Ekrem Akurgal

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Ekrem Akurgal (born March 30, 1911 in Tulkarm ; † November 1, 2002 in İzmir ) was one of the most important Turkish classical archaeologists .

Life

Ekrem Akurgal was born on his grandparents' plantation in Tulkarm , Palestine , but grew up with his father near Akyazı . At the age of seven he moved with his family to Istanbul and attended a French-speaking school. At 19 he met Mustafa Kemal Ataturk , from whom he received the only direct grant from the Turkish President. This gave him the opportunity to train in Germany. Other Turkish scholarship holders who also traveled to Berlin with him were the later archaeologists Sedat Alp and Afif Erzen .

Ekrem Akurgal studied from 1932 at the University of Berlin , where he received his doctorate on Lycian reliefs in 1940 under Gerhart Rodenwaldt . From 1941 he worked at the University of Ankara . In 1944 he married Lemis Baykan , with whom he had two sons. The family chose his name Akurgal in 1935 through the Family Name Act . Akurgal is the name of a Sumerian king ( Akurgal (Lagaš) ), in whose excavations Ekrem was instrumental.

From 1957 until his retirement in 1981 he was Professor of Classical Archeology . His field of research encompassed all ancient cultures in Anatolia, including the Hittites , Urartians , Phrygians , Lydians , Carians and Lycians . He paid particular attention to the art history of the Greek settlers (Ionic and Aioli). In this regard, he dug in Phokaia (Foça), Pitane ( Çandarlı ) and Erythrai, among others . His most important excavation was that of Old Smyrna (Bayraklı).

Along with Arif Müfid Mansel, he is the founding father of classical archeology in modern Turkey. As such, he received numerous honors, such as an honorary member of the German Archaeological Institute and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the academies in Düsseldorf (1984), Copenhagen, London , Rome, Stockholm and Vienna. He also holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bordeaux, Athens, Lecce and Eskisehir.

He was considered a supporter of Ataturk and helped build the mausoleum of his patron . His knowledge of the language and his area of ​​expertise enabled him to receive foreign-speaking state guests and show them around the historical scenes. He campaigned for a Turkish-Greek friendship and founded the Greek-Turkish friendship association with Aziz Nesin .

In the 1960s and 1970s he tried to make his works, which were popular in Europe, known to Turkish readers, but he could not find an interested publisher. This was only to change from the 1980s. In 1999, three years before his death, he wrote his autobiography Memories of an Archaeologist - Some Significant Chapters in the Cultural History of the Republic of Turkey . He was buried at the Kokluca Mezarlığı cemetery in Izmir, where he last lived and which he valued for its openness . His widow's wish to bury him next to his most famous excavation in Old Smyrna was rejected by the Ministry of Culture.

In February 2013, the Ekrem Akurgal Library was opened in the Istanbul Department of the German Archaeological Institute , which was donated to the department by Akurgal's widow Meral from the estate of the deceased.

Fonts (selection)

  • Bir arkeoloğun anıları. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti cold door tarihinden birkaç yapraklar. Ankara, Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi 1999. ISBN 975-405-166-6 (autobiography with list of publications)
    • German: Memories of an Archaeologist. Some significant chapters from the cultural history of the Republic of Turkey. Verlag Franz Philipp Rutzen Ruhpolding / Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2013. ISBN 978-3-447-06875-8
  • Greek and Roman Art in Turkey (1987)
  • Old Smyrna, 1: Residential layers and Temple of Athena (1983)
  • Ancient civilizations and ruins of Turkey (1969)
  • Urartian and Old Iranian Art Centers (1968)
  • Orient and Occident (1966)
  • with Richard Ettinghausen (ed.): Turkey and its art treasures. The Anatolia of the Early Kingdoms, Byzantium, the Islamic Period (1966)
  • The Art of the Hittites (1961)
  • The art of Anatolia from Homer to Alexander . W. de Gruyter, Berlin 1961, ISBN 978-3-11-001351-1 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  • Preliminary report on the Sinope excavations (1956)
  • Two pre-classical grave steles from Sinope (1955)
  • Phrygian Art (1955)
  • Late Hittite visual art (1949)
  • Remarques stylistiques sur les Reliefs de Malatya (1946)
  • Greek reliefs of the VI. Century from Lycia (1941) (= dissertation)

literature

Obituaries

Festschriften

  • Cevdet Bayburtluoğlu (Ed.): Akurgal'a Armağan (= Anadolu 21, 1978/80, ISSN  0570-0116 ). Dil Ve Tarih, Ankara 1987.
  • Cevdet Bayburtluoğlu (Ed.): Akurgal'a Armağan (= Anadolu 22, 1981/83). Dil Ve Tarih, Ankara 1989.
  • Cevdet Bayburtluoğlu (Ed.): Akurgal'a Armağan (= Anadolu 23, 1984/97). Dil Ve Tarih, Ankara 1997.
  • Istanbul Communications 53, 2003.

Representations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fahri Işık: Akurgal, Ekrem. In: Peter Kuhlmann, Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon. Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, column 8 f.
  2. ^ Foreword by the editor of his autobiography / Erika Simon & Brigitte-Freyer Schaunenburg: Memories of an Archaeologist - Some significant chapters from the cultural history of the Republic of Turkey. on-line
  3. See: Akurgal Danışmanlık
  4. Mustafa Adak: Review: Ekrem Akurgal, Bir Arkeoloğun Anıları , Gephyra Vol 1 (2004) [1]