Evans devoted three decades to excavating and restoring the place at Knossos. His labors brought him a knighthood and aroused worldwide interest in the Minoans. Arthur John Evans (July 8, 1851 - July 11,1941) was an English archeologist. He and Heinrich S
Evans devoted three decades to excavating and restoring the place at Knossos. His labors brought him a knighthood and aroused worldwide interest in the Minoans. Arthur John Evans (July 8, 1851 - July 11,1941) was an English archeologist. He and Heinrich Schliemann were pioneers in the study of Aegean civilization in the Bronze Age. Schliemann had planned to excavate at Knossos, but died before fulfilling that dream. Evans bought the site, employed a large staff of local laborers as excavators, and began work in 1900. Within a few months they had uncovered a substantial portion of what he called the Palace of Minos. On the basis of the ceramic evidence and stratigraphy, he concluded that there was another civilization on Crete. The small ruin of Knossos spanned 5 acres and the palace had a maze-like quality that reminded him of the labyrinth described in Greek mythology. The labyrinth had been built by King Minos to hide the Minotaur, so he named the civilization once inhabiting the palace the Minoan civilization. By 1903, most of the palace was excavated, bringing to light an advanced city containing artwork and many examples of writing. Painted on the walls of the palace were numerous scenes depicting bulls, leading him to conclude that the Minoans did indeed worship the bull. During the excavation he found 3,000 clay tablets, which he transcribed and organized, publishing them in Scripta Minoa. He perceived that the scripts were two different and mutually exclusive writing systems, which he termed Linear A and Linear B. Despite decades of theories, Linear A has not been convincingly deciphered, nor even the language group identified. His classifications and careful transcriptions have been of great value to Mycenaean scholars. He was knighted in 1911 for his services to archaeology and is commemorated both at Knossos and at the Ashmolean Museum, which holds the largest collection of Minoan artifacts outside of Greece. He died in 1941 at the age of 90.
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