Carl Blegen

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Carl Blegen

Carl William Blegen (born January 27, 1887 in Minneapolis , Minnesota , † August 24, 1971 in Athens , Greece ) was an American classical archaeologist .

Blegen came from a family from Norway. His father John H. Blegen (1851–1921) was a Lutheran pastor and professor at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. Carl Blegen also studied there. He then studied at the University of Minnesota (1904 BA ) and at Yale University (1907 MA ). He spent 1910 to 1913 on a scholarship at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens , whose secretary he was from 1913 to 1920. In 1920 he received his PhD from Yale University.

Blegen was Assistant Director of the American School from 1920 to 1926 and Acting Director from 1926 to 1927. From 1927 until his retirement in 1957, Blegen was Professor of Classical Archeology at the University of Cincinnati . During and after the war he worked for the American government (1942–1945 in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, 1946–1947 for the State Department in Athens).

His most important excavations include those in Troy , Pylos , Nemea and Prosymna . He was also involved in many other excavations and published numerous specialist articles and monographs .

Blegen carried out excavations in Troy from 1932 to 1938. In 1939 and then again from 1952 to 1969, Blegen conducted research in Pylos (Greece). There he found over 330 clay tablets with the linear font B in 1952 , which were previously only known from Crete. In 1939 he discovered the archive of the Mycenaean palace with around 600 clay tablets. In June 1940 these were transferred to the USA under the care of archaeologist Helen Walace, wife of Alan Wace . The tables were later published by Emmett Leslie Bennett . Since 1941 Blegen was a member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1959 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Blegen was married to the archaeologist Elizabeth Pierce Blegen . One of his students was Emmett Leslie Bennett , whom he commissioned to edit the Linear B texts.

literature

  • Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan, Jack L. Davis, Vasiliki Florou (eds.): Carl W. Blegen. Personal and archaeological narratives . Lockwood, Atlanta 2015, ISBN 978-193-704-022-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Ernst Doblhofer : The decipherment of ancient scripts and languages . 2nd Edition. No. 20415 . Reclam Verlag, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-15-020415-3 , pp. 259, 277 (first edition 1957 by Paul Neff, Vienna).
  2. ^ Louise Schofield : The Mycenaeans . British Museum Press, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7141-2090-4 , (German: Mykene. Geschichte und Mythos . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-534-21644-4 ), pp. 24-25 .
  3. ↑ Member History: Carl W. Blegen. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 5, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Blegen, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blegen, Carl William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American classical archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Minneapolis , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1971
Place of death Athens