Semni Papaspyridi-Karouzou Σέμνη Παπασπυρίδη-Καρούζου
Born 1897 (8) Died December 1994
Perhaps the most important woman in Greek archaeology (1)
Semni Papaspyridi Karouzou was a Greek archaeologist who specialized in the study of pottery from ancient Greece. During her career, she would excavate in Crete, Euboea, Thessaly, and the Argolid before becoming the curator of the ceramic collection at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. She was the first woman to join the Greek Archaeological Service at a time when an educated woman had to tread very carefully not to upset the established patriarchy while promoting her own career goals. According to her biographers, she was not a professed feminist but no intelligent woman in her era with ambition and a liberal mindset could avoid being part of the struggle for professional advancement based on merit, rather than gender.
Semni had male champions and male enemies. The most prominent in the former category was her husband Christos; the most virulent in the latter was rightwing archaeologist superstar Spiridon Marinatos.
Her Life
Polysemni (Semni) Papaspyridi, was born in 1897 in Tripoli in the Peloponnese, the only child of an educated middle class family. Her father was a military officer, and her mother the French-educated daughter of a judge. The family moved frequently because of her father's career, but finally settled in Athens where Semni enrolled in the University of Athens to study archaeology. The science of archaeology was then (and still is) a potent tool of the state. It was Greek archaeologists who contributed to and reinforced the national narrative of Greece’s seamless connection to its ancient past.
An ambitious girl with a healthy sense of her own worth like Semni would know she needed powerful mentors. Talent was not enough. The vote for women was still more than thirty years away and archaeology was a male preserve. As a student, she avoided the main university library, preferring to separate herself from the student throng. Instead she chose the university reading room where she was much more likely to run into the likes of well known writer Demitrios Kambouroglou or some of her professors such as Christos Tsountas. Tsountas, in his sixties, was reaching the end of a distinguished career that had culminated in extensive excavations at Mycenae. He did become a mentor.
Eminent archaeologist Christos Tsountas was also a prolific writer; his books and insights are still sought after today.
In 1919 Tsountas was one of the professors teaching The Practical School of Art History, a new course established and funded by the Greek Archaeological Society on behalf of the Greek Government. The purpose was to better train future archaeologists. Semni was among his students that year as were Christos Karouzos, her future husband, and Spiridon Marinatos who eventually would become the couple’s bête noire partly because Christos had won a scholarship in 1916 that Marinatos had applied for.
That alone would likely not have made Marinatos the lifelong enemy of the Karouzos couple but the 1922 Smyrna disaster and the resulting upheavals would place them on opposite ends of a rapidly polarizing political spectrum. Semni and Christos would remain staunch leftists whereas Marinatos would position himself firmly on the conservative right.
What made this kind of rivalry so potentially toxic was the fact that the circle of archaeologists in Greece in any given era may have been small but it was tightly knit and interactive. Everyone no matter what his or her political affiliations, had to work together on and off with multiple colleagues within the framework of the always cash-strapped government run Greek Archaeological Service and its potent private sidekick, the Greek Archaeological Society. Rivalries for plum assignments were a normal aspect of the system, but an archaeologist with strong political connections was in a position to do real harm to a rival, especially if that rival held views that were out of favour with the government then in power.
It is likely that Tsountas was a help in gaining Semni a position with the Greek archaeological service in 1921. He was one of the examiners for the tests applicants took at the time. She became a curator of antiquities at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and was the very first woman to take on that role.
Its construction began in 1886 and was designed by Ludwig Lange with façade modifications by Ernst Ziller. Built to impress, it was inaugurated in 1889 and is still the most important archaeological museum in Greece.
There Semni worked with Ernst Bushor, director of the German Archaeological Institute and Sir John Beazly, a renowned British scholar of Greek Pottery, who inspired her lifelong fascination with attic pottery.
Semni travelled in a well educated, progressive circle, enjoying the company of poets such as Angelos Sikelianos and musicians like Dimitrios Mitropolis. Like her future husband Christos, she championed the use of demotic Greek as opposed to the more stilted katharevousa. She loved literature and believed that professionals like herself should strive to use the best possible style when writing for publication.
In 1924 Semni was transferred to Crete to assist ephor Stephanos Xanthoudis in his Minoan research, She worked on excavations at Bronze Age sites at Herakleion where she joined the circle of writer Nikos Kazantzakis. After Crete, she was sent to Euboea where she studied ancient Eretria and wrote a guide book to the site.
German Interlude
In 1928, she and Christos Karouzos were awarded a Humboldt Fellowship (2) to study classical and Roman studies at the universities of Munich and Berlin. There were extra classes offered in western art, which Semni would later say, gave her “a new romantic passion for classical antiquities”.
1930 Back in Greece
Semni took the surname Papaspyridi-Karouzou on her marriage in 1930 to Christos Karouzos (3). They were kindred spirits. Christos was an innovator and modernist. Early on, he had joined the progressive Educational Society which promoted the use of demotic Greek and critical thinking skills. This society had many famous members including Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos and Nikos Kazantzakis. Christos, Semni, and fellow archaeologist Yannis Miliadis would form the core of a younger group urging changes in the system. Many of their progressive ideas were Marxist inspired. (4) In the twenties, the Greek Communist party was legal and popular with many intellectuals.
The First Female Ephor
In 1930, Semni was promoted to the post of Ephor of Antiquities an achievement described as a "feminist victory" by feminine activist Avra Theodoropoulou. As an ephor, she was responsible for archaeology in an entire district. She would hold this post first in Thessaly and then in the Argolid, where she excavated tombs in Argos from the Mycenaean and classical periods; worked in ancient Epidaurus, and strived to preserve historic buildings in the town of Nafplio, where, much later, she would publish an excellent guide.
Semni and Ceramics
Because of her, the pottery section of the Museum became the most energetic and scholarly. She tirelessly wrote articles for Greek and Foreign publications. (5)
In 1933, Semni was named curator of the ceramic collection at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, a section of the museum that she would preside over for more than thirty years. The sorting, identifying, and interpretation of this collection is perhaps her greatest contribution to archaeology. It was no easy task then and must have become even more daunting as the collection kept growing.
The sheer size of the collection in the museum today both impresses and discourages the neophyte. In the main vase exhibition, more than 2,000 artefacts are on display. It is so much easier to linger over the Mycenaean gold, the Thera wall paintings, and the large statues that abound on the museum’s ground floor rather than attempting to make sense of that vast array of pots that are today displayed behind glass on the second floor. It is too much to absorb at one go. And yet, the study of ancient pottery has been vital both in dating and providing insights into everyday culture and art. Its curation demands an eye for detail, an excellent memory, a deep knowledge of the material, - and patience (6). Karouzou was ideal for the work at hand. She defined her own methodology as attempting to reveal "the invisible meaning of ancient works".
The Metaxas Dictatorship and the Prelude to the Second World War
Under the 1936 Metaxas dictatorship the Communist Party, which had already been under government scrutiny and legal restraint since 1929, became anathema – an evil that must be eradicated. Metaxas wanted to make Greece great again and that effort involved returning to an era when women knew their place and political parties did not complicate the task of a strong leader to govern. In fact, Metaxas had banned all political parties but chose the communist party as public ‘enemy’ number one. This put leftists like Christos, Semni, and Ioannis Miliadis in a precarious position. Metaxas had appointed a very willing Spiridon Marinatos to head the Greek Archaeological Service and Spiridon had no problem with a new law forbidding women to enter the field at all. Women like Semni, who already held positions, were allowed to stay on but were refused promotion to the higher posts such as museum directors or ephors. To add insult to injury, the same regime would promote katharevousa in education, administration, and the media, as a means to reinforce public patriotism and pride in the nation’s past.
The Italian and the German Invasion
At the outbreak of the Greek-Italian war in 1940, the bitter divide between right and left was briefly overshadowed by an explosion of fervent patriotism on the part of every political faction. Many leftists languishing in prison or in exile were freed and allowed to join the fight on the Albanian front. For a time, archaeologists, including Marinatos, put aside their political differences to meet the common threat.
Karouzou and her husband along with archaeologists of every political stripe, answered the government’s order to pack and hide the collections in Greek museums in case the worst happened.
In the National Archaeological Museum, a Committee for the Concealment and Insurance of the Exhibits was established. It included supreme court justices, members of the museum staff like Semni, curator Yannis Miliadis, and Spyridon Marinatos. It was a political truce for the greater good. Members of foreign archaeological schools, museum guards, and even their families joined in the frantic activity.
The task was so successfully accomplished that, by the time the Germans had invaded Greece in 1941, most large museums had become empty shells, echoing the jackboots of the Nazi officers who had come to view their treasures:
Artefacts were hidden in caves, basements, private homes, the Bank of Greece, and under the floors of the museums which had displayed them.
(Karouzou would later recall: It was with pride for our people that I was assured, in the end of the war when the boxes were opened and the antiquities received, despite [the] fatally insufficient supervision not a single gold object, no precious gem was missing) (7) “
The German Occupation
When the Nazis arrived in Athens that April, the Karouzous were the only archaeologists in Greece to formally withdraw their membership in the German Archaeological Institute in protest.
German archaeologists had always been highly respected by their Greek colleagues, most of whom had studied in Germany. The Nazification of the Institute and the shock of the Nazi invasion would reverberate long after the war.(8)
As most pre Metaxas era politicians joined the government in exile in Egypt, the Greek people were left to suffer under rapacious occupiers. (9) Semni, Christos, and Yannis Miliadis joined the largest resistance group in Greece, the leftist and communist inspired EAM which became so successful that, when the war ended, EAM and their political wing ELAS had gained so much territory and power (and, some might argue, popular loyalty) that they were in a position to challenge the returning Greek government in exile.
During the occupation Christos Karouzos became director of the National Archaeological Museum. Along with Yiannis Miliadis and other members of EAM archaeologists, they ensured that its treasures and those of the Acropolis museum remained intact. Many smaller museums were not so lucky and suffered theft by the Germans.
When the Greek government in exile did return, a very brief attempt at rapprochement segued into a civil war which did not end until 1949 at which time, all former members of EAM, whether communist or not, were suspected communists. Miliadis had been sent to an internment camp in Egypt in 1944 and in 1948 as the civil war still raged, Christos was forced to resign from the Archaeological Service because of ‘suspected communist beliefs’. In 1949, he was reinstated and he and Semni were put in charge of reorganizing the National Archaeological Museum.
As Greece entered the fifties and the tumultuous 60s, the divide between left and right seemed as great as ever. The fact that Semni and her husband as well as Yannis Miliadis remained in their post is a testament to their talents. In 1964, when she was 67, Semni had to retire because of a new law imposing age limits on civil servants.
The 1967 Junta
Christos Karouzos died of a heart attack just one month before a group of Greek army officers created yet another dictatorship. This one would last until 1974. They named Spiridon Marinatos General Director of Antiquities; Semni was labelled a dissident and banned even from accessing her own material in the museum. It was a nasty and vindictive act.
Semni left the country for Rome and Munich. Upon her return, she was accused of being a communist and, as a public enemy, forbidden to leave the country. This caused an international outcry. A letter written by a group of indignant British archaeologists was published on the front page of The Times of London and the Junta relented to the extent that Semni was allowed to leave Greece. She spent the Junta years visiting exiled Greeks in Rome and Lyon working as an invited scholar at the universities of Tübingen and Geneva.
After the fall of the junta in 1974, she returned to Greece and was able to resume her career under the new democratic government. From 1975 to 1977, she was vice president of the Archaeological Society at Athens. In 1983 she was made president of the International Congress of Classical Archaeology and was awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Lyon, Tübingen, and Thessaloniki for her scholarship and contributions to the field.
She become chair of the Greek arm of the 'Lexicon Iconographicarum Mythologicae Classicae' ('Lexicon of the Iconographies of Classical Mythology')
In total, Karouzou published twenty books and over one hundred and twenty articles during the course of her career. With the publication of guidebooks to the National Archaeological Museum and to various archaeological sites she contributed to public access to Greece’s past. Many of her articles can be found on line.
When she died in December 1994, the Greek newspaper To Vima called her 'the last representative of the generation of great archaeologists'
Afterword
Archaeologists Nikolaidou and Kokkinidou, praise Semni’s “broad intellectual perspective, and democratic sensitivity”. A wonderful story told by American Archaeologist Stephen Miller illustrates this. It was in October 1974, three short months after the fall of the Junta during which she had been treated so badly. She had become president of the Central Archaeological Council (Κεντρικού Αρχαιολογικού Συμβουλίου). Miller needed her backing for changes in the plan of the museum being built on site at Nemea. He brought her to Nemea in the hope of getting her on board but made the mistake of introducing her to his friend and helper, the mayor of the nearest village who happened to have been appointed by the Junta because of his right wing views. The two adversaries began a heated argument with words like Communist and Fascist liberally in the mix. It ended with Semni wondering aloud if the mayors charming and handsome young son could possibly have been fathered by such a man! A horrified Miller believed that his enterprise was in ruins. And don’t forget that Greeks like Semni who were persecuted by the Junta were unhappy with the position of America and American institutions like the American School of Classical Studies at Athens for their tolerance, if not their outright support, of the Military Dictatorship.
But he was wrong. Semni approved the changes because, as she told him afterwards, You know what you are doing. Where her work and her archaeological mission were concerned, Semni rose above politics, something her political enemies on the right could not manage. She had integrity.
The Grave
This is one of the worst kept graves in the cemetery and it is a shame that no one has seen fit to care for it. They had no children, but that is no excuse. The Greek Archaeological Society should see to it.
This curious portrait on top the the stele has a a brass ribbon (?) attached which has me stumped. Any thoughts?
The Map
Footnotes
(1) A statement made by archaeologists Marianna Nikolaidou and Dimitra Kokkinidou.
(2) The Humboldt Scholarship was established in 1860 to support German scientists abroad, but changed course in 1925 in an effort to attract foreign students to Germany. In a way it was a forerunner of the Fulbright Scholarship. Given that so many Greek archaeologist, including Tsoudas were educated in Germany, this was a wonderful opportunity for Christos and Semni.
(3) Christos’ first post when he joined the Greek Archaeological Service in 1919 had been in Thebes where he wrote a catalogue for the museum in demotic Greek. The government agency in charge of such publications, refused to use it.
(4) The Communist Party, banned by Metaxas, had been legally established in Greece in 1918 and in the 1920s, had attracted many intellectuals. Mistrusted by governments since 1929 the party somehow reassembled during the Italian and German occupation and membership reached its peak in the mid 1940s before the civil war caused it to be banned in 1947 – a ban that lasted until 1974.
(5) Quoted from The authors of Excavating Women
(6) Archaeologists Nikolaidou and Kokkinidou write that in her study of the iconography of pottery she moved beyond the images to real people, their everyday life, attitudes and ideologies.
(7) After the war, they were responsible for reinstalling the museum collections, using the catalogues Karouzou had made; this reinstallation was completed in 1947.
(8) For more on the German Institute see: https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2025/07/eugene-vanderpool-archaeologist.html
(9) It has to be said that the Greek government in exile was peppered with supporters of the Metaxas dictatorship as well as pre - Metaxas politicians. Although it had some liberal elements, the left was not represented.
Sources
https://www.in.gr/2023/12/08/stories/semni-karouzou-emprakti-enantiosi-pros-tis-nazistikes-katoxikes-arxes/ Excellent photographs of the effort to save the artefacts.
https://www.namuseum.gr/en/to-moyseio/ergastirio-syntirisis-aggeion-amp-ergon-mikrotechnias/
https://www.imerodromos.gr/h-apokrupsh-kai-diasosh-ton-archaiothton-ston-v-pagkosmio-polemo-2/ .
https://all4nam.com/2016/03/09/%CE%BC%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%B5%CF%83-%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%B1%CE%BC%CE%BD%CE%B7%CF%83%CE%B5%CE%B9%CF%83-%CE%B1%CF%80%CE%BF-%CF%84%CE%B7-%CE%B6%CF%89%CE%B7-%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%83-%CF%83%CE%B5%CE%BC%CE%BD%CE%B7/ A video in which she is remembered (Greek)
