Bert Hodge Hill

 

 

BERT HODGE HILL

                 Born March 7 1874, Vermont            Died December 2 1958, Athens

 

 

 The Protestant Cemetery, ten rows up from the entrance

Bert Hodge Hill was director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) for twenty years during the early period of the development of the school which is today an archaeological and research powerhouse. His name will be forever linked to ancient Corinth where his own meticulous methodology led to the adoption of the rigorous documentation of excavations that has become the hallmark of American excavations in Greece. Bert chose to live in Greece until his death in 1958, distinguishing himself during two world wars as well as during the relief effort for refugees after the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922. He was well liked and hard working. It was his reluctance (or inability) to finalise and publish his Corinth excavation findings that led to his dismissal as director of ASCSA in 1926.  Aside from that failure, Bert Hodge Hill proved to be adept in every other endeavour during his long life.  If his marriage to fellow archaeologist  Ida Thallon was an unusual one, it proved to be happy and, if he never became a super star like his friend and fellow archaeologist, Carl Blegen, his life was nonetheless full of adventure.  His story offers a fascinating glimpse into ASCSA’s early years and into the complex Corinth excavations where Bert found himself deeply mired in mud and local politics.

 

 

His Life

Bert Hodge Hill was born in Bristol Vermont on March 7, 1874. He received his AB degree from the University of Vermont and his MA from New York’s Columbia University in 1900.  From 1901 to 1903, Bert became a Fellow at the American School of Classic Studies in Athens, an institution which had opened its doors for the first time only nine years before his arrival. His sojourn, first as a Columbia Drisler Fellow, then as a Fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America, would change his life in ways he could never have imagined.

Foreign Archaeological Schools in Athens – a Little Background…

When the ASCSA was founded n 1881, it had only two rivals, the French School founded in 1846 and the German School founded in 1872. Until such schools became established, most Greek archaeological sites had been magnets for thieves, visiting dilettantes, and amateur archaeologists /collectors like Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans. The Greek Archaeological Service (founded in 1834) and the Greek Archaeological Society (created in 1837) made up of Greek archaeologists and interested citizens had done their best and had even sponsored some digs but the number of potential sites was vast and the government lacked the means to either excavate intensively or to stem the steady flow of stolen antiquities. Allowing foreign schools to operate offered a solution – especially since the citizens of the nations establishing such institutions considered themselves Greece’s cultural inheritors. Enthusiasm was high. 

Today there are 19 archaeological schools or institutes in Athens(1), all under the aegis of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, all sometime collaborators but also rivals because all have been dependent on the  ministry for assignments to ‘plum’ sites. The government’s choice of who excavates and where has often hinged on who could pay the most, so the funding of these schools was important, as was ensuring a constant flow of publications both to inform and attract donors. The Greek government has always restricted what finds could be taken abroad but there always seems to have been a way to ensure that donor institutions acquired an adequate number of antiquities to display. (2)  

 

When Bert attended the American School, it was in a smallish neoclassical building in a very rural landscape:

 

The School in 1902 when 15 students attended

It had been the brainchild of Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton(3)  and founded in 1881 by a consortium of 9  American Universities who would then send their graduate students to Greece either as attendees or as Fellows with grants for research. The Greek government, under Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis ceded them land in today’s Kolonaki. At that time it was considered a dubious gift because it was deemed too far from the acropolis and the city centre.

 

Athenian public transport in 1882 did not pass by the school.

In 1882, the first group of students arrived; 1885 saw its first woman student; 1896 saw its first site excavation at Thorikos and at Corinth. Students who came to study or work would form friendships and professional networks which would last their entire lives. Most became professors at American universities or institutions so as time passed the ASCSA was also creating a network of experts and backers. (4)  Little did Bert realize that one of the young students also attending the 1901-1902 year would become his wife.  

He returned to America in 1903 to become the Assistant Curator of Classical Antiquities at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a Lecturer at Wellesley College.

If the sudden death of Theodore Heermance, the director at the ASCSA had not occurred in 1905, Bert might have remained in Boston. But the death had left the school scrambling for a suitable replacement and Bert’s name was put forward by the chair of the schools’ managing committee. He had received a glowing recommendation from his alma mater, the University of Vermont, but it did mention his inability to hand in written work in a ‘timely manner’.  In those early days, this was not deemed the flaw it would eventually become.  Bert was well liked. ‘Agreeable’ is a word that would always be included any conversation about Bert.  ‘Inventive’ was another.

Bert had to give up his connection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because, as director of ASCSA he had, like Caesar’s wife, to be above suspicion in the eyes of the Greek Director General of Antiquities with whom he would have to deal. No foreign museum with a significant collection of Greek antiquities was above suspicion when it came to how they had or would acquire their Greek artifacts.

The role of director included attending Greek social events, remaining in good standing with the Greek Director of Antiquities and, of course, supporting the students’ endeavours. In those typhoid and malarial prone years, attending to the sick and even arranging for a body to be shipped home was part of the director’s job.  It even fell to Bert to personally arrange for screens to be placed on all of the windows in the school, not to mention overseeing the School’s expansion.

 

1922: still isolated but growing.  The two buildings on the left belong to the American School. The British School, founded in 1886, became its neighbour on the right.

 

If he ever found his duties onerous, there was always the dig at Corinth to which the School had been given exclusive rights in 1896. It was then the jewel in the crown of the school’s excavations and Bert’s great love during his directorship.

Corinth

Ancient Corinth’s layout was a bit of a mystery in the 1890s. Pausanias had barely mentioned it partly because, for him, it was just another Roman city and his interest was ancient Greece.  When he was there, Corinth was still being well watered by an 85 kilometre aqueduct from Mount Kyllini, a marvel of Roman engineering, but the venerable ancient Greek Peirene fountain was still doing its stuff and had been enhanced by an imposing facade in Hellenistic and later in Roman times. Pausanias mentions its ‘sweet waters’.

 

The Peirene Fountain after Excavation.

 

The fountain had started out as a grotto with a spring that tapped into an aquifer to the south. The spring was then enhanced by tunnels built deep behind the original cave, tunnels which allowed even more water from the aquifer to accumulate, flow into basins and then into a pool in front of the fountain.

When it was rediscovered in 1898  by the American School, the fountain was buried more than six metres underground and may never have been found at all if Mr Tsellios’ well, on the land above the site, had not been explored. It turned out to be fed, not by the water table itself, but by the ancient tunnels.  The School wasted no time in digging down and had laid bare the façade by 1901. Like Pausanias, they were more interested in Greek structures than any overlying structures or finds. In their haste, the documentation of the layers carted away was not quite up to the standards that Bert himself would insist on when he became director of the site.

 

Here you can see the farm above and just how much dirt and rubble had to be removed.

 

Tsellios’ well was destroyed in the process and he was given a pump in recompense although, being a conservative villager, he was very suspicious of his new pump.  His house was purchased by the School and become the main residence of the archaeologists.

The Peirene fountain find was big news at the time and helped the school to raise funds for more excavations. Its discovery was a starting point for exploring the ruins of Corinth, a palimpsest of eras that has still not been entirely excavated. (5)

Muddy Waters…

What is amazing is that the fountain system, although deeply buried, was still providing water to the town. This was discovered when tunnelers’ boots muddied the waters as they were exploring and the muddy water  began to appear in the water used by the townspeople, including the outlet where village women still washed their clothes!(6)

The American School became responsible, not just for farther excavations, but also for ensuring the safety of the town’s water supply. Luckily, Bert was as fascinated as to how the fountain’s tunnels and catchment basins worked as much as he was with the artifacts being unearthed. Bert was a bit of a Renaissance man – everything interested him. Apparently he hoped to return the fountain to its pristine state and working order – quite a task.

Maybe Don’t Drink Deep…

Like the villagers, Bert suffered from both malaria and typhoid during his water explorations and many suspected the fountain’s water supply although this was not conclusively proven until microscopic analysis in 1932. The very uncovering of the fountain had led to more complications with water purity because its environs were now exposed to flooding after rains.

Carl Blegen and Bert Hodge Hill

Bert got some real help when a former Fellow of the School, Carl Blegen became School Secretary. The two became lifelong friends. Carl was made Assistant Director in 1920. Both remained in Greece all during the First World War, guarding the School which, of course, was shut down.

 

 

Carl and Bert in 1915

 

Bert volunteered for the American Red Cross. In the 1920s he also served as an officer on the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission after the Asia Minor catastrophe brought so many Greek refugees to the country.

 

Bert’s 1918 American Red Cross ID card

1924 and a Marriage

Bert’s marriage came about when he was 50 because Carl Blegen fell in love. A problem arose when Elizabeth Pierce, a fellow classicist and student at the school refused Carl because she felt she could not abandon her relationship with her erstwhile teacher and friend with whom she had already been living for some years. Ida Thallon, thirteen years older than Elizabeth knew Bert from her sojourn at the school in 1901 and they had met again when she visited with Elizabeth. She was a scholar and classicist in her own right.

What to do?

Carl, desperately in love, came up with a plan. He would marry Elizabeth and Bert would marry Ida. Then all four could live together, allowing the ladies their time together without ruffling society’s feathers.  Bert and Ida seemed to have adopted the role of indulgent parents, sometimes referring to Carl and Elizabeth as ‘the children’.  Bert was fifty to Ida’s 49 when they married in England in 1924. The day after their wedding, Carl wrote to Bert:  It is certainly the finest possible solution of the whole problem, best in every way for everybody …. We are going to have a wonderful time together when our Quartet reassembles in Athens.

 

Ida Thallon Hill

 And they did…

1926: Publish or Perish

The first real crisis in the shared lives of the ‘Pro Pars’ as they often referred to themselves (short for in a professional relationship) occurred in 1926 when Bert’s foot dragging on publishing his Corinth notebooks led to his humiliating  (for him) dismissal.  Bert never felt that he had discovered quite enough to publish. It fell to Edward Capps the chairman of the managing committee to tell Bert his days as director of the ASCSA were over. His procrastination had become inexcusable in the eyes of the man whose job it was to keep the school running smoothly, see to the regular publishing of reports, and to keep it well funded.(7)

This setback for Bert caused the indignant Quartet to distance themselves from the ASCSA, but not entirely. In fact Carl became the director for a year after Bert. They lived the rest of their lives near the American School at 9 Ploutarchou Street, a home Elizabeth purchased in 1931. While they were in residence it became an open house for archaeology students, Greek scholars, and American Embassy staff.

 

9 Ploutarchou Street is today the seat of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation which promotes Greek Culture and Arts within and outside of Greece. Upon their deaths, it was willed to the ASCSA.

 

Bert’s interest in Corinth never waned. He was ever ready to offer advice and help out.  He championed the building of its onsite museum in 1932, a museum that is well worth a lengthy visit, as is the site itself.

Bert would go on to excavate in Cyprus (1932 and 1934 -1952) under the aegis of the University of Pennsylvania and Carl would excavate for the University of Cincinnati  in Troy and in Pylos.

 

Bert at the sacred spring in the 1930s.

 

In 1936  Bert travelled to the United States as the Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at the Archaeological Institute of America. He was, by this time completely enmeshed in Greek life. He had been on the board of the Athens College (8) from its inception in 1925, and during the Second World War, he alone remained in Greece, keeping the home fires burning (9) and again helping in the Red Cross. In 1947, Bert was awarded the title of ‘Director Emeritus of the American School’.

Ida would die during a sea voyage with Elizabeth in 1954. Bert followed her in 1958. Like the others in the Quartet he would leave his papers, personal and professional, to the ASCSA.

 

Afterword

I just can’t help liking Bert. His perfectionism and ability to see the whole picture, I find very sympathetic as was his obvious ability as a teacher. His writer’s block must have caused him a lot of anguish. It might even explain why he is the only one of the Quartet who did not seek or obtain a Phd. He was a doer, a fixer, not a writer. His Corinth papers were finally published in 1964, well after his death. Those who know, say they are pretty much the way he wrote them.

 

The Grave

 

The Protestant Cemetery, about ten row up from the entrance

 

The Map

 

 

Footnotes

 

(1) Austrian, Belgian, British, Danish, French, Finnish, German, Irish, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Italian, Swedish, Swiss, American, Canadian, Australian, and a bit of an outlier, Georgian.

(2)   Our article on Dolly Goulandris touches on the issue of stolen antiquities: See https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2025/02/dolly-goulandris-and-cycladic-art.html

(3) Charles Eliot Norton also founded the Archaeological Institute of America  in 1879, open to archaeologists and all who share a passion for archaeology.  For more on the ASCSA, try 54 Souidias: A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils.

 (4)   95% of School graduates have taught at American universities at some point in their career.

(5)  This year, for example, new excavations are happening north and west of the ancient theatre.

(6)  Right up until the mid twentieth century, women like my mother-in-law were still washing clothes in communal wash basins in the village.

(7) Capps had even gone as far in 1923 as to ban Bert from taking part in further excavations at Corinth until he published. It didn’t work.

(8) In 1925, the Founding Committee was granted a charter under the name "Hellenic American Educational Foundation," with an American sister society established in New York. The mission of this School would be to educate and shape the character of Greek boys from Greece and from abroad. It is still going strong and is now co-ed. 

(9) In 1940, the Greek government had appointed a commission, including Bert, to protect the Corinth Archaeological museum from harm. This involved covering the floors with 40 cms of sand and attempting to somehow protect the delicate artifacts.  America entered the war on December 7, 1941 and Bert was arrested in Corinth on December 12, 1941 but was released and allowed return to Athens where he had to share the house on Ploutarchou Street with four German officers.

 

Sources

The best source for Bert Hodge and the Quartet is the ASCSA itself.  They are very generous with their on line Information. Archaeologist Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan  and her wonderful From the Archivist's Notebook  offers a wealth of information  about the school and its archives. See https://nataliavogeikoff.com From the Archivist's Notebook

 

-https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/uploads/media/Histories_of_Peirene_Sample.pdf   A must read about the fountain with excellent photos and information.

                                                                                                                                   --https://www.archaeological.org/archaeologists-you-should-know-bert-hodge-hill/ 

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Histories_of_Peirene/8FX9PfBGqPoC?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=bert+hill,+archaeologist&pg=PA115&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Carl_W_Blegen/YwhPDgAAQBAJ?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=carl+blegen,&printsec=frontcover

https://nataliavogeikoff.com/2015/11/01/the-end-of-the-quartet-the-day-the-music-stopped-at-ploutarchou-9/#more-1771

https://nataliavogeikoff.com/2014/02/14/my-heart-is-beating-february-13-1923/  

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Hill_Ida%20Thallon.pdf

https://www.google.gr/books/edition/Carl_W_Blegen/OwdPDgAAQBAJ?hl=el&gbpv=1&dq=ida+thallon+marriage+1924&pg=PT143&printsec=frontcover. 

 

https://chpl.org/blogs/post/tbt-carl-blegen/

https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/history-of-the-american-school-1882-1942-chapter-i

https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/history-of-the-american-school-1882-1942-chapter-ii

and

https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/history-of-the-american-school-1882-1942-chapter-iv

 

 

Semni Karouzou, Archaeologist

 

Semni Papaspyridi-Karouzou       Σέμνη Παπασπυρίδη-Καρούζου

Born 1897 (8)                                                         Died December 1994

Perhaps the most important woman in Greek archaeology (1)

 Section Seven, Number 706

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.

 

Christos Karouzos

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.

 

 Spiridon Marinatos circa 1928. He was head of the Greek Archaeological Service from                   1937 to 1939, from 1955 to 1958, and lastly from 1967 to 1974.

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.

 

The museum in 1900

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”.

 

Berlin, 1929. Christos is standing on the left; Semni is standing second from the right.

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".

 Semni would no doubt be a little jealous of the state of the art ceramic laboratory that graces the fourth floor of the museum today.

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.

 

The order was issued on November 11, less than a month after the Italian invasion.

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) “

 Yiannis Miliades retrieving ‘Athena number 140’ from its hiding place in 1947. Because of the civil unrest after the Germans left, many artefacts stayed in hiding for quite some time.

 

 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.

 

 

It was a brave act

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)

 

 

 

The German Archaeological Institute, founded in 1872 and built by Ernst Ziller, was the first Foreign Archaeological School in Greece.

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.

 

 

Semni and Christos

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.  

 

The Junta was a giant step backwards for Greece. Even the language they proposed to retain - katharevousa - was right out of the Metaxas playbook.

 

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.

 

Semni towards the end of her long life

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

 Section Seven, Number 706

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.lifo.gr/culture/arxaiologia/i-semni-karoyzoy-sti-nemea-tha-htisete-moyseio-sas-xerete-ti-kanete

https://www.in.gr/2020/09/16/stories/features/spyridon-marinatos-mia-xarismatiki-alla-kai-antifatiki-prosopikotita/ 

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)

https://nataliavogeikoff.com/2016/09/01/communism-in-and-out-of-fashion-the-american-school-of-classical-studies-at-athens-and-the-cold-war/