1 The Ashmolean houses today the Sir Arthur Evans archive that includes, in addition to the extensive documentation of his Knossos excavations, hundreds of letters, numerous diaries and notebooks, drafts of lectures and articles. This presentation stems from our ongoing work to catalogue the Arthur Evans archive in preparation for its digitization.

2 For the history of the Ashmolean, see Ovenell 1986; MacGregor 1997, 2000; Brown 2009.

3 Quarrell and Quarrell 1928, 26–31.

4 Duncan 1836, vi.

5 Parker 1858; 1870, 9 where he notes “The Museum is now a Museum of Archaeology only. What is Archaeology? It is History in detail, and the details are tenfold more interesting than the dry skeleton called School Histories”; see also Chester 1881.

6 Evans 1943; Horwitz 1981; Brown 1983; MacGillivray 2000.

7 Already as a schoolboy, Evans had developed an interest in collecting medieval pottery; he is considered one of Oxford’s first field collectors: see Mellor 1997, 53–4.

8 Evans 1943, 261–62. The first professorship in Classical Archaeology in Oxford went to William Mitchell Ramsay (1851–1939) who stayed in the post for two years (1885–1886); he was succeeded by Percy Gardner (1846–1937; in post between 1887 and 1925).

9 Evans 1884a, 12–3; 1884b.

10 Evans 1884a, 28.

11 Duncan 1836, vi–vii. On Darwin’s own involvement in collecting, his influence in the practice of a variety of related disciplines and his eventual impact on museum displays, see MacGregor 2009.

12 For example, it is worth pointing out that Evans’s views contrast sharply those expressed by the second professor of Classical Archaeology in Oxford, Percy Gardner (Gardner 1887, 16); also Thomas 1999, 164 and 168, n. 32.

13 On John Evans and his circle, see MacGregor 2008. John Evans was also a strong advocate of the significance of local (British) archaeology as opposed to the more Imperial approach of museums in Britain and Europe at the time. In a letter to The Times (11 October 1864), John Evans noted that “while large sums of money have been devoted to the purchase of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Assyrian antiquities, collections of national importance have been treated with neglect, if not with contempt.”

14 Evans 1884a, 27.

15 There was some tension between Evans and the General Pitt Rivers. The inaugural lecture of Evans and his attempt to centralize the archaeological collections agitated the General, since he felt that Evans was trying to do exactly what he was trying to achieve with his own collections. In fear of having two homes for the “development of art”, Pitt Rivers suggested that the Ashmolean should focus on the “advanced industries”, while the Pitt Rivers should concentrate on the “primitive industries”: see Larson 2008, esp. 95.

16 This process had already started almost a month prior to Evans’s appointment to the keepership (University Gazette 20 May 1884, where the transference of the archaeological objects held in the Natural History Museum, the University Galleries and the Bodleian Library to the Ashmolean was announced).

17 Evans faced tough opposition within the University and the amalgamation was resented by a number of curators in the University Galleries. According to Whiteley 1997, 629: “The study of Classical art and archaeology was strengthened by the move, but the prospects for the fine arts were not uniformly improved by the dominance of archaeologists in the administration of the museum”; also MacGregor 1997, 608–10.

18 Evans 1943, 356; also echoed in Hogarth 1920, 9: “The growth of the Ashmolean to first-rate importance as a Museum of Archaeology is due to one man more than any one else, namely to Sir Arthur Evans, Keeper from 1884 to 1908”. Evans was knighted in 1911, in King George V’s coronation honours, not just for his work at Knossos but also for his work at the Ashmolean and his contribution to learning in general (Evans 1943, 366).

19 Hogarth 1909, 48–9 and 54.

20 A haematite amygdaloid seal with a standing lion with a shaft sticking in its back (AN1873.129, CMS VI.2, no. 346). It was only later that Furtwängler identified this seal as Mycenaean (Furtwängler 1900, 51, n. 2).

21 For an assessment of Evans’s keepership, see Ovenell 1986, 250–64.

22 The term “Aegean” was first applied to a class of Bronze Age pots from this region by Flinders Petrie while excavating in Egypt: Petrie 1969, 108; see also Evans 1921, 266; Phillips 2006.

23 For the impact of archaeology on the display of “classical antiquities”, see the excellent article by Beard 2012 who argues in favour of a shift between two different regimes of museum displays and “ways of seeing” in the course of the 19th century – one focusing on the history of the objects through their donors; and the other on archaeological typology, context, and provenance.

24 Evans 1943, 207 and 263. His fascination with Schliemann’s discoveries can also be seen in his inaugural lecture in Oxford, where the excavations at Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns and Orchomenos were prominently noted (Evans 1884a); see also Evans in Ludwig 1931, 20.

25 A four-sided agate prism with Cretan Hieroglyphic signs on all sides (AN1889.998, CMS VI.1, no. 104). For the inspiration it is said to have provided to Evans, see Evans 1909, 8–9. See also Brown 2001, xxii–xxiii and Evans 1943, 309; they both place emphasis in the formative years between 1883 and 1893 in Evans’s life. See now Galanakis 2014 for a reinterpretation.

26 Brown 2001.

27 Keeper’s Report (Ashmolean Museum), 1896, 3.

28 Evans 1894, 1895. In 1895 Evans saw a baked tablet, said to have been found at Makryteichos and most likely coming from Kalokairinos’s excavations at Knossos. This tablet, inscribed in what Evans would later classify as “Linear class B” script, was copied and photographed by Evans (1952, 38), before it was destroyed in the Cretan insurrection of 1899 (Evans 1899–1900, 18, n. 1; Brown 2001, 208, n. 190; a drawing also exists in Evans’s 1900 notebook of the Knossos excavations, p. 11). Charles Clermont-Ganneau of the Louvre made a plaster copy of that same tablet, which he also saw in 1895 (Clermont-Ganneau 1901; COMIK vol. 1, no. 34; Kopaka 1992, esp. 383).

29 Panagiotaki 2004.

30 Ovenell 1986, 262–63.

31 Evans (1884a, 17) had already expressed in his inaugural lecture that if the original object was not available, then “it is surely of infinite advantage to have before our eyes at least the reproduction”. On the 1902 exhibition see Nature (16 October 1902), 623 and Keeper’s Report (Ashmolean Museum), 1902, 1 and 5.

32 Evans 1903.

33 The Builder (31 January 1903); Evans (1903, 51) explained that “the general arrangement adopted has been to place illustrations of the Western half of the Palace on the Left side, and those of the Eastern half on the Right.”

34 E.g. Review of Reviews (March 1903); Antiquary 39 (February 1903); The Speaker (21 February 1903); The Illustrated London News (17 January 1903); The Athenaeum (31 January 1903); Globe (13 February 1903); Magazine of Art 1 (January 1903); Magazine of Art 2 (January 1904); Monthly Review (March 1903); Academy and Literature 1604 (31 January 1903), esp. 107: “But, in deference to the astonished and delighted expert, it has been arranged that until the close of the winter exhibition we are to see this collection, of such interest to the archaeologist, the artist, the historian, the ethnologist, the biologist, and, indeed, everyone whom Crete was the steppingstone by which Civilization passed from Asia to Europe, from Egypt to Greece.”

35 The Observer (11 January 1903); The Architect & Contract Reporter (9 January 1903); The Times (31 December 1902) and (16 February 1903). The Nation (30 July 1903) mentions the summer show of fine Greek art, mostly coins and gems, the majority of which came from the collection of Evans (221 pieces, including engraved gems of the “Mycenaean era”).

36 Globe (13 February 1903); in the same article and in reference to the petition of the Cretan Exploration Fund the author remarked: “Why not organize a Minoan bazaar? The cause is good and the costumes are pretty.”

37 Magazine of Art 2 (January 1904).

38 The Builder (31 January 1903); also The Speaker (3 January 1903), esp. 369: “primitive though they may be, these Cretan frescoes strike a European note. The court of Minos must have been rather a club of gay gentle-folk than the suite of some Eastern tyrant”.

39 Hogarth 1903, 322.

40 The Builder (31 January 1903).

41 See most recently Hamilakis 2002; Darcque et al. 2006; Hamilakis and Momigliano 2006; Ziolkowski 2008; Gere 2009.

42 By mid-February £850 had been raised according to The Times (16 February 1903, 12) out of the original minimum of £1,500 estimated to carry out the season’s excavations. From Mackenzie’s accounts for the Knossos costs (A.J. Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum), we are informed that the total cost for 1903 amounted to 32.123,50dr or ca. £1,285. There were ideas for more exhibitions – but they never materialised: e.g. R.C. Bosanquet, one of the Phylakopi excavators, suggested to Evans in a letter (18 November 1903) that “would it be worth while to arrange an exhibition of Cretan antiquities in London, and to pool for that purpose the άχρηστα to be given under the new law from Cnossos, Zakro, Psychro, Praesos, P.K.? Together they should make a good collection and a good advertisement for the Fund. If we apply in the spring, we should have the collection in England by the autumn. Do you mean to share the booty with other museums?” (A.J. Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum).

43 Sherratt 2009, especially with regard to Evans’s rhetoric in the press.

44 Keeper’s Report (Ashmolean Museum), 1903, 1.

45 Keeper’s Report (Ashmolean Museum), 1904, 1–2; Evans 1905, 1906.

46 Outside the Knossian and Cretan antiquities, the most important acquisition for the Museum by Evans was part of an assemblage of Middle Minoan pots found in a tomb at Abydos in Egypt which offered at the time “the most definite datum yet obtained for the relative chronology of the Middle Minoan period in Crete”: Keeper’s Report (Ashmolean Museum), 1907, 3.

47 For the shifting attitudes to the collection and display of casts see Frederiksen and Marchand 2010. Mycenae’s Lion Gate was the first Bronze Age cast to be included in the Oxford Cast Gallery (1894).

48 Many of Evans’s replicas were removed from the Ashmolean displays between 1951 and 1983. Recognizing their role in the history of Aegean archaeology, they are, since 1983, back on display. A number of exhibitions have been organized on the Gilliéron replicas: Stürmer 1994; Haywood 2000; also in 2010 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba in collaboration with the Winckelmann Institute of the University of Berlin and most recently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son, 17/5/2011–17/6/2012); see also Haywood 2003. On Aegean replicas in particular, see Sherratt (unpublished).

49 On the Gilliérons see: Hood 1998, 22–6; Lapatin 2002, esp. 120–39; Stürmer 2004.

50 28/12/1902 and 13/03/1903 (Arthur Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum).

51 Sherratt (unpublished).

52 Sherratt 2000, 20.

53 It is also around this time that “Aegean collections” (mostly potsherds, but not infrequently also other small finds) appeared outside Oxford, in the UK but also the USA and beyond (too many to list here properly). These collections were largely selected by Evans himself. For example, in the Irish Times of 9 March 1911 (p. 9) the reader is informed that “owing to Dr. Evans’s courtesy, and the kind co-operation of Dr. Hogarth, Keeper of the University Museum of Oxford ... the wants of the Irish students have been at least tolerably provided for. There is now to be seen in the Kildare Museum an exhibit of sherds arranged according to the main periods of Dr. Evans’s classification, with casts of certain clay tablets of the new linear scripts, placed in their proper context”.

54 Lapourtas 1997, esp. 81.

55 Evans 1943, 350.

56 1900–1904 (Fyfe); 1905–1910 (Doll); 1922–1926 (De Jong); 1926–1930 (De Jong; Gilliéron on the paintings). Their work is discussed in great detail by Kienzle 1998.

57 Kienzle 1998; on Evans’s architects, see also Palyvou 2003.

58 Evans 1904–1905, esp. 23: “In this way it has been possible to organize on the spot a kind of reference museum for the whole excavation, the baskets from the various floors and levels being carefully arranged and labelled by Dr. Mackenzie.”

59 The loggia was ready in 1930; from a letter sent to Evans by Gilliéron, fils, we are informed that by 1932 the recreated frescoes had been framed and were ready for installation in the “pinacothèque de Cnossos” (Gilliéron, fils to Evans, 12/03/1932, A.J. Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum).

60 Hogarth to Evans, 17/01/1902 (A.J. Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum).

61 Hogarth to Evans, 17/01/1902 (A.J. Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum).

62 Kienzle 1998, 296; concrete at Knossos was first used as part of Doll’s restorations at the site. It is also worth mentioning that earthquakes provided Evans with an interpretation for the destruction of the palace both in 1600 and 1400 BC. This idea appears to have developed in 1922 (Evans 1922, 327). With the 1926 earthquake (about 7.4 in the Richter scale according to Ambraseys and Adams 1998), earthquakes as an explanation for the destruction(s) of Knossos acquired more prominence in Evans’s writings (for the latter, see Evans 1943, 381–83; A.J. Evans Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Newspaper Cuttings, book 7, 48–68). On Evans’s defence of his work at Knossos, see also Fyfe 1926 and Evans (1930, xii): “It is with special satisfaction that I am able to record that the strength and stability ensured to the reconstituted structures by the use of this new method has enabled them to resist with complete success the fresh severe shock of earthquake that took place in February of this year.”

63 E.g., Papadopoulos 1997, 2005; Hitchcock and Koudounaris 2002.

64 Evans 1943, 354–55.

65 One of the earliest romantic watercolour drawings was the “Throne Room” by E.J. Lambert in 1917. Soon more followed, such as the colour reconstructions of the “Hall of the Double Axes” and the “Queen’s Megaron” by E. Gilliéron, fils, all commissioned by A.J. Evans in the mid-1920s for the publication of the Palace of Minos. The Gilliéron drawings in particular coincide with the most radical phase of the work of reconstitution (1926–1930) and appeared in volume III of the Palace of Minos in 1931. Some very intriguing drawings were published by Fritz Krischen (1921) illustrating a festive day at the court of Minos (I would like to thank Prof. J. Driessen for his reference to the drawings of Krischen). Another set of romantic watercolour reconstructions were commissioned by N. Platon on behalf of the Herakleion Museum and were drawn by Piet de Jong in the 1950s.

66 For a summary of these views, see Lapourtas 1997; MacGillivray 2000; Gere 2009; also references in Hamilakis and Momigliano 2005.

67 Grundon 2007, 143.

68 Evans in Pendlebury 1933, 5; cf. Evans 1904–1905, 26: “as a whole the effect of this legitimate process of reconstitution is such that it must appeal to the historic sense of the most unimaginative.”

69 Kienzle 1998 is the best critical study on Evans’s restorations at the site. A conservation project on the palace at Knossos by the Ministry of Culture of Greece included the restoration of Evans’s interventions and took ten painstaking years to complete (Minos 2008). Although Evans failed to create a unified archaeological park, one of the aims of the recent restoration project was to look at ways in which this park can be materialized in the near future; see also Papadopoulos 1997, 2005.

70 Keeper’s Report (Ashmolean Museum), 1924, 4 and 11, “it is now much easier for the student to distinguish originals”. It goes without saying that this change underlines the shifting attitudes towards “replicas” and “originals”, and for that matter the nature and extent of reconstructions and reproductions; it also forms part of broader discussions of the time regarding the “value of things” (not so much their archaeological, but primarily their commercial value). For the different approaches to conservation and architectural restoration in Evans’s time (including Evans’s own views on the subject), see Lapourtas 1997 and Kienzle 1998.

71 Evans 1943, 384.

72 I would like to thank Lucinda Douglas-Menzies for providing me with photos of the 1926 Youlbury exhibition and for granting permission to publish the one shown here.

73 The exhibition was only briefly mentioned in the press: e.g. The Times (10 August 1926).

74 He was assisted by Mercy Money-Coutts, Doreen Dunbabin and Helen Waterhouse.

75 Myres 1936, esp. 5–33. For more details on “Knossos in London” and the 1936 exhibition, see Baker 2013, 164–77.

76 Many of the “visual aids” used in this exhibition are still preserved in the A.J. Evans Archive (Ashmolean Museum).

77 The Times (14 October 1936); Wace 1936; Evans 1936a, 1936b; Woolley 1936.

78 This approach to exhibitions stemmed from the 1851 Great Exhibition in London (e.g. the Pompeii display: Hales 2006). For a link between Pompeii and Evans’s restorations at Knossos, see Lapourtas 1997. Although motifs ornamented some of the rooms of the major Greek museums (e.g. the National Archaeological Museum at Athens), visual aids in Greece and Crete between 1900 and WWII were limited (Chourmouziadi 2006, 40–60).

79 This display strategy was most likely inspired by earlier approaches to the presentation of “archaeological discoveries” (as opposed to the antiquarian cabinets): e.g. the reconstructed entrance Hall of the tomb of Seti I, exhibited by G. Belzoni at the Egyptian Hall at Piccadilly in 1821–1822 or John Soane’s House-Museum in London. See MacGregor 2007, 237–97, esp. 281–9. For a somewhat extreme example, see the Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Preston Free Public Library, which opened in 1893 with extravagant decoration. The Harris Museum predominantly displayed casts of ancient objects. One can list the Getty Villa at Malibu, built in 1954, among the museums that aimed, at a much later stage, to create a “visitor’s experience” through the recreation of ancient architecture, the use of intricate external and internal decoration, and the population of the museum space with ancient (mosty intact or restored and aesthetically pleasing) objects.

80 Cf. Evans’s notes on the excavation notebooks, often illustrated with beautiful drawings, but rarely with sufficient contextual data.

81 It is worth noting here a reviewer’s remark on the first volume of the Palace of Minos in The Burlington Magazine (May 1922), 314: “though much can be explained by illustrations and much more by coloured plates, could we but have them by the hundred, it is essential for the intensive student to familiarize himself with actual examples of the pots themselves (as in certain museums, notably the Ashmolean, is possible) before the sequence of types will root itself firmly in his mind.”

82 Kienzle 1998, 1, 449.