Fragment: To get on in the profession

From: MacNeice, Louis. The Strings Are Flase: An Unfinished Autobiography. London: Faber and Faber, 1965.

If I wanted to get on in the profession, Dodds told me, I must do some research. Edit a Greek play perhaps. He recognized that much of the 'research' done at universities was done merely from careerist motives, and much of it was a waste of time.  Pun provided you had a critical faculty, provided you had you had imagination and provided you did some work you might contribute something to Scholarship. Scholarship for Dodds was a living and humane activity, an antidote to sentimentality,  to our more muddled or trumpery brands of civilization...

page 137

Fragment: A Time of sadness

From: Evans, Joan. Prelude and Fugue: An Autobiography. London: Museum Press Limited, 1964.

The autumn of 1914 was in any case inevitably a time of sadness. The friendliest of my nephews, who under the compulsion of a premonition of war had given up scientific work to join the Royal Fusiliers a year or two before, was killed in France early in the term; a friend whom I might well have married was killed a few days later; and I felt the senseless destruction of Rheims as an acute personal loss. Morover I was the only woman working in archaeology, my sole companion being an Australian undergraduate - Gordon Childe - whom I hardly knew to speak to, and I did not make friends so easily as I might have done had I belonged to a more popular "school"...

page 72

Fragment: What sort of men the Swedes are

From: Gjerstad, Einar. Ages and Days in Cyprus. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology., Pocket-Book 12. Göteborg: P. Åstrom, 1980.

I shall never forget one spicey, heavy evening at Alambra, when young Polykarpos  sang his song of love and suffering, so the stars trembled in the heavens, nor one afternoon with Andreas, the paralyzed café landlord at Ormidhia. He lay silent in bed, contending with his rheumatic pains while the farmers were making a noise all round him. Suddenly he raised his huge head and shouted to the boys in the room to be quiet. Then, with blazing eyes, he sang a dithyramb about the heroic deeds of Charles XII to show what sort of men the Swedes are.

page 82

Fragment: Approbation

From: Wilson, John A. Thousands of Years: An Archaeologist’s Search for Ancient Egypt. New York: Scribner, 1972.

It is a commentary on the attitudes of the faculty at an American university that I received more approbation from my colleagues in other departments for resigning from administrative office than I had ever received for accepting such an office.

Page 85

Fragment: I was in despair

Fragment from: Wilson, John A. Thousands of Years: An Archaeologist’s Search for Ancient Egypt. New York: Scribner, 1972.

Sprengling knew that he would be out of the country at the time of my oral examination in later May 1926. He told me not to worry about any testing of my ability in Classical Arabic as he had been satisfied with my performance in class. So I dropped that field out of my consideration and I boned up assiduously on other subjects. The examination itself dragged on for three hours. For well over two hours Breasted  took me over the hurdles in hieroglyphic, hieratic, and history. The rest of the department sat back in boredom. Since Breasted's current interests were pretty well known, that long grind went off satisfactorily. Then he turned me over to the other examiners. There were a few desultory questions, and my answers were less precise because I was rather weary by that time.  Then Breasted announced that, since the examiner in Arabic was not present, he himself would set some questions. The shock of that unexpected attack emptied my brain. Not only could I not translate the Arabic, I could not even pronounce it. It was a sorry performance.

At long last I was excused and went outside into the museum to wait for the examining committee to make its decision. I was in despair. How could they pass me after such a collapse? The wait seemed interminable. Finally the secretary of the Department, George Allen, came out to summon me. In his characteristically cautious way he told me first that they had been disappointed. Then he went on to elaborate: instead of passing me summa cum laude, they have been forced to pass me only magna cum laude.

page 46.

Fragment: "beautiful and amiable women"

Fragment from: Layard, Austen Henry. Sir Henry Layard Autobiography and Letters from His Childhood until His Appointment as H.M. Amdassador to Madrid Edited by the Hon. William N. Bruce, with a Chapter on His Parliamentary Carreer by the Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur Otway. 2 volumes vols. London: John Murray, 1903.

At Aleppo I found Mr Mitford, who, tired of waiting for me, was about to continue his journey towards Baghdad. He had established himself in a small lodging in the Christian quarter outside the town, where I joined him. We remained there together for a week, spending  most of our time with our kind and hospitable friends, the Barkers, who collected in their house the best native and the only European society in the city. There with pleasant and instructive conversation, for there  were at that time several accomplished and interesting men residing in Aleppo, with beautiful and amiable women; and with picnics in the gardens and the neighbourhood which were then in the full glories of Spring, the few days we could spare passed too rapidly away. I still look back to that short week, which is like an oasis in my toilsome and lonely wanderings.

page 283.

“Confessions of a Humble Country Historian.”

Reading autobiographies outside of the area of scholars of Antiquity.  This one is very interesting.

Enteen, George M. “Confessions of a Humble Country Historian.” Perspectives on History, May 1997. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/may-1997/confessions-of-a-humble-country-historian.