Richard MacGillivray Dawkins

Richard MacGillivray Dawkins (born October 24, 1870 in Surbiton , Surrey , † May 4, 1955 in Oxford ) was a British classical archaeologist and neo-Greekist .

Life

Dawkins' parents were Richard Dawkins (1828-1896), a Royal Navy officer , and Mary Louisa MacGillivray. After attending Totnes Grammar School and Marlborough College , Dawkins began studying electrical engineering at King's College London , but gave up after two years to work at Colonel REB Crompton's Arc Works in Chelmsford . He gave up this point, given the heritage that he had received with his parents died 1896/1897, and studied from 1898 to Classics at Emmanuel College of Cambridge University . Upon graduation in 1902, he was awarded a Craven Scholarship for a one-year study visit to the British School at Athens . However, he stayed there until 1914 and from 1904 to 1910 was also a Fellow of Emmanuel College without a residence requirement. From 1906 to 1914 he was also director of the British School at Athens .

In 1907 he inherited the house Plas Dulas in Llandulas, Welsh from a distant relative on his mother's side . During the First World War he was first with the Home Guard in Plas Dulas from 1914 to 1915 , then from 1915 to 1916 with the Intelligence Department of the British Legation . He was then a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in Crete , where he was responsible for reconnaissance until 1919. In 1920 Dawkins was appointed the first Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford , and in 1922 a Fellow of Exeter College , a position he held until his retirement in 1938. Since 1933 he was a member of the British Academy .

Services

Dawkins was one of the pioneers of Minoan archeology and the study of Greek dialects and fairy tales . He took part in an excavation in the Cretan Palekastro and in a survey of the Laconia landscape that was started in 1905 . From 1906 to 1910 he directed the excavation of the important sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta . In the Boeotian town of Rhitsona , he led the excavation of a cemetery by Ronald Montagu Burrows and Percy N. Ure . From 1911 on he led an excavation in Phylakopi on the Cycladic island of Milos . From 1909 to 1911 he conducted linguistic field research in Cappadocia . This resulted in the first and for a long time decisive study of Cappadocian , a modern Greek dialect with strong Turkish influences. In Byzantine territory, Dawkins studied the 15th century chronicle of the Cypriot writer Leontios Machairas and published a pamphlet on the monks of Mount Athos .

Fonts (selection)

• Modern Greek in Asia Minor. A study of the dialects of Silli, Cappadocia and Phárasa . Cambridge 1916 ( digitized ).
• The unpublished objects from the Palaikastro excavations 1902-1906 described by RC Bosanquet and Richard M. Dawkins. Macmillan, London 1923 (British School at Athens, Supplementary paper, 1).
• The sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta. Excavated and described by members of the British School at Athens 1906-1910. Ed. by RM Dawkins. Macmillan, London 1929.
• The Cypriot Chronicle of Makhairas (1932).
• The Monks of Athos (1936).
• Forty-five Stories from the Dodecanese (1950).
• Arabian Nights .
• Norman Douglas . G. Orioli, Florence 1933. Enlarged and revised edition: Rupert Hart-Davies, London 1952.
• Modern Greek Folktales . Chosen and transl. by RM Dawkins. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1953.
• More Stories from the Arabian Nights (1957).

literature

• Romilly James Heald Jenkins : Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, 1871-1955 , in: Proceedings of the British Academy 41 (1955) 373-388.
• Frederick Rolfe, Cecil Woolf, Laura Maria Roberts Ragg: Letters to RM Dawkins . Vane, London 1962.

Web links

• Photograph by Walter Stoneman, 1945, National Portrait Gallery, Photographs Collection
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, owner of Plas Dulas, Llanddulas from 1907 until his death in 1955 ( Memento from October 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
• Dawkins, Richard MacGillivray .  Publications in the bibliographic database of the Regesta Imperii .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ zorbas.de/maniguide
2. ↑ Victoria Sabetai : Ronald M. Burrows and Percy N. Ure in Boeotia . Ure Museum, University of Reading, 2006 (PDF; 2.4 MB)