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Cyrene Papers: The Second Report. The Oric Bates Expedition of 1909

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

Jaimee P. Uhlenbrock
Jaimee P. Uhlenbrock*
Affiliation:
State University of New York at New Paltz
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Abstract

In late April 1909 the young Egyptologist Oric Bates led a three-week survey expedition to Cyrenaica under the sponsorship of the Archaeological Institute of America and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for the purpose of locating a suitable site for archaeological excavation. Participants in the expedition included Richard Norton, Allison V. Armour, and Russell C. Sturgis, Jr. At the conclusion of the expedition Bates sent a full report to the sponsors, who filed it away without acknowledgement. The report, which is published here for the first time, details this first official American expedition to Cyrenaica. Correspondence is discussed that reveals why the Archaeological Institute of America and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston chose to ignore the report and to dismiss Bates abruptly from the project just several days after the report was submitted. The role that Norton played in Bates' dismissal is also examined.

Type
Articles
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 30 , 1999 , pp. 77 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1999

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References

Notes

1. Four earlier trips to Cyrenaica were undertaken by parties of Americans, but in each case these were unofficial. See Uhlenbrock, Jaimee P., ‘The Cyrene Papers: The First Report. The Documents,’ Libyan Studies 29 (1998): 100–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. The Eastern Libyans (London) 1914Google Scholar.

3. The dates are approximate and are based on the few supplied by Bates in his report, as well as calculations predicated by the time needed to sail or ride from one site to another (see note 42 below). Indications for this come from letters from Allison Armour discussing the itinerary of his yacht, as well as letters from Norton concerning his 1910 expedition (Norton, R., ‘From Bengazi to Cyrene’, Bulletin of the Archaeological Institute of America 2 (1910): 57–67Google Scholar) and other documents.

4. The number of photographs taken during the expedition is approximate as many of the negatives have so deteriorated as to become adhered to one another in clumps owing to chemical changes. These have been discarded.

5. London (1864).

6. Goodchild, R. G., ‘Death of an epigrapher: the killing of Herbert DeCou’, Michigan Quarterly Review VIII-3 (07 1969): 149–154Google Scholar; id., ‘A Hole in the Heavens’, in Libyan Studies. Select Papers of the late R. G. Goodchild, London (1976), J. Reynolds, ed: 290–297; Coccia, M., ‘Giallo fra le rovine di Cirene’, Archeologia Viva 17.72 (Nov/Dec 1998): 72–75Google Scholar; id., ‘Giallo a Cirene’, Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale 39.2 (Jul-Dec 1997): 271–274.

7. Both Sturgis and Bates were in the same school clubs.

8. See R. Norton, as in note 3 above.

9. A photograph of the expedition at a fort at Malah, Wadi (Museum of Fine Arts Archive) and reproduced in The Eastern Libyans (London 1914: 167; see also White, as in note 10 below, fig. 6)Google Scholar shows at least two Turkish soldiers, while another photograph of the spring at Cyrene (No. 25 of the Bates report) has in it five men in Turkish uniform. However, given that the expedition party spent the majority of their time aboard the yacht while they traversed the coastal waters of Cyrenaica from Benghazi to Derna no less than four times in three weeks, one wonders at what point they could have acquired a guard.

10. Uhlenbrock, J. P., op. cit.: 97–114; White, D., ‘Stranger in a strange land: the untold story of the 1909 Bates expedition to Cyrene,’ Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 35 (1998): 163–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Bates was in Egypt in September 1908 and mentioned possibly organizing an expedition to Cyrenaica in view of the change in Ottoman politics (letter, September 11, 1908, to Benjamin Ives Gilman, Museum of Fine Arts archive).

12. See Uhlenbrock, as in note 1, p. 103.

13. Letter from David Hogarth to Arthur Fairbanks, Forest Row, December 24, 1908 (Museum of Fine Arts archive).

14. Ibid.

15. Letter from Kelsey to James Loeb May 22, 1909 (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan).

16. White, op. cit.: 77, suggests that Norton was favoured over Bates because of sporadic but clandestine excavations carried out by Bates. This would have placed Bates in a bad light with the sponsors only after the expedition returned to Boston. However, it is clear from the correspondence that Bates was slated for dismissal from the project even before the expedition arrived in Cyrenaica.

17. See Uhlenbrock, op. cit.: 104.

18. Museum of Fine Arts Archive.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Letter to Arthur Fairbanks, Feb. 11, 1909 (Museum of Fine Arts Archive).

23. Museum of Fine Arts Archive.

24. Ibid.

25. The acquisition of a firman and the stipulations laid out by the Minister of Public Information at Constantinople are detailed in the Cyrene Report I, a typescript letter from Allison V. Armour to Arthur Fairbanks, Constantinople, March 19, 1909 (Archaeological Institute of America Archive).

26. Rosenbaum, E., A Catalogue of Cyrenaican Portrait Sculpture, London (1960): no. 132 (B17073), no. 155 (B17074), no. 157 (B17072)Google Scholar, all three said to be from the Fonduk at Benghazi. No. 155 has been discussed recently by Walker, S. (‘The Imperial Family as Seen in Cyrene’, Libyan Studies 25 (1994): 179–180 and fig. 24)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who assumes a Benghazi provenance. However, according to the Bates report, the statues were found at the farm.

27. Rosenbaum, op. cit., no. 292 (B13004).

28. Robinson, D. M., ‘Inscriptions from Cyrenaica,’ American Journal of Archaeology 17 (1913): 189–190, no. 104Google Scholar, early Byzantine. In 1911 the American School of Classical Studies in Rome was subsumed by the American Academy in Rome (see L., and Valentine, A., The American Academy in Rome. 1894–1969 Charlottesville, 1973: 52–53)Google Scholar, where today one can see the inscription set into the south wall of the courtyard (Inv. no. 9319, = Cortile Bay XII, no. 99).

29. While similar to the genre discussed most recently by Bacchielli, L. (‘Il ritratto funerario in cirenaica: produzione urbana e produzione della chora a confronto’, Giornata Lincea sulla Archeologia Cirenaica, Rome 1990, figs. 1–5)Google Scholar, the heads appearing in the photograph, to my knowledge, have never been published.

30 This class of reliefs has been discussed by Pandolfi, L., ‘Rilievi eroici di Cirene,’ in Catani, E./ Marengo, S. M., eds., La Cirenaica in età antica, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Macerata (1998): 449–456Google Scholar.

31 Spoil.

32. The coins were sent back to Boston with Bates (letter from Bates to Fairbanks, June 10, 1909, Museum of Fine Arts Archive) and later were offered to the museum for purchase. In 1916, while Norton was engaged in ambulance work in France, still employed by the museum he offered the coins as a gift (letter from Norton to Fairbanks, 1916, Museum of Fine Arts Archive). There is no record of these coins in the Classical Department of the Museum.

33. This purchase may have resulted in the letters exchanged between Norton, Fairbanks, and Bates. See p. 94.

34. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

35. Archaeological Institute of America Archives.

36. Uhlenbrock, op. cit.: 106.

37. White, op. cit.: 170-78.

38. As in note 5 above, plate 40.

39. White, op. cit.: 176, figs. 9, 10,

40. Ibid.: 177–78.

41. Ibid.: 176. White also proposes that other side trips were undertaken that never received mention in the report. In particular he cites a reference by Norton to a ‘cheery companion’ whose company Norton enjoyed on an excursion ‘that day last June when we rode from Ras el Hil to Derna.’ This appeared in Norton's report of his reconnaissance trip of May-June 1910 (Norton, as in note 3 above). White viewed this as a reference to Bates. But this report was written in 1911, a year after the trip, and the reference to ‘last June’ indicates June of 1910 when Norton travelled with Lawrence Mott. In any case, the Bates expedition had already left Libya by the end of May.

42. Even though Bates does not supply many dates in his report, nevertheless a rough calculation of the chronology of the itinerary can be made based on mention in letters and in the report itself of the length of time it took to sail from one place to another. Thus, Norton wrote upon leaving Malta on April 20, and the party arrived in Benghazi on April 27 after stopping in Tripoli and other sites. The party then spent three days in Benghazi and therefore must have left on April 29 for Derna. Bates notes that Derna to Marsa Souza is a hard two days' sail, so Benghazi to Derna must have been a journey of at least five days or more, with arrival estimated at Derna on May 6. If one calculates that a day was spent in Derna visiting the governor, etc., (May 7) and another in the Gulf of Bomba (May 8), then the two-day sail from Derna to Marsa Souza can be placed roughly around May 9–10, with an arrival at Cyrene on May 11. With 'several days' spent at Marsa Souza before sailing west to Tolmeita and Benghazi (at least five more days) the sojourn at Cyrene itself could not have been more than several days (May 11–13?). This would put the Marsa Souza sojourn around May 14–16?, with arrival in Benghazi around May 20. Five more days would be needed to return to Derna for the mail (c. May 25). The party must have reached Syracuse by the end of May, as Bates made a transatlantic crossing to arrive in Boston June 7 (cable from Gardiner Lane, June 8, 1909).

43. Archives of the Archaeological Institute of America.

44. March 19, 1909 (Museum of Fine Arts Archive).

45. Museum of Fine Arts Archive.

46. Joyce Reynolds informs me that the gladiatorial stele is believed to be lost.

47. See above, note 28.

48. See above, note 32.

49. Museum of Fine Arts Archive.

50. Museum of Fine Arts 09.536 oval jasper intaglio, bearded head in profile, unpublished; 09.535 oval sard intaglio, bust of a faun in profile; see Spier, J., Ancient Gems and Finger Rings. Catalogue of the Collections, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, Malibu (1992): 97, under 226Google Scholar.