Halet Çambel

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Halet Çambel

Halet Çambel (born August 27, 1916 in Berlin , † January 12, 2014 in Istanbul ) was a Turkish archaeologist from the Near East . She was one of the most important representatives of research in the field of prehistory and early history in Turkey.

Life

Halet was born in Berlin in 1916 as the third child of the married couple Hasan Cemil Çambel and Remziye Çambel . Her mother was the daughter of the Turkish ambassador in Berlin, İbrahim Hakkı Pascha . Her father was a Turkish military attaché in Germany and a friend of Ataturk . After the First World War , the family lived in Switzerland and Austria for a few years. Due to the occupation of the Ottoman Empire after the end of the war and after the Treaty of Sèvres , the family did not return to Turkey until the republic was founded.

Halet Çambel completed middle and secondary school at the girls' grammar school in Arnavutköy . Since moving to this part of Istanbul in 1930, Çambel began to practice fencing at the nearby English-speaking Robert College . At the Sorbonne in Paris she studied archeology , Middle Eastern languages ​​and prehistory and early history, a subject that was shaped by German scholars in Turkey at this time. She was also one of the first Turkish women to participate in the Olympic Games when she started fencing in Berlin in 1936 . After returning to Turkey, she married the poet and later architect Nail Çakırhan (1910–2008).

In 1940 she began to work as an assistant at the Faculty of Literature at Istanbul University , where she obtained her doctorate . Since the 1940s she worked closely with Kurt Bittel , director of the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul .

In the early 1950s, the new discoveries in the ancient Hittite town of Karatepe near Kadirli , her family's hometown in Osmaniye province , had a decisive influence on her career. Initially a student of the German professor Helmuth Theodor Bossert , she worked on the excavations in Karatepe-Arslantaş and on the deciphering of the Hittite language , which was made possible by the bilingualism found on Karatepe . From 1957 to 1960 she developed the first Turkish covered “on-site protection model” of the excavations in Karatepe-Arslantaş by successfully arguing against the transport of the statues, which weighed tons, to a museum.

Halet Çambel took over the chair for Near Eastern Archeology at the University of Istanbul in 1960 and was one of the very first professors in Turkey. 1962–63 she was a visiting lecturer at the University of Saarbrücken . She received numerous honors, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen and the Prince Claus Prize , was a full member of the German Archaeological Institute, an honorary member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences and an elected member of the American Philosophical Society . She was honored in the context of the exhibition "Republic: New Individual, New Life" in İstanbul.

A quote from the Danish-German ethnologist Ulla Johansen may give an impression of the pioneering work and the role model function that Halet Çambel had for entire generations of students . Çambel and Bahadır Alkım , another former student of Bossert, had helped Johansen in 1957 in an unorthodox way to establish contacts with the nomadic Aydınlı for their field research:

“Halet and Bahadır felt obliged to teach the children of the nearby village, from which their workers also came, three hours a day during the 4–5 annual months of excavation, because at that time there were none in the remote small villages of Southeast Anatolia Schools. They also carried out health care for the villagers. Many farmers came to the excavation from the wider area. Although she was barely forty and handsome, Halet was widely respected by the farmers. The fact that she never got into ambiguous situations was due to her demeanor: She wore comfortable trousers and simple, high-necked blouses that fully covered her upper arms, and a masculine-looking peaked cap over her short haircut. She always told the farmers straightforwardly and unpretentiously what she meant and intended. In the following years I copied Halet and also - in contrast to what I had been prophesied about the male Turks before - I never had to hear any personal indications in the country. "

To finance the excavations at the end of the 1940s, she printed private lottery tickets with the consent of the administration and donated half of the proceeds to needy children and the local library.

Publications (selection)

  • with Güven Arsebük and Sönmez Kantman: Çok Dilli Arkeoloji Sözlüğü - Multilingual Dictionary of Archeological Terms Dictionnaire - Multilingue d'Archéologie - Multilingual Archeological Dictionary . Istanbul 1994.
  • Karatepe-Aslantaş, the Inscriptions. (= Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions. Vol. 2), de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999.
  • with Aslı Özyar: Karatepe - Aslantaş. Azatiwataya. The sculptures. Zabern, Mainz 2003.

literature

  • Güven Arsebük, Machteld J. Mellink , Wulf Schirmer (eds.): Light on Top of the Black Hill. Studies presented to Halet Çambel = Karatepe'deki Isik. Halet Çambel'e sunulan yazilar. Ege Yayınları, Istanbul 1998, ISBN 975-807-020-7 (pp. XI-XV list of publications).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Gunnar Koehne: A land with two faces ; Section “The Professor”.
  2. ↑ Halet Çambel in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
  3. ↑ Member History: Halet Çambel. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 28, 2018 (with a short biography).
  4. ↑ Research Institute Exhibition Hall Istanbul, December 11, 2013 - May 17, 2014 [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / en.iae.org.tr  
  5. ↑ Ulla Johansen: Field experiences with the Aydinli. On the creation of the collection of the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology . In: Albert Kunze (Ed.): Yörük - nomad life in Turkey . Trickster, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-923804-79-2 , ISBN 3-923804-22-9 , p. 27
  6. ↑ Ulla Johansen, op. Cit., P. 28
  7. ↑ http://www.istanbulkadinmuzesi.org/de/halet-cambel Website of the Istanbul Women's Museum, accessed January 13, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Çambel, Halet
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cambel, Halet
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish archaeologist from the Middle East
DATE OF BIRTH August 27, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 2014
Place of death Istanbul