. It is referred to as "Jan affair."
EA: What affair?
GV: "Jan," as in the proper name, J-A-N. "Jan affair." I think that this person had also worked at the Byzantine Institute. They considered suing Dumbarton Oaks about a particular affair, but then decide not to.
EA: Who is that?
GV: I do not know. I was wondering if you did.
EA: I don't know either.
GV: "Jan affair?"
EA: I don't know, my dear.
GV: You don't remember. Alright, then. Certain minor problems with permission at Hagia Sophia – that is certain minor problems regarding work at Hagia Sophia arise in the year 1965 as a result of the turbulent political situation in Turkey. And in a letter to Underwood you write that the movement to turn Hagia Sohpia into a mosque revived. What are the things that you remember from this period?
EA: I sincerely do not remember.
GV: Alright. You have mentioned ARIT a couple of times.
EA: Who?
GV: ARIT, American Research Institute in Turkey.
GV: It seems that you were quite involved at the time of its establishment. You were even giving advice to Underwood about where precisely ARIT should be set up.
EA: Underwood did not have much to do with ARIT – not with ARIT.
GV: What was your role there?
EA: The director there – they all would know me, anyway. ARIT had, well, it had two directors. One of them was Heath Lowry, and I knew him. And then there was the current director, Tony Greenwood. And his father was a colleague at Robert College. That's all, not much to it.
GV: But during its establishment, too, you –
EA: No, no.
GV: There is not much. Alright. Do you remember Rustem Duyuran?
EA: Very well indeed!
GV: Could you tell us about him, then, because –
EA: Rustem Duyuran. Rustem Duyuran was the director of the Archaeological Museum. He got his education in Germany. To put it colloquially, he was out of it. He was also interested in, well, drinking. This guy would always start up fights and things like that. Between him and Paul, and because Paul was a little tactless, I would be the go-between. I would intentionally call him "big brother Rustem" so that it would be easier to make up with him after a potential fight – because if you call someone your big brother, then you do make peace with him. But otherwise – Rustem – for example, let me tell you a little something: One day at the – there was this Nezih Firatli who was working at the Archaeological Museum. Nezih Firatli. He was a very good archaeologist, and a good friend. He, too, passed away. He would, you know, help us. And then, well, we were to borrow something, I now forget what it was, from the Archaeological Museum. We needed Mr. Rustem's permission. Now, Mr. Rustem would not be there in the mornings. And so, I told Paul to leave his card on his desk, so that we could later claim to not have found him in his office. And that way we could get the "little permission" from Nezih. Then we went back one afternoon when Mr. Rustem was there. What would Paul do but tell him: "We left that card intentionally in order to be able to say that we didn't find you there." The man's face was like – "Big brother," I said, "don't dwell on it, you understand the situation here." And so we resolved it. Paul had such gaffes to make.
GV: But I think that Rustem Duyuran worked in Anatolia.
EA: He did. He was the director of the Archaeological – of the museum in Izmir. He had some – but he was a strange man. At Sarachane, for example, some, well, some marble pieces with monograms were found. I told Mr. Rustem to get some of those. "They don't concern us," he said. Nezih and me, we would take those to the Archaeological Museum at night in order to, well, salvage them. Anyway, so Mr. Rustem was an odd man like that. On the corner there, in Beyazit, there is a bath-house, under which there are reliefs from the Theodosian period. These reliefs are very precious because there are very few of them that date back to the Theodosian period. I went to Mr. Rustem and told him, "Big brother, just give me two men and I will take care of the money. Let's remove these pieces, and take them to the archaeological museum." "Just leave it!" he said – things like that. And then all of those pieces got broken. I had actually taken pictures of those. There must be photographs of those pieces at Dumbarton Oaks.
GV: What happened to the photographs that you had taken?
EA: I gave them away. I didn't take many pictures.
GV: You were giving them away?
EA: No, I wasn't taking them. Larry Majewski would take them.
GV: Yes.
EA: I'll show you the ones I have, but they are all taken by Larry. I would only do the enlargement. With a friend of mine, we'd enlarge photographs.
GV: So you were taking the films and –
EA: No, no, they – we – these were for me.
GV: For you, but you were enlarging them in a dark room?
EA: Yes.
GV: And this was in the Yildiz Apartment?
EA: No, no, it wasn't there, dear. This was at a friend's house. We were doing this for ourselves, not for them.
GV: So, for yourself. Well, there is also this story about the removal and installment of the bronze doors of Hagia Sofia.
EA: Let me tell you about that. Those doors – they are very old. I mean, they are from the Hellenistic period. Someone named Carlo Bertelli came from Italy for – to clean and restore those doors. And, well, Saban had an older brother, his name was Salih. He was unbelievable. Van Nice used to call him – he would say, "He's a medieval man." He would lift the enormous door by himself. How would he do it, how come? Well, anyway he – those doors were cleaned, and crosses and things were exposed. This was Bertelli's work. Also there happened something tragic. They put some of that bronze on the floor and they got stolen. Whoever stole them was unknown. I mean, I guess, they were handed over to the guy who roasted chickpeas.
GV: I think, their installment was also –
EA: Bertelli took care of that. The door was not completely removed, to begin with. The doors were not removed.
GV: They were not?
EA: No, no, no. There was no way!
GV: Yes, they really are very large. I think, also, that there was this group of Armenian artisans at the covered bazaar – one or two artisans. Did you –
EA: I don't know about them.
GV: You don't know about them. Alright. If I told you names of some people whom we don't know, perhaps you could –
EA: Go ahead.
GV: First is this Tahsin Bey that we have come across. I thought that it may be Tahsin Oz, but –
EA: Ha! No, his name was not Tahsin, though. His last name was Oz. I think he was the director of the Archaeological Museum.
GV: Was he? Do you know anyone by the name of Tahsin?
EA: I don't personally, but I think this may be him.
GV: Boris Ermeloff?
EA: I don't know him. Wait, he was a friend of – the one you mentioned – of Mister Walker's.
GV: Ermoloff?
EA: Ermoloff.
GV: A friend of Walker's.
EA: I mean, he was staying with him.
GV: He was staying at Walker's. Yes, okay.
EA: I think, perhaps, that he was the Polish Ambassador. He was – well, there was this great antiques dealer here by the name of Zakos.
GV: An antiques dealer.
EA: And so, he used to have very large pieces. This antique – this guy goes and buys a coin, a very expensive coin, from him. He shows this coin to Whittemore in the evening. Whittemore tells him that it's a fake and tells him to return it. And so, he takes it back to Zakos. "For the life of me," says Zakos, "this is not a fake!" "No." and so Zakos gives him back his money and half an hour later Whittemore shows up and says: "Where's that coin that Ermeloff brought you? – and "don't sell these things to illiterate persons after this." He pays him and places the coin in his pocket.
GV: Anybody by the name of Richard or Robert Gregory?
EA: I don't know them.
GV: You don't know them. Alexander Piankoff?
EA: Alexander?
GV: Piankoff.
EA: I don't know them.
GV: Nor him. Alright. Jack Loveless?
EA: [No response.]
GV: No. Okay, we come across the names of certain people that we think were workers: Halil, Hayyam.
EA: They were laborers – just masons, you know.
GV: Yes, alright. Then there is a person named Halasi Khun.
EA: Halasi Khun. I know him, but – he is a well-known person – but I can't recall who he was.
GV: Yes. Peppa?
EA: Who?
GV: Peppa.
EA: Peppa was the maid at Paul's apartment. She was a maid.
GV: But she did not work in the Yildiz Apartment, did she?
EA: She worked in the Yildiz Apartment.
GV: So she was there.
EA: She was there. She would stay during the winter, too. She would stay there. She was a kind of a, well, a care-taker. I would take her monthly payment to her. Later on when she quit the job, they got her out of the apartment. There was not much need in the winter in the first place. And Paul Underwood had been sending her – he had been sending a certain amount of money every month until the day he died. And I would take that money to her.
GV: Was Peppa of Greek origin?
EA: Yes, she was Greek. Also half-blind.
GV: Was she? And about Koco – we have already talked about the two Kocos. We have also come across someone called Nashi, or, perhaps, Naashi.
EA: Nashi. Nashi must have been the brother of this Koco.
GV: Of which Koco, though?
EA: Of the one with the middle name. Well, he was the brother of one of them. The one who was Carroll Wales' friend?
GV: Gano, Seth Gano, I think…
EA: I have heard his name, but don't remember him.
GV: You don't know him. There's also this person, Mehmet, who constantly comes up.
EA: Mehmet.
GV: He would carry buckets, apparently.
EA: [No response.]
GV: He must have been an unimportant person, then. There are a couple more names, but – McMurray, for example, is one.
EA: [No response.]
GV: You don't know him either. Yes, alright Is there anything else that you would like to tell? This is it for my questions.
EA: Not really, no. I don't think there is anything left.
GV: Would Mrs. Atabay like to add anything?
Mrs. Atabay: No, no. I was not in that world actually. And yet, I know most of the names that you brought up here, of course. I mean, I know them as friends.
EA: Let me also give you these – book of visitors to Kariye, with signatures. There are two. Take them both.
GV: I would appreciate it.
EA: You take those.
GV: Are there any – are there any photographs of the workers?
GV: Or your photgraphs –
EA: No, no.
GV: – of that sort? No, okay. I will end the recording now but I would like to show you a couple of photographs of people you may recognize.
EA: Do show!
GV: Alright.]]>
ABF: We are Anna Bonnell-Freiden and Clem Wood, and we are here with Henry and Eunice Maguire to talk about their involvement at Dumbarton Oaks over the years at their house in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 3, 2008. So, we'd like to start by asking you about your impressions of the social and intellectual atmosphere at Dumbarton Oaks when you first arrived, in 1971.
HM: Eunice…
EM: Oh, I shouldn't really be the one to start because you were the one who was the Junior Fellow – but maybe if that means I have less to say, I should go ahead.
HM: Well, you did more socializing.
EM: Well, we were both graduate students at that time, and I think even I – though I had not originally been an advisee of Professor Kitzinger's – was by that time. In fact, it was he who had first welcomed us to on our first visit, when we were still undergraduates; and Henry paid his first visit to America during the winter vacation of my senior year – and that turned out to be a very important visit, our visit to Dumbarton Oaks, and meeting him, and having his interest encourage us both in our directions. We were both interested in Byzantine art, but I was – no, we were also both interested in Western medieval art. And he encouraged both interests. So, I was, I think, still casting about, perhaps, either to narrow my thesis topic or to find a doable one for him, at the time you had your Junior Fellowship. So, it was a wonderful opportunity for me too, and I found all the staff and fellows very friendly and welcoming, and, of course, I was very excited to be given a seat in that fabulous library. The reading room was upstairs where, now, the Director of Studies office is and the outer office. It was all one big room with the long tables across; and I was lucky that I was given a seat near the window, so I had the sense of the garden being there. And I was sitting at the same table opposite Irina Andreescu, and behind me was Nancy Ševčenko, just to give you a sense of the atmosphere and the contemporaries. Also, the photographic resources…the photo collection, which was at that time under the care of Marlia Mundell – before she was married – and the other photo resources were very helpful to me because my work has always been quite visual; and I was looking for material which hadn't been published in the way in which I wished to approach it. So, that was very important, as were the museum collections, though I didn't know at the time that I would end up as a museum person. And there were many informal opportunities for stimulating conversations. The only disappointment was – and this maybe will come under one of your other questions, but – at that time, there was an official ban on inviting spouses to lunch in the Fellows Building. And, of course, a lot of the intellectual, informal intellectual conversation goes on – or used to – at those lunches, maybe even more than now, because I think people tended to go more all at the same time then, for lunch, because it was a smaller group. So, I did feel excluded in that sense and I felt that I was penalized for being a scholar, because scholars…scholarly colleagues were allowed to be invited, but if you happened to be a scholarly colleague and also a spouse, you couldn't; and I wasn't the only one who suffered in this way, among the various couples who were there over the years. The one who wasn't a spouse…I mean, the one who wasn't a Fellow, until that rule changed, couldn't mingle with colleagues in the Fellows Building; that was the only drawback, as far as the social and intellectual atmosphere goes.
HM: Although I would say that lunches were rather formal affairs and often were eaten in silence because the Junior Fellows were afraid to say anything because they would reveal their ignorance, and the senior faculty – and there were a fair number in those days – they often weren't on speaking terms with each other. So, they didn't speak either. So I'm not sure you missed an enormous amount, except for the food, which was quite good.
EM: Well, the other drawback for me, of course – and that was jumping ahead to your question about daily routine – that my time was really circumscribed by the challenge of finding affordable childcare, or childcare that was affordable to two graduate students. So, I remember that one Saturday, Irina Andreescu said, "I think it's outrageous that you can't come to lunch. I'm going to invite you and Gavin"; so, this was our son who turned two at the end of January that year. "And, because they might not approve of that, I'm going to do it on Saturday." So, I think…I don't remember whether lunch was served on Saturday, but I do remember we were the only people in the room. But she made a point of bringing me in to have lunch with her on Saturday to have lunch with her, with this tiny child on my lap.
HM: So, you asked about parties. There was one memorable…one party I remember that year was a Guy Fawkes party, which was organized by Charlotte Roueché, who was actually not officially a Fellow. She was somewhat in the same position as Eunice. She had a fellowship, I think, from Newnham, but she elected to spend it as D.O.; but since she wasn't officially a D.O. Fellow, she couldn't come to the lunches and this kind of thing. Anyway, she organized this Guy Fawkes party in the Fellows Building; and everyone was there, including Paul Lemerle, who was one of the senior visitors at that time. And I remember our son…he had some grandchildren, so he was very taken with our son, and our son was spreading marshmallows on his lapels. They were roasting marshmallows in the fire.
EM: Yes, and Lemerle was dressed very formally in a beautiful dark suit, and there were these sticky little fingers all over his suit [laughter].
CW: Where was this?
EM: In the Fellows Building, facing the fireplace. We actually roasted marshmallows and maybe even hotdogs in the fireplace.
HM: In those days, there were some interesting parties there. There was another party, which I think was on one of our later visits, when Seka Allen…I asked her for a recipe for a punch, and she came up with some sort of strawberry punch which she said was delicious, and it was, but it was actually very potent, and many people went away somewhat tipsy.
EM: What I remember was the Halloween party, when people came in costumes. And some of the Pre-Columbian Fellows wore, kind of, Day of the Dead masks; and it was wonderful to see them dancing in those, even with the mask of the back of the head, so the boots were pointing in the opposite way from what seemed to be the face. And I remember that the Magaws came as Justinian and Theodora and danced very elegantly in those costumes.
ABF: So did a lot of your social life revolve around the Fellows' Building at that time?
HM: Quite a lot of it, yes, because that was one place where you could have large gatherings, because the apartments that D.O. provided were very small. But, of course, we had a social life outside of Dumbarton Oaks as well. So, we knew some people in Washington
EM: But speaking of outside of Dumbarton Oaks, one thing I didn't mention that was amazing and, in those days, tremendously – a very useful privilege – was that they had runners to go to the Library of Congress to get books that were there but not at D.O. – which saved a lot of time. And later on, when the runners were stopped, they managed to get stacks privileges for us, so that we could go to the Library of Congress and find our own books. I think that lasted until the Library of Congress re-shelving system became so backlogged that it was impossible with a stack pass to find the books – which was too bad, but it was very – and I think, also, of course, it must continue with the Hellenic Center, the library. The cooperation between libraries was so facilitating. That was great.
ABF: Did you have a lot of contact with the Center for Hellenic Studies?
HM: No, not a great deal, no.
EM: I didn't, no. I think some people did who were dealing on philosophy topics, or something like that. But the art historians didn't, maybe because there weren't as many art history…
HM: The library is very not strong in art history, not nearly as strong as D.O., so we didn't really have much reason to D.O.
EM: The D.O. Byzantine library used to keep up with a very wide range of fields: lots of archaeological material, lots of ancient Greek and Roman, and lots of Western medieval, so it was very good for general research on Byzantine topics.
ABF: And so you often spent that year working in the library?
HM: Yes, essentially trying to finish my thesis. That's probably true of most Junior Fellows. You know, they arrive with an unfinished thesis and they struggle to get it done before the ax falls and they are ejected. I think that's a very typical experience. Usually, the first part of the year is more relaxed. I mean, I could tell when I was Director of Studies that there was a change in mood in the lunch room come about March. People would see the end of their fellowships and become much more serious.
ABF: So, in those first years, who were the scholars who had the greatest impact on you?
HM: Well, I mean, of course, my two supervisors – the supervisors of my thesis – had the greatest impact, though neither of them were at Dumbarton Oaks at the time; those would be Kitzinger and Ševčenko. But in later years, I came to know Alexander Kazhdan, and he had a very strong influence on my work; and perhaps also Robert Browning, in different ways. Kazhdan was very interested in social history, and obviously saints and saints' lives, and he also had a strong interest in Byzantine literature as literature, which in those days was somewhat unusual. Whereas, Browning was more of a philologist, but he was interested in Byzantine gardens, so I found a kindred spirit there; and he was also very, very kind in his advice. Even if you made horrible mistakes, he would point them out very kindly and set you straight, so I appreciated working with him.
ABF: And what was your thesis topic?
HM: The thesis topic…it was a slightly strange topic. It was about the ecphrases (which are descriptions of works of art) and specifically about one feature of them, which is that they often talk about the emotions of the figures in the scenes; and, in those days, sort of in the '60s, people didn't think of Byzantine painting as being emotional. It was connected with modernist painting and thought of as being abstract; and so, as a result, these ecphrases were thought of being essentially false, not giving a sort of correct impression of Byzantine painting. So, the thesis was partly, in a way, to exonerate the ecphrases and say that they did have something to say about what the Byzantines thought about painting and, secondly, to show that there was this strong emotional element in Byzantine art; and I focused on depictions of sorrow. And now, of course, this is absolutely perceived wisdom; I mean, people are very aware of this aspect of Byzantine art. But back then, you know when I told people the topic, they thought it was a sort of non-topic, because they didn't think there was such a thing as emotion in Byzantine art. Anyway, that was it.
ABF: But they believed in you.
HM: Well, eventually. Eventually, you know, I published it. Always with these things, you find that other people are working on the same lines. So, what you might imagine is a totally new and original direction that you are taking, you find that people at the same time in different places are doing the same thing. So, another scholar who worked on somewhat the same assumptions was Hans Belting, although in different ways. So, his work has been very influential. So, I think that yes now this is generally agreed that this is an important aspect of Byzantine painting.
ABF: Did you know Belting at D.O.?
HM: Belting – he came, yes.
EM: Yes, we met him there.
HM: Yes, we met him there on several occasions
EM: And there were other people too who were not officially posted or connected with DO over a period of time but who would come as readers or perhaps as speakers and stay for a few days; and one of those people who had a great influence on me, in encouraging me personally and helping me…giving me some courage with developing aspects of my work that were not simply visual, was Peter Brown, who was there for a whole semester reading everyday when he was teaching at Catholic University as a Mellon Professor – that was sometime before he was at Princeton. So, that was very helpful to me, because I was still working on my dissertation at that time, long-distance from my adviser. There were other people whose names you didn't mention, though all the ones you did mention were people who very much broadened my way of thinking and also gave personal encouragement, which is one of the wonderful things, I'm sure you would agree, about Dumbarton Oaks – people like Robert van Nice, who was there putting together the archival photographs and drawings, his amazing drawings of Hagia Sophia. His love for that one building really was inspiring; and I was working on a subject in architectural sculpture for my dissertation. And then I think I mentioned Megaw. Davis was another one of the great figures who was there off-and-on frequently; and John Meyendorff. And then, in the library, you mentioned Seka Allen. She was a bibliographer, as you probably know; but she did take a personal interest in everybody. She was a wonderful social pivot, really, because she knew – she and Irene Vaslef, the Byzantine librarian – knew what interests people had, more than we might discover by casual conversation among ourselves. And she would help – they both would help bring people together – as well as leading you to the right books, they would lead you to the right people to discuss some aspect that maybe you were just beginning to explore, which was another wonderful grace really, to have their attention to everyone. And ones' contemporaries – people slightly younger or slightly older – also had sometimes…quite by chance you would meet somebody in the stacks or you would see a book that somebody opposite you in the reading room was reading, and you would ask about it, and it would reinforce the direction you were just beginning to take or that you had been taking but you thought that no one in the field would approve of or encourage you to go in another way along a path that you were trying to follow. I remember conversations like that, for instance, with people like David Olster, who was working with antique texts when I was beginning to try to explore them in some unfamiliar directions – and Leslie MacCoull, when I was beginning to work with Coptic Egypt.
HM: I should mention that the second time I visited Dumbarton Oaks, when Ihor Ševčenko was still there; and he had been asked by Ernst Kitzinger if he could be the second superviser – reader – of my thesis; and he said, "Well, I'll have to examine this candidate first." So they flew me down from Cambridge to Dumbarton Oaks; and I met Ihor and Nancy for lunch. They gave me lunch in the building that is at the corner, where sort of S Street turns the corner – they had a house there. We had this long lunch, and he served two bottles of wine – I think we must have had the best part of one-and-a-half bottles of wine, between the three of us. So, at the end of this, he produced a couple of Byzantine epigrams and said, "Please translate these." Byzantine epigrams are not, you know, the easiest things to translate; but it just happened that I had already read these before. But I was able, in spite of my slightly inebriated state, to make sense of them.
EM: Maybe it helped.
HM: Maybe it helped, yes. So he said, "Okay, I'll take you on. I'll be your supervisor." So that was my exam [laughter].
CW: That's a great story; and was this when the library was still on the top floor of the Main House? You were working next to everyone?
HM: Yes, yes, yes. It was in those days it was before they even had air conditioning. So, yes, it was very hot up there in the summer. In fact, I think Dumbarton Oaks more or less sort of closed down in the summer. They didn't have summer fellowships. The faculty went off to the hills of Europe, and it was too hot to work.
EM: It was also very conducive to browsing because they had to extend the stacks underneath the eaves, so there were funny, kind of changes in level, which they carpeted over to make a little less hazardous. But, for me, it meant lots of places where I could sit, pull books off the shelf, spread them out, and see which ones I really wanted to take out and which ones I didn't. While I was doing that, I came across a number of very early, sometimes eighteenth- or nineteenth-century editions of books that I might or might not have heard of. And I started taking those down to Irene Vaslef, and that was the beginning of the rare book collection, which hadn't been separated from the other things at that time, as far as the Byzantine library went; and she asked me if I would continue to keep an eye out for things like that for her.
HM: It was very nice to be in the old library, sort of after hours, when it was more or less empty, and you could imagine yourself as a kind of French aristocrat in his chateau with all these books at your disposal, in strange places, in cupboards. It had a lot of character.
EM: I bet. There was that spooky closet behind the elevator, where some of the books were kept. When you went in there, you would hear the creaking of the elevator and somehow have the feeling that if somebody shut the door, you might never get out until someone else needed a book from there [laughter]
CW: So then after that year you went to Harvard right away?
HM: Actually, it was…Yes.
CW: Or was it after the second year?
HM: I had a year as a Fellow. Then I spent the year teaching at the University of Massachusetts and then to Harvard. And so then I had three years in teaching at Harvard and three years at Dumbarton Oaks.
CW: And were you…was that the first group of joint appointees?
HM: More or less, but there were joint appointees not only with Harvard but with other universities at more or less the same time. So, I think Rob Nelson, for example, had a joint appointment, I suppose, with Chicago, a little bit after mine. I'm not sure exactly what the chronology of them was, but there was a sort of a group of these joint appointments about the same time.
ABF: There was Michael McCormick as well.
HM: Yes, he was. I think maybe Ioli Kalavrezou had one as well, if I'm not mistaken.
CW: So, I guess you were at Harvard for the first three years, so that was really before the talk of moving Byzantine Studies there.
HM: Well, at Harvard there was really no talk of it. But as soon as I got to Dumbarton Oaks for the second three years, it was very much in the air. And it was a fairly tense time, actually, at Dumbarton Oaks, because the future was obviously very uncertain – especially that first semester or year, when, as you spoke of in your list of questions, the triumvirate was sort of taking over the duties of Director of Studies. That was a rather strange period.
EM: When was it that they lent highlights of the Dumbarton Oaks collection to the Fogg? I remember that we had a feeling that it was a kind of double-edged sword. Because, on one hand, it was very nice to see Byzantine things in Cambridge; but, on the other hand, we wondered, "Does that mean that they're thinking of moving the whole collection?" Because, if it does, it will mostly go underground, because, well, Harvard University Art Museums is now closed and planning an expansion, but they will always have to have a lot of wonderful things in storage because, unless they have everything out in study storage – in other words, storage rooms with everything visible to the public – there won't be room to display everything that they have; and clearly, a lot of the Byzantine things would go underground. And if that happened, then to some extent we saw that as emblematic as what would happen to Byzantine studies.
HM: Well, I think the main plan was to move the library and the fellowship program and, to be frank, the funds, up to Cambridge; and then to leave – obviously they couldn't move the gardens – and the gardens have their own endowment in any case, so they were going to leave them. And it seems they were seriously planning to do this, but then a number of alumni, powerful alumni, objected, so Harvard backed off. So it was people like Joseph Alsop, who kind of saved the – saved the intellectual aspect of Dumbarton Oaks for Washington
EM: Because he cared about Washington, as well as because he cared about Dumbarton Oaks
ABF: Who favored the move?
HM: I suppose, well – I think some of the professors at Harvard favored it because there would have been more money to spend there more broadly on the humanities, and it would have enriched the library at Harvard – and the books would all have been in one place. Because, it is true, that even today, there are gaps in the Widener Library that correspond to books that are at Dumbarton Oaks; so this is obviously irritating for Harvard professors. So – but I think it was mainly probably attractive to the administration because D.O. had a huge endowment (especially in those days it seemed very big), and it was being spent on what seemed like very esoteric subjects, and there was no teaching going on. So, I remember Bill Loerke, who was Director of Studies, you know, while this was all brewing up, had a visit from the Harvard – some people from Harvard, I don't know exactly who – he told me that they asked him what was going on at Dumbarton Oaks. He showed them all these books that had been published, shelves of them, and this made no impression on them at all – because, you know, what are sort of twenty feet of books compared to hundreds of students who could be supported with the same amount of money? So I think it was mainly the administration's scheme.
ABF: Was there talk among people at Dumbarton Oaks about the legacy of the Blisses, in so far as they had very specifically left the money for the Byzantine and Pre-Columbian programs?
HM: Yes, I mean, obviously that was one of the things people talked about. I think people were more worried about the future of Byzantine Studies; because, at that time, Dumbarton Oaks was – I don't want to go sort of into later questions – but it did at that time play a major role in the field because of its active fieldwork and the number of people who had been on the staff – Byzantinists who had been on staff at Dumbarton Oaks – and these joint appointments. So it was very important in promoting the field in America and abroad too. But, so, I think that was seen as being under threat; that, if they moved the endowment to Cambridge, then the money would have been spent just broadly on the humanities, so on Western medieval and on the Renaissance and history and all sorts of other fields as well. And the particular flavoring of Byzantium would have been lost. But, of course, it didn't turn out that way, so that was partly why, I think, we had this very strange situation of the three, sort of junior assistant professors playing the role of Director of Studies, which was strange, in a sense, because I was in charge of the publications; and so I was writing letters to senior scholars, you know, advising them on how they could improve their manuscripts, which probably didn't go down very well.
EM: How else was…I can't remember how else the responsibilities were divided up between John Duffy and…
HM: Irina Andreescu was in charge of fieldwork and John Duffy was in charge of the fellowship program.
EM: That's right.
ABF: And this is while you also had this joint appointment?
EM: Yes.
HM: This was, yes, when I'd moved down to Dumbarton Oaks. So, yes, I still had, officially, a joint appointment with Harvard, although I wasn't actually doing any teaching up there. I spent three years teaching at Harvard, and basically partly visited Dumbarton Oaks and then three years at Dumbarton Oaks.
ABF: And it was in those three years at Dumbarton Oaks when you began to pick up those responsibilities that had previously fallen upon the Director of Byzantine Studies?
HM: The Director of Byzantine Studies, yes. And then, at the end of the year, Giles Constable came as Director, and he assumed the responsibilities of Director of Studies himself. So, then we were sort of free to pursue our own research, so we had essentially two years of research fellowship – which was very nice.
ABF: So can you tell us more about that experience of working so closely with Irina Andreescu and John Duffy?
HM: Well, as far of the three of us were concerned, it went fairly smoothly. I actually, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed working with the publications. So, that worked fine. The uncomfortable part was the sort of political goings-on outside. For example, at the Byzantine Studies conference, we felt, I think, rather on the spot – people asking us questions: "What's going on, what's going to happen?" Which was really out of our hands. And, of course, people at Dumbarton Oaks were either nervous or angry or both, so.
ABF: And what were your responsibilities?
HM: Well, as I said, with the publications, it was mainly that I was in charge of the Dumbarton Oaks Papers. So, that would be, sort of, doing a first editing of manuscripts when they came in, finding readers for the manuscripts, sometimes suggesting ways that they could be clarified or improved, and, likewise, with the books.
EM: And putting pressure on authors who were taking a bit longer than expected.
HM: Yes, and on readers who were taking forever to read the manuscripts.
CW: And so then you were next directly involved with D.O., as a Senior Fellow in the '80s?
HM: Yes, yes, and that when was Angeliki Laiou was Director; and I think there was a feeling that they needed some kind of art history presence. So, what I basically did was to advise on matters of art history and read manuscripts or select books for the library and participate in seminars, and this kind of thing – and to some extent, to do some of my work
EM: That was when you were the Art History Adviser, you mean, which was different from when you were the Senior Fellow.
HM: Oh yes, that was when I was on the board of Senior Fellows, but that's a different…
CW: That was the Senior Research Associate?
HM: Well when I was at Dumbarton Oaks for that year, I was Senior Research Associate but I was also on the board of Senior Fellows, which means that we visited three times a year just for a day or two for meetings; but I wasn't in residence.
CW: Right, but you were for that year.
HM: For that year, yes.
CW: So you had been there at the end of the '70s, when the faculty…the permanent faculty, were disbanded?
HM: Well, I wouldn't say that they were exactly disbanded. They dwindled away. Under Giles Constable, they sort of dwindled. Then there was something of a revival under Laiou because she brought people in to work on various projects – but not with faculty status, but as research associates. So, the end of the faculty status, I suppose, would have been under Giles Constable; because, before his time, the Directors of Studies and many of the other people involved had the status of professors at Harvard University. And this, I think, actually was a fundamental change, especially as far as the Directors of Studies were concerned, because now the position of Director of Studies is a non-tenured position – it's for five years, which may be renewable. So, in effect, what that means is that you are not going to get anyone applying who already has tenure, unless they can make some sort of deal with their university to release them.
EM: And let them come back.
HM: And let them come back, which is what happened in my case, when I was Director of Studies – that I was able to get five years release from the University of Illinois; but it means that, for one thing, that person is unable to stay for more than five years, because no university is going to let you go for ten years, so. And, also, not all universities will do it; I mean, Harvard, for instance, won't let you go away for more than two years without losing your tenure. So effectively it means that now that candidates are restricted to people at the ends of their career – if they have five years left in their career, they spend it at Dumbarton Oaks – or younger scholars who maybe were unable to get tenure somewhere or are in some sort of unusual position where they don't have tenure; but it excludes, sort of people who are kind of in the most active portions of their career, who have tenure somewhere, unless they can make a sort of deal to leave short-term. So, it has very much weakened the position of Director of Studies, and it makes the Director of Studies much less active; because his position vis-à-vis – or her position vis-à-vis – the Director is much less strong than it would be if he or she had had tenure, so; but that was a major change.
EM: Had tenure at D.O., you mean?
HM: Well, at Harvard it would have been, effectively, because they had their tenure at Harvard, they were tenured professors. So, Kitzinger, for example, Loerke, were tenured Harvard professors.
ABF: Can you tell us about the publication of the Cypriot fieldwork that Alice Murray mentioned this to me at some point?
HM: Yes. Well, when I arrived as Director of Studies, I found all these unpublished projects, manly relating to fieldwork in Cyprus; and one of my, sort of, ambitions was to revive the fieldwork aspect of Dumbarton Oaks, and I thought this would be one way to do it. Because, one of the reasons that fieldwork had been abandoned was precisely because there was so much that hadn't been published, and so it was seen as sort of wasteful extravagance to do this fieldwork and not have it appear in print. So, that was my main motivation – and perhaps also because I'd visited many of these places in Cyprus and was interested in them. And it was mainly a matter of kind of fanning the embers of these various projects. I think the authors had become discouraged, and they received no encouragement from Dumbarton Oaks. It was just sort of finding ways to facilitate their taking up the projects again, finishing them; which sometimes meant bringing them physically to Dumbarton Oaks or sometimes it was just providing general encouragement and saying, "We really want to publish them." And, as you know, Alice-Mary has carried this on.
CW: So that was part of your agenda as Director?
HM: It was one part of it, yes. I think what I wanted to do as Director of Studies was to open the place up, because it had the reputation of being rather enclosed and elitist. So, I tried to bring more activity into the Byzantine area, which was also what Angeliki Laiou wanted to do – for the Byzantine Center to have a more active, as opposed to a passive role. So, the fieldwork was part of this; and I was able to institute one or two projects associated with fieldwork; for example, the materials analysis of Byzantine ceramics, where we had some of the ceramics at the Walters and at Dumbarton Oaks tested and then we had a small colloquium devoted to the subject. But I wasn't successful in starting any sort of major new fieldwork projects outside of the United States, and this was one of my regrets, I suppose. If I have one regret about my period as Director of Studies, is that we weren't able to sort of reestablish active fieldwork. All we did was we would give grants, small grants, to people. So, people would come to us and say they wanted to do X, and we would give them 5000 dollars; but we didn't initiate anything ourselves. And I think this is sort of a missed opportunity, considering what D.O. had done in the past. Actually, after I left Dumbarton Oaks, actually, I did do a project on the mosaics in Porec which was funded by the Kress and the University of Illinois; it's the kind of thing that I think should probably have been done by Dumbarton Oaks. But, that aside, there were various other ways that, umm, I tried to be more active. I introduced a museum fellowship. So, we would have someone come for a year and sort of plan a small exhibition. I think that was a valuable way to sort of bring together the Byzantine Studies Center and the collection and also to bring some variety into the collection, so it wasn't just a static display, but there was some change in the exhibitions in it. So, I think that was, on the whole, a success; and we tried to have colloquia and symposia that would interest, sort of, people in western medieval history and art, and even Renaissance and ancient. We tried to sort of integrate Byzantine topics into sort of a wider frame. For example, we had a colloquium on women's space in Byzantium and in the West. So, I suppose, efforts of that kind – also the fieldwork archives, I tried to get them properly looked after. And, I was even involved in sort of excavating Dumbarton Oaks itself. In the boiler room, we discovered these rolled up canvases which were the paintings of the frescos at the Kariye Camii – perhaps you've seen them. But they were exhibited, umm…
EM: At Columbia
HM: At Columbia, yes and then in Istanbul; but we found them sort of rolled up and shoved under the boilers. So we took them out, and then they were eventually restored at great expense and insured for thousands and thousands of dollars before they were sent off to Istanbul. But I think that Angeliki Laiou as Director – she was certainly able to kind of revivify the Byzantine area and make it more interesting and active than it had been before. I think it had slightly fallen into the doldrums before she arrived.
EM: Well, her encouraging you to set up both colloquia in areas that hadn't been explored before, such as the Byzantine gardens and her own intellectual interests extended the dialogues and the range of scholars who came, to some extent; because I don't remember very much before her on Byzantine economics as an aspect of cultural history or Byzantine law in relation also to the culture. And those were things that she continued to not only encourage herself with her own work but to bring scholars to present their work – that really opened up the fields for others who hadn't really thought about these areas, I think.
HM: Another thing we did was introduce the short-term graduate residencies. Now, as you may know, anyone who is working on their dissertation or general exams can apply to spend two weeks at Dumbarton Oaks, free of charge, to use the library. And that's been very popular.
EM: What about the summer fellowships? Did you start those?
HM: No, I think it was Giles who started that. After he'd air-conditioned the building, he started the summer fellowships, yes.
CW: The colloquium on Byzantine garden culture has been cited on several occasions as an example – perhaps the sole example – of interdisciplinary academic activity at D.O.; but it seems to have a positive enclave in there.
HM: Well, that was due to a number of factors coming together. One was Joachim who had a genuine interest in Byzantine culture and gardens. And the other factor, I suppose, is a sort of change in the nature of Byzantine archeology and art history; because, in the old days – in the days of empiricism – there was virtually nothing to say about Byzantine gardens, because none exist and none have been excavated. So, it was a sort of non-topic; but there are a lot of descriptions of real and imaginary gardens. So, once you move into the area of reception – etiology – there's quite a lot to say about Byzantine garden culture; and also you can make connections, then, with other fields of garden culture. So I think that helped make it possible.
EM: It was also under Joachim's directorship as Director of Studies for the Garden Center that Irene Vaslef proposed, successfully, that I do that inter-departmental exhibition, which I think was the first inter-departmental exhibition (though it was a library exhibition) called Roman Constantinople, with rare, illustrated books from the Garden Library and the Byzantine Library. And, then, in the process of working on that, I found and was able to display the Fossati prints of Hagia Sophia, which had been transferred for some reason, maybe because it was such a rare book. They were wonderful, large lithographs in full color of the interior of Hagia Sophia, published in, I can't remember what…was it the '60s or '70s of the nineteenth century? They had been transferred to the Garden Library and totally lost track of – there was no record that they existed anymore. The people researching in the Garden Library had no particular reason to be interested in them, and the Byzantinists didn't know they were there. So, I guess in a way, this was a kind of, in more ways than one, a groundbreaking collaboration, to mine the resources and bring them together. It was certainly very enjoyable, and well-received I think. One of the former Byzantine librarians at Dumbarton Oaks was then a librarian for the National Gallery, and she wanted to have the exhibition or another version of it there; and Irene got a grant for it, but somehow the three of us never had time to make that happen, unfortunately. But it shows you how Dumabrton Oaks collection – both book and other collections – and combined resources can really have an outreach; and Dumbarton Oaks has been able, while the collection was waiting for its new reinstallation, to lend things to exhibitions, as you know, in Georgia and here at The Walters, which I think had a great impact on not only Byzantinists but other people who saw them in those places, people who might not have visited Dumbarton Oaks to see the collections there. So, all that outreach is something that is still happening, I think, but started, sort of in the '80s or '90s – the '90s probably – so it's relatively recent. I can't remember what year that was. It must have been the early '90s.
CW: You've already – you've talked a little about Constable and Laiou, but do you have any other impressions of other Directors you've seen.
HM: Well, umm, when I was first arrived as Junior Fellow, Tyler was the Director, and he struck me very much as being a gentleman of the old school – very popular with the staff. Well, I remember, he gave a sort of interview with each of the Junior Fellows when they first arrived and he explained a little bit to me about the legacy of the Blisses. He said, "Well, they were wealthy, but not really very wealthy." It wasn't really very kind, but I think probably Dumbarton Oaks was beginning to feel the limits of its endowment; and there were, I think, some financial problems that were another reason, I should have mentioned, why Harvard may have wanted to move the operations north – you know, have them more closely supervised. But yes, he was a courtly gentleman. And then there was Giles Constable, who was really very controversial. And then Thomson, who – Robert Thomson, who kept a – steadied the ship and was a fiscal conservative Scotsman –
EM: – and a good listener, I think.
HM: And a good listener, yes, but he sort of calmed down under his tenure; and then Laiou, I said was active. And I see her tenure as a kind of second golden age almost for the Byzantine Center at Dumbarton Oaks. And that's really the extent of my personal experience with the directors of Dumbarton Oaks.
ABF: In summing up, if you could give us some general thoughts about how Dumabrton Oaks has changed, and how it's been important to you, and ultimately how you think it's changed the field, or responded to changes in the field.
HM: Okay, well that's a lot of questions [laughter]. So, first of all, how it has changed…I mean, in the old days, speaking of the Byzantine Center…was very much the dominant center at Dumbarton Oaks, and there were virtually no Fellows at all in Landscape Architecture or Pre-Columbian; and, on the other hand, in the '50s, I think there might have been up to eight permanent staff members in the Byzantine Center, many of whom would have been Harvard faculty. And over the years, there's been something approaching parity between the three programs; and the staff of the Byzantine program has really dwindled to the Director of Studies, in effect – and, of course, there are also the people associated with the Museum and the Archives. So, it's become much smaller. As far as the Library's concerned, because of the sort of huge expansion in the number of books being published, the Library's become much more focused. So, again, even when Eunice and I arrived there, as Eunice said, they were collecting book on western medieval art. Now, it's very much focused on Byzantium. So, it's become narrow in its focus. Finally, I would say that it's become much more passive, as opposed to the early days, when it was much more active. So, there are no fieldwork programs, at the moment I think there are very few projects. It's really a library, a place where people find fellowships, and a collection; but it's not a sort of center that actively promotes the field. So, I would see those as the main changes over the course of time. As far as the relationships with Harvard are concerned, I would say they are much closer now then they were. I mean, it was founded as an independent project of a wealthy couple; but, over the years, its ties with Harvard have become closer and closer: there are the three Harvard professors who are in Cambridge, not at Dumbarton Oaks; I believe there are some fellowships that are earmarked for Harvard students; the library catalog is integrated with HOLLIS. So, it's much more tightly bound to Harvard than it used to be. The Directors always come from Harvard. As far as its impact in the field is concerned, obviously it's much smaller. It was, you know, very important, in the early days. Now, you know, except as a place to go and find books or to have a fellowship or to look at some very important pieces, it's no more important than any number of other places where there are books and fellowships and some objects you could look it. So, it doesn't have that special importance it used to have. One way in which it probably still can have a very positive impact in the field in America is through joint appointments; which have been a little bit controversial, because sometimes the joint appointments don't work out. These are the appointments where they appoint a junior person, an Assistant Professor, at some university, and Dumbarton Oaks pays half of the salary for the first five or six years until that person gets tenure. And, in the past, this has been a very good way to persuade universities to take on Byzantinists, where otherwise, they might go for some other field. They haven't always worked out, because the person doesn't always get tenure; but, in those cases when it does work out (which may be about fifty percent of them), it's obviously very important, because a large number of the people who now have tenured positions in Byzantine Studies started out on these joint appointments. So, that's one way D.O. could continue to be every important in the field of Byzantine Studies here in America. Then as far as my own work is concerned, it's really been fundamental, you know, because, at all stages, I've been able to benefit from the library and from meeting people there. It's just a wonderful place for meeting other scholars and sort of getting ideas or exchanging ideas – especially, I would say, I'm afraid, more in the old days than now, when there were more people around, when it was more active, and there were more people to meet. But, you know, it's still a beautiful place, and still, especially for those of us who live in this area, it's a wonderful library to use.
EM: Well, there's still an active program of informal talks, which I'm sure are important for those who can give them and attend them; and that was another thing that was new, I think, in the '90s – which was very good, I think. And, unfortunately, because, as you see, it takes up a fair chunk of your day just to get between Washington and Baltimore, even though they're on the map very close, it hasn't been possible for us to attend those since we've been in Baltimore. So, maybe that sense of intellectual exchange is more present still than we've been able to appreciate since we've been here.
HM: Could be, could be, yes; and they certainly still have the symposia and colloquia, which are –
EM: – very good
HM: Very good, yes. I don't suppose it's possible, really, for the old days to return, because it was dependent on the largesse, in the first place, of the Blisses; and when the Blisses were no longer alive, obviously that font of fonts dried up, and D.O. had to live strictly within its means.
CW: It seems to be doing well for itself.
ABF: Yeah, financially, I think it's very stable, from what I understand.
HM: Well, I imagine with the sort of general decrease in the value of the Harvard endowment, Dumbarton Oaks has a prospect with that.
ABF: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
HM: No, just to thank you for coming and hearing our impressions of the past.
ABF: It was a pleasure.
CW: Yeah, thank you for having us. We're happy to hear them.
EM: We hope before you go, you'll tell us a little about yourselves.
ABF: Sure, we'll turn this off.]]>
Today (February 26, 2012), I am getting ready to visit Dumbarton Oaks yet again, for a Study Day co-organized by the Pre-Columbian Studies program at D.O. and the Library of Congress, and focusing on Tenochtitlan/Mexico City, particularly as depicted in early Colonial period maps. Such maps were among my discoveries during my D.O. fellowship year (1995-1996), searching for Aztec palaces. In the old PC Rare Book room in the basement of the Main Building were wonderful high-quality facsimile editions of codices and early maps, there for the browsing.
I found the Mapa de Mexico de 1550, a view of Tenochtitlan/Mexico City full of genre figures and little buildings in native style, some houses marked with a pierced disk to signify that they were native palaces. I was well aware of this meaning of the pierced "preciousness" disk as the most valued objects in the entire Central Mexican world, but as I perused the map on that May evening, I had no idea that the real thing was locked in a safe in the next room. The two matched carved jadeite disks (PC.B.133a and b) were heavy with elegant beauty and ancient meaning. They are probably over 1,500 years old and represent related concepts of preciousness and rulership and even the count of a single day, or the perfect circle of a ripple in still water.
For me, these jade disks would hold a key to the puzzle of Teotihuacan's history, and the importance of water worship (as shown in the Bliss Collection's net-jaguar mural). All of these ideas would develop over the course of my editorship of the new catalogue of the Bliss Collection's objects from Central Mexico, their first comprehensive treatment in over fifty years. I was able to show how the preciousness disk motif linked Bliss Collection objects pertaining to Teotihuacan, and I appreciate the present display of all these objects, with the disks adjacent to the great net-jaguar mural and painted ceramic vessels that repeat the motif.
All of this was far ahead of me as I began to count the Aztec palaces in the Mapa de Mexico – seeking patterns in the surviving locations of known city-state rulers. Meanwhile, I continue to explore the meaning of the preciousness disk, particularly as it expressed the sanctity of water imagery in the Teotihuacan and Aztec worlds. These matters range over my major research topics, such as "Aztecs" and also "hydrology" which merges into "monumental parks" which overlap with "palaces" (and so on). For all these ventures, Dumbarton Oaks has been a valued resource and generous patron, sowing opportunity and hoping that its scholars bring in a harvest of good work.
When I started using the Dumbarton Oaks library in 1981, my research interests were far removed from palaces and polished jades. My 1980 dissertation pertained to crop yields in the Teotihuacan Valley before European contact. In 1981, I moved to Washington to teach at Catholic University in D.C., and weekly visits to the D.O. library were an important part of life as a scholar. Over thirty years later, Dumbarton Oaks continues to be essential to me as a scholar and as a veteran member of its wide-ranging extended family.
Describing the people at Dumbarton Oaks as a "family" may seem trite to outsiders but it bears a lot of truth. From the first time I entered the Main Building I had a sense of being welcome to become a part of the life of an academic great house (including Levi-Strauss's sense of the term). The people were convivial and relaxed and the building seemed a grand old mansion semi-converted to the needs of scholarship but strongly retaining its own identity as an elegant, lived-in home with a fascinating history. And the gardens were an education and inspiration.
In 1981, Elizabeth Boone had just begun her term as Director of Pre-Columbian Studies and I had just begun an assistant professorship in the Anthropology Department of Catholic University. The friendship Elizabeth and I developed then, when we were both new in our careers as pre-Columbianists, has been a great pleasure ever since.
In the early 1980s I was a long-distance weekly commuter between Washington and Pine Grove Mills, Pennsylvania (and my husband), and the Dumbarton Oaks community was essential to me. I learned the impressive range of the D.O. stacks and enjoyed the intellectual interchange at informal meetings, research presentations, and dinners at Elizabeth's home. At several of these I got to know Gordon Willey, Bowditch Professor at Harvard and my own mentor's mentor – a kind of revered academic lineage grandfather figure. My archaeological work was in the settlement pattern analysis tradition that he had pioneered and my mentor Bill Sanders had elaborated. Elizabeth used to serve Chartreuse after dinner because Gordon liked it, and I discovered that I liked it, too. Whenever I drink it, I recall Gordon and his great kindness to other scholars, particularly junior scholars. And I'm so glad he wasn't partial to Fernet Branca or I wouldn't have that occasion to salute his memory.
I began to attend the annual symposia, joined enthusiastically by my husband David Webster, Mayanist archaeologist and a professor of anthropology at Penn State. In those years I also got to know Betty Benson and Bridget Gazzo, who became my good friends and, at crucial times, key resources. Opportunities arose to participate in ongoing Dumbarton Oaks projects such as writing, with Janet Catherine Berlo, the introductory essay for her edited volume on Teotihuacan.
In the early 1980s my research focus was a rural Aztec period village (occupied ca. CE 1200 to 1603) in the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico. With a National Science Foundation grant I had excavated a fair sample of Cihuatecpan ("Woman-Palace") village, including a house three times the size of the next largest. This discovery moved my life in a new direction for unexpected reasons. I had met my goal of revealing the lives of the commoners, but also uncovered the only Aztec palace ever completely excavated in the Basin of Mexico. That big house was a small but clear example of the Aztec tecpan, "lord-place".
It took me a while to figure out that the structure was a tecpan-palace, because no one had comprehensively studied the archaeology of Aztec palaces. These properties were coveted by the Spanish conquistadores and rebuilt in Spanish style, so very few archaeological remains have survived. But the sixteenth-century chroniclers gave good descriptions of palaces and courtly life, and I learned just how rich these ethnohistorical resources were when I began to research the topic at the Dumbarton Oaks library, with its impressive holdings of facsimile editions of codices, and the most recent Spanish and English editions of all important studies from Mexico and the U.S. My research monograph on Cihuatecpan (1988) owed much to what I was learning at Dumbarton Oaks, and I needed to focus on the palace.
Where better to delve the identity of the Aztec palace than in the buried treasure of the Pre-Columbian Library at Dumbarton Oaks? My fellowship year (1995–1996), devoted to learning about the Aztec palace, was an intellectual watershed, first because I learned so much from my uninterrupted time in the library and second because of the new directions my months at D.O. provided. It was also tremendously enriching to be living in Georgetown with access to Washington's cultural resources, and meet wonderful people who would remain close colleagues and friends.
At a research presentation that fall I met Joanne Pillsbury and we immediately bonded as palace people. She was investigating what would be a radical innovation in Andean studies – identifying huge residential complexes as palaces. Palace-related issues absorbed our attention and we realized that no one had ever brought together basic descriptions of elite residential architecture in the key culture areas of the New World. It was a natural topic for a Dumbarton Oaks summer workshop and a symposium and edited volume, and those projects were developed and had satisfying success. Joanne and I remain trusted colleagues and good friends.
When I began my fellowship year, Jeff Quilter was beginning his term as Director of Pre-Columbian Studies. We had been trained in the same anthropologically-oriented tradition of modern U.S. archaeology, and understood each other as scholars, sharing many interests and the same kind of sense of humor. David and I enjoyed getting to know Jeff and his wife Sarah. Other Pre-Columbian fellows that year were Sue Bergh and Oswaldo Chinchilla, and we have kept in touch.
It was one of the first years that La Quercia was in use, and George Brock, one of the house staff at Dumbarton Oaks, was our resident concierge and local hero. La Quercia was newly refurbished and besides had George as a steward of the building, and so most things were in good working order. George also saw to it that our larger experience as resident fellows in Washington, D.C. was as memorable as the high quality of Dumbarton Oaks's libraries.
Jeff Quilter has joked that I looked at every book in the D.O. Pre-Columbian library, and that is a flattering exaggeration. I didn't look at works pertaining to South America unless I had a particular lead on a topic of interest. Otherwise, I trolled the indexes where possible, and came to use the presence of a useful comprehensive index as a strong measure of the author or editor's scholarly competence. There was a set of about a dozen topics that I sought, reflecting palace-related subjects but also other ongoing interests. I worked my way through that library very systematically, and photocopied important works so that I could continue research after the fellowship year was over. (Recall that this was 1995–96, which might as well be the Upper Paleolithic in terms of research resources available "on line" -- the card catalogues occupied a lot of space in the Rare Book Room.) I skimmed thousands of books to find the information I needed and I was richly rewarded, even finding a previously unknown ethnohistorical reference to Cihuatecpan, the village I had excavated. A D.O. round table meeting in spring 1996 led to further Aztec palace research.
All through the winter of 1995–1996, those of us working in the basement of the Main House enjoyed the spectacle of sub-sub-basement exploration by teams of technicians installing a new telephone system. Renovation and exploration crews were constantly going through Pre-Columbian Studies in the basement, on their way down to the second or even third basement. Ken Johnson, as new guy, got the most challenging assignments at spelunking and his great attitude suggested that he had a strong future at D.O. We scholars, working long hours in the Main House, got to know the staff and their standard of excellence in maintaining and protecting the buildings and gardens. As Dumbarton Oaks became more technically sophisticated, Pete Haggerty and Jo Ann Murray joined the staff and became tech gurus for all of us who worked there.
When, later, I lived in the Fellows Building on and off for years, I had morning kitchen conversations in the Fellows Building with Lila Guillen and I remember Nora Escobar when she first worked there; I enjoy talking with her these days when she's working the desk in the Library or Main Building. We who continue to stay in the Guest House appreciate Mario García's work at maintaining it. Carlos Méndez and I have known each other for years, and I admire his recently unleashed party planning skills with regard to a recent Speakers Dinner. And Hector Paz's range as a chef is admirable; he readily achieves food that has great flavor and is calorically affordable.
In the winter of 1995–1996, all of us at D.O. became aware that the Main Building was a very old and complicated building, and it was most challenged by the elements during the great snowstorm of January 1996, with attendant power outage in D.O. -- the city was paralyzed. When Dumbarton Oaks reopened, the city was still blanketed with snow, gradually restoring its grid of streets to working order, but upper east Georgetown was among the last to get dug out. The walk to and from La Quercia along R Street, very pleasant in nice weather, became magical in a sheath of white that lasted and lasted. Moreover, one felt perfectly safe walking home to La Quercia at night on R Street, unlikely to meet a mugger on the bright, beautiful, nearly impassable street.
Research into Aztec palaces led inevitably to research into Aztec monumental gardens (e.g. Chapultepec Park, first developed as a monumental garden in the 1420s, and Texcotzingo, possibly the world's first botanical garden) and this led to informal conversations about garden design matters with John Dixon Hunt, Joaquim Wolschke-Bulmahn and Michel Conan. These conversations led to publications about monumental gardens, and participation in a Landscape Studies symposium and volume. These days I enjoy conversations with John Beardsley as we compare and contrast ancient and modern solutions to the challenge of the twenty-first century's "new oil": water.
The late 1990s brought continued contact with Dumbarton Oaks as Joanne Pillsbury and I prepared for our summer seminar and symposium on palaces of the New World. The summer seminar brought together Mesoamericanists (George Andrews, Enrique Gonzalez Licon, David Webster, and me) and Andeanists (Joanne, Bill Isbell). We were trying to hammer out the normative values of New World palaces and elite residences (types of plan, sizes, relation to community, etc.) because this basic comparison had never been done before and would create a solid baseline of types, a prerequisite for further interpretation. Moreover, it would help those of us who were participating in the upcoming symposium and preparing our summary statements. I began to think about how the Aztec palace related to those of Tula and West Mexico, how it related to those of Teotihuacan. We got along well and worked hard, and of course the sheer gorgeous luxury of Dumbarton Oaks in summer creates a strong sense of well-being.
We lunched in what can here correctly be called The Fellows Building. The dining room was in the same place then as now, and we used to have interesting conversations among seminar group and also with others we knew – Glenn Ruby, head of publications, or some of the Byzantinists or Landscape people. Ned Keenan was new as Director and would sometimes lunch with us. He was a great proponent of computerization of print media and education, and one lunch time he argued passionately against paper-borne information, promising to prove to us that no one ever used the old paper volumes in the basement compact stacks. We followed him back to the Main Building, through the foyer and down the winding stairs, while he continued to inveigh against paper books. The farthest compact stack pair was open, and when he got there, Keenan was non-plussed to find a serious-looking young woman sitting on the floor of the gap, clearly doing research. When he said "What are you *doing* here?!?" she looked completely dumbfounded, not without reason.
The summer seminaristas got along well, though Bill Isbell and I had a running disagreement about the importance of post-modernism to scholarship. One day the pre-Columbianist table gave rise to (drumroll) raised voices. It was basically Bill and I who raised our voices, and we determinedly parted on good terms after lunch – and just then Bill's wife arrived for a weekend visit. Bill had in fact wooed his wife years before when he was a D.O. Fellow and she was Associate Director of Studies – Judy Siggins, noted scholar and one of my favorite people, was in the mood for a cup of coffee and some catch-up conversation with me, which was immensely fun and relaxing. It was a good example of how the D.O. people-network is so interwoven. I had first met Judy in the early 1980s – Elizabeth Boone introduced us, and the three of us enjoyed the occasional Fellows Building lunch, or dinner and a movie – and we had kept in contact at D.O. symposia and Society for American Archaeology meetings.
We of the seminar were living in La Quercia that summer (except, of course, for Joanne), and David and I had apartment 206 (or as the dangling number read, 209). In the rear, this apartment overlooks the alley and driveways and interesting backs of wonderful-looking Georgetown houses, and if I worked at the table by the window it was like the set of a benign "Rear Window." Walking to the D.O. campus from La Quercia in that and other summers, I always slowed down along Montrose Park because they had a large planting of lavender around the fountain and the fragrance was so refreshing – I have since begun a long bed of lavender around the edge of the big farm pond on our property.
To float on our Pennsylvania pond in summer, watching the hawks and smelling the lavender, is a transcendently pleasant experience, and it shares space on life's short list with being in or around the pool at Dumbarton Oaks. Whenever I was living at D.O., I was in the pool every day that conditions allowed. A lousy swimmer, I got myself a water-exercise flotation belt and did my half hours of laps without getting my face wet. My favorite time at the pool was seven AM and I always felt lucky if I had the space to myself because, while there were other places in the world that were as beautiful, the simple quiet experience of this place, in this garden, could not be surpassed.
And this attitude led to one of my least poised moments at Dumbarton Oaks. No, not that morning in late October when the gardeners walking through the pool area paused and asked if I needed help as I hauled my shivering self out after one lap (water temp, 59°). No, this was when Don Pumphrey, the famously laconic Head of Grounds, asked me a direct question for the first time in the years of our acquaintance: What did I like best about Dumbarton Oaks? "The pool!" I blurted out. Within nanoseconds I realized that to maintain a reputation as a serious scholar and caring human being I should have said "the library!" or "the collection!" or "the people!" But such is my gratitude to the shimmering space centered upon the D.O. pool that when considered from the perspective of a consistently rewarding experience, time in the pool was always a serenely mindful meditation.
Our palaces symposium in mid-October was a success – the papers were mostly strong and on topic, and Joanne and I appreciated the lively interchanges among our colleagues. In late October I turned my attention to plans for my Mesoamerican overview book – the 20 page outline was due at the publisher by the end of the month. The book would become Ancient Mexico and Central America: Archaeology and Culture History; the first edition won the Society for American Archaeology's Book Award. The book was an outgrowth of my editorship of the encyclopedia Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America, and for both these projects the D.O. library was a great help, and so were the people encountered at Dumbarton Oaks – including D.O.'s greater community of scholars, others like me who had been made to feel welcome and made visiting Dumbarton Oaks a regular part of their schedule.
In late 1998, Joanne and I got to work pulling the symposium volume into shape. We looked ahead to an uncomplicated publication process, and had emphasized to our authors the need to move expeditiously. As sometimes happens, misunderstandings occurred between editors and one or two authors. Some papers unrelated to the larger topic were withdrawn, leaving a couple of major culture areas unmentioned. In consequence, essential features of elite residential architecture in these culture areas were reassigned to existing papers. And so my paper on Aztec palaces also presented the basics of palaces in Teotihuacan and Tula. The symposium volume is now in a paperback edition.
As Director of Pre-Columbian Studies, Jeff Quilter had inherited the ongoing project of publishing the first new edition of the catalogue of the Bliss Collection in nearly fifty years. The Andean volumes had been published under Elizabeth Boone's directorship and the Olmec volume was nearly ready for the Publications Office.
As planned in the series, the "Central Mexico" volume would cover the Bliss Collection's objects from the Central Highlands and adjacent regions. Several art historians had considered taking on editorship but then realized that their schedules didn't permit them to come to Dumbarton Oaks for a fellowship term to lay the project's groundwork, select co-authors, and address research issues pertaining to their own share of the write-ups and articles. Jeff knew that I had managed the production of the Mesoamerican encyclopedia manuscript, with hundreds of authors and my own organizational plan, so I could probably deal with the catalogue project and its half-dozen authors and topics. Plus, by then I knew every stage of the book production process and had a fairly comprehensive knowledge of my field and my colleagues. Jeff felt that these were all positive signs of an ability to bring the project to completion, and thus the catalogue series would continue on course.
Frankly, I was daunted (this turned out to be fully justified, as the years passed) and told Jeff that I wasn't really an "objects person" but Jeff pointed out that my experience as a field archaeologist meant that I was of course an "objects" person. Technically, in the art historical sense, I was correct about not being an "objects person" at that time, but again, Dumbarton Oaks gave me a fabulous opportunity to grow as a scholar and I became a hybrid archaeologist-art historian objects person, using the resources of the library and the collection, the objects themselves, training myself to see in the objects the attributes essential to a proper art-historical description and analysis. Interactions with Betty and Elizabeth and Joanne were an immense help in this regard, and Jeff was also building a reputation as an archaeologist with a strong art-historical perspective.
It was during this time that I got to know Sue Boyd, then Curator of the Byzantine Collection, and I can thank Dumbarton Oaks for arranging yet another memorable friendship. We have since enjoyed socializing, and she and David and I went together on a tour of Egypt. When I met her, it was to borrow a book that the D.O. library didn't have, but she did. The book was Fake and I needed to read it as part of a quick study about this chronic problem in the world of art history and art galleries. You would think that a field archaeologist would know about such things, but my specialty was Aztec rural sites, and no one would bother to fake those pot sherds. I read all I could about fakes and how they were detected, because it was possible that some objects in the Bliss Collection were more recently manufactured than previously supposed. There were many questions about the carved greenstone Figure in the Act of Childbirth (Tlazolteotl), now believed to be in the style of Aztec sculpture rather than from the Aztec period. The sibling piece, Rabbit, is also unlikely to have been made and finished five hundred years ago.
The carved jade disks were not at risk in this assessment. The material, type of sculpting and finishing all seem completely authentic. Down in the Rare Book Room of the Pre-Columbian Studies Library, I would don purple latex gloves to handle the jade disks, and I would wonder at their origin. I worked a lot in the Rare Book Room as the catalogue came together, and I remember the day in June 2002 that several things clicked, with the Bliss Collection's jade disks and Teotihuacan mural (and Teo vessels) as material springboards for approaching multiple features of Teotihuacan and its culture: the iconography of the disk motif (in the Bliss Collection's disks, the Teotihuacan mural and vessels – and all over Mesoamerica in the Classic period, always signifying Teotihuacan), the meaning of the mural's water temple, springs and canals, the relationship of water to political power, the timing of the layout of the city's grid of apartment compounds with the city's drainage system, which then fed the nearby system of canal-gridded drained fields ("chinampas") – highly productive agriculture in a challenging setting.
I thought back on the day twenty-five years before, in the town of San Juan Teotihuacan, that my mentor William Sanders took us grad students into the walled confines of the cathedral close, where a verdant pool evidenced one of the last of the old springs that once burbled out at the southwest edge of the ancient city. They watered a drained field area so fertile that a local population of tens of thousands could be supported. Bill explained that powerful factions always try to control water sources, and thus the Colonial period church moved quickly to build on this property and secure this valuable water source. They may have built over a native water temple, like the one on the Dumbarton Oaks mural. Water was the principle reason for the existence of Teotihuacan, and my research into the Bliss Collection objects brought together so many pieces – from iconography to crop yields – of the puzzle that is Teotihuacan.
Tracing these relationships at Teotihuacan and exploring this iconography has become an ongoing focus of my research and scholarly output, with the catalogue itself, of course being the first and primary presentation of my findings and interpretations. Working on the catalogue gave me space to review the existing literature on these matters, heightening the catalogue's timeliness and relevance. The harvest from my association with Dumbarton Oaks continues with upcoming and recent articles, public lectures, book projects. I am currently writing a book about Teotihuacan's rise and fall, from the perspective of access to water as a dominant feature development.
In a sense, the experience of being put in charge of the presentation of these objects by Dumbarton Oaks to the public prompted a new phase of my palace research, because these objects were surely the accoutrements of the elites and the output of elite workshops. To plan the catalogue and begin research, I was offered a one-term fellowship, but opted instead to take my research days twelve at a time – typically, a Monday morning to the next week's Friday afternoon – over the course of the next few years. I believe that because of this "intermittent fellowship" (my term, not D.O.'s) I became the particular demon in the life of Marlene Chazan, Dumbarton Oaks's able long-time financial officer, but it was not my intention to annoy -- my choice was dictated by other obligations and my own nature: I am basically a home-loving person who enjoyed the opportunity to spend significant and well-planned stretches of days at Dumbarton Oaks focusing on the catalogue project and living in the Fellows Building, particularly appreciating Room 7 for its morning light.
If the beauty and comprehensiveness of the completed catalogue volume indicate level of success, then all of us who worked on it deserve hearty congratulations. There were many challenges. The process of coordinating the production of the articles was complicated by communication problems among project participants. Furthermore, these were the years of major campus development and renovation of the Main Building, so the objects were put in storage. In addition, the D.O. Publications Office was hit by the sudden passing of its leader, Glenn Ruby, and it was several years before a steady course was restored.
Changes in the Publications Office leadership had an immediate and costly impact on the catalogue volume. As originally submitted in a format approved by Glenn, the articles varied considerably in length – because the objects varied considerably in interest and importance. Under the new policies of the reorganized Publications Office, however, I was instructed to standardize all articles to 2,000 words. I was dismayed with this directive, and so were my authors. I did my best to ameliorate hard feelings, but in conforming to this policy good will was lost along with extended treatments of some of the Bliss Collection's greatest pieces (the mural, the dart thrower). In time, new Publication Office administration led by Kathy Sparkes revisited these policies and instituted a format that permitted in depth treatment of the most important objects. She and Sara Taylor saw that the volume made us all very proud.
Coincidentally, as I worked on completion of the catalogue and other projects, my husband, David Webster, was appointed as a Senior Fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies. David is one of the most knowledgeable and fair-minded people I know, with great common sense and dedication to duty, so he had excellent qualifications for the appointment. It was tremendously enjoyable for both of us to be a part of the festivities of each special meeting, and as David's spouse I felt completely welcome to the memorable parties.
David will soon come to the end of his term as Senior Fellow, and my current publication projects will depend on continued access to the library, but are not Dumbarton Oaks products. Soon, though. I did so much research on the Net Jaguar and Mural – and jadeite disks – that I have everything ready to develop it into a nice contribution to D.O.'s Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology Studies Series. And in 2013, David and I will be attending Steve Houston's weekend workshop on Piedras Negras, at Dumbarton Oaks. I look forward to all of these opportunities to remain an active part of the Dumbarton Oaks community.]]>
In 1969, Mee published a book of prints, which featured many of her early paintings. Roberto Burle Marx, a well-known landscape architect and close personal friend, wrote in his introduction to the volume that, "As a specialist in scientific illustration she is the most efficient I have ever known. Her work achieves perfection without becoming stereotyped…. In fact, Margaret Mee takes the plant from its obscurity and shows its colour, rhythm, texture, and form without ever becoming pretentious in so doing." He praised her work, rating it equal to and in some ways better than the botanical drawings of her peers. He spoke from personal experience about Mee's fieldwork, saying:
"I remember an excursion I made to collect rare plants hitherto not cultivated. Margaret Mee, with her gift of keen observation, surprised us by always finding the rarest species. She has the desire to identify her discoveries and the joy of sharing them with plant lovers. It is this which takes her into the forests as an explorer, braving poisonous snakes, illnesses and more, in order to arrive at the supreme moment of flowering, the moment when Nature seems to reveal herself in all her beauty, mystery, and luxuriance. The artist takes advantage of this magic moment to discover and portray an infinite series of secrets and revelations, rich in colour and form."Mee, Margaret. Flowers of the Brazilian Rainforests; collected and painted by Margaret Mee. London: Tryon Gallery, 1969. p 11.
This almost magical quality infuses Mee's paintings. She is now highly regarded not only as a botanical illustrator, but as a skilled and nuanced artist. It is no wonder that Mrs. Bliss was attracted to her work.
Please explore and enjoy the Dumbarton Oaks Rare Book Collection's paintings by Margaret Mee.]]>