the site existed by about 1900 b.c. Evans’s excavation of Knossos began in 1900, and the task was to tax his excavation and conservation skills until 1929. Although there has been considerable discussion of the conservation strategies followed by Evans and his associates, and about his emphasis on the “Minoan” civilization as being of Indo-European origin, there is no doubting the magnificent achievement of his major publication of the site, The Palace of Minos at Knossos (four volumes between 1921 and 1935). At Knossos, Evans had “found” the Minoan civilization, and, following Schliemann, he had further enhanced the links between myth and history.

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Palace in ancient Knossos with reconstructed balustrade and fresco

(Image Select)

Tim Murray

References

Evely, D., Hupres-Broch, H., and Momigliano, N. 1994. Knossos, a Labryinth of History: Papers Presented in Honor of Sinclair Hood. Athens: British School of Athens.

Kondakov, Nikodim Pavlovich

(1844–1925)

The son of a freed serf and steward of princely estates, Kondakov went to school in Moscow, and in 1861 was sent to study at the University of Moscow with Slavic historian, philologist, and folklorist Ivonvich Buslayev. In deference to his teacher’s dislike of Darwinism and prehistoric archaeology, Kondakov studied Classical and Byzantine art, graduating in 1866 and becoming a teacher at his old school.

In 1871, after traveling abroad to study classical monuments, Kondakov was appointed to the professorial chair of the theory and history of art at Novorossiysk University in Odessa. Scholars at this university were actively studying the local classical monuments of the Northern Black Sea coast and Kondakov participated in the excavation of the necropolis of the ancient Nimphaeum in Kerch, in the Crimea, where members of both the Greek and Scythian aristocracy were buried—the best excavated, researched, and recorded necropolis in the ancient world. Between 1873 and 1884 Kondakov traveled to major centers in Europe and the Near East, visiting libraries and museums and writing a monumental synthesis on the history of Byzantine art, his doctoral thesis The History of Byzantine Art and the Iconography of the Miniatures of Greek Manuscripts. This won the Gold Medal of the Russian Archaeological Society