John Pendlebury

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John Pendlebury, 1934
Grave of John Pendlebury in Souda Bay War Cemetery

John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury (born October 12, 1904 in London , † May 22, 1941 in Heraklion ) was a British archaeologist who worked in Crete and Egypt . During the Second World War he worked as a British spy before and during the German occupation of Crete and was executed.

Youth and education

Pendlebury was the son of the London surgeon Herbert Pendlebury and Lilian Devitt. His mother was the daughter of a shipowner, and after she died in 1921 Pendlebury became financially independent through inheritance. He lost an eye as a child and then had a glass eye. As a teenager, after visiting the British Museum , where he met Wallis Budge , he decided to become an archaeologist and especially an Egyptologist. Pendlebury attended Winchester College from 1918 to 1923 (where in 1923 he attended the excavations in Mycenae with a teacher from the college and the British School at Athens , where he met Alan Wace ) and then studied classical philology and archeology at Cambridge University ( Pembroke College ). As a student he also excelled in sports and later he was an active athlete. After graduating in 1927, he won a scholarship to the British School of Athens and worked on a catalog of Egyptian artifacts found in Greece that appeared in 1930. In 1928 he visited Crete for the first time. He met Hilda White, an archeology student who was 13 years his senior, and whom he later married. His first excavations took place in Thessaloniki . Also in 1928 he was invited by Arthur Evans and his assistant Duncan Mackenzie (1861-1934) to excavate in Crete and Knossos . In 1928/29 he was in Egypt for the first time and took part in the excavations in Amarna , which were under the direction of Henri Frankfort . There he also met Humfry Payne (1902-1936) and his wife Dilys Powell (1901-1995) know. Payne was director of the British School at Athens from 1929, and Dilys Powell later became a well-known film critic, who also left memories of Pendlebury.

Excavators in Knossos and Amarna

In 1929 Arthur Evans appointed him as an excavator (curator) in Knossos, where he replaced the sick Duncan Mackenzie. Soon afterwards he also became chief excavator in Tell-el-Amarna, which he remained from 1930 to 1936 after Henri Frankfort switched to excavations in Iraq. He was helped by his wife and students from the British School of Athens in cataloging the excavation finds at Knossos. As the curator of Knossos, there was also tension with Arthur Evans, whose interpretation of Knossos Pendlebury did not share. Even so, they jointly published a guide to the Palace of Knossos, which was essentially written by Pendlebury alone. In 1934 he gave up the post of curator in Knossos because he was forbidden to excavate independently outside of Knossos in Crete and he was working on an archaeological guide for all of Crete. He particularly excavated in Karphi . During this time he got to know the island very well through extensive hikes and spoke the dialects of the inhabitants.

Second World War

When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Pendlebury saw the threat of a German invasion due to the strategic importance of Crete and offered himself to the British military authorities to do some reconnaissance in Crete. He received military training in England and officially returned to Crete in 1940 as Vice Consul in Heraklion. When Heraklion was conquered in May 1941, Pendlebury himself took part in the fighting and was wounded. Since he could not identify himself as a soldier, he was shot dead. He is buried in Souda Bay War Cemetery .

Fonts

  • Aegyptiaca. Catalog of Egyptian objects in the Aegean area . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1930.
  • Archaeologica quaedam . Classical Association, Oxford 1932.
  • with Arthur Evans: A handbook to the palace of Minos at Knossos with Its Dependencies . Macmillan, London 1933.
  • A Guide to the Stratigraphical Museum in the Palace at Knossos . British School at Athens, London 1933.
  • with Mercy Money-Coutts, Edith Eccles : Journeys in Crete, 1934 . British School at Athens, Athens 1935.
  • Tell el-Amarna . L. Dickson & Thompson, London 1935.
  • The archeology of Crete. An introduction ( Methuen's Handbooks of Archeology ). Methuen & Co., London 1939.

literature

  • Imogen Grundon: The Rash Adventurer. A Life of John Pendlebury . Libri Publications 2007
  • Dilys Powell: The Villa Ariadne . London 1973
  • John Pendlebury in Crete . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1948 (with appreciations from Nicholas Hammond and Tom Dunbabin ).
  • Antony Beevor: Crete, the Battle and the Resistance . Murray, London 1991

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ See display with picture and video . The book received the Runciman Award in 2008 .
  2. ↑ The Villa Ariadne was the residence of the excavators in Knossos.
personal data
SURNAME Pendlebury, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pendlebury, John Devitt Stringfellow
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1941
Place of death Heraklion