July–December 1935

THE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA PHILADELPHIA

August 23, 1935Dear Bert:

We cabled you that we would present our Lapithos finds to Cincinnati as per your suggestion. Do you suppose that they would care to contribute one or two hundred dollars more toward restoration, above the $200 we guaranteed by cable to Virginia? I have written my ideas to Virginia and exhorted her to come to you if she meets trouble.

Since you are to have Dorothy Cox as surveyor you will probably not need either of the two young Greeks who have written the correspondence I enclose. Eliapoulos, or Ellison, comes well redommended not only by Simkhovitch but also unreservedly by Dinsmoor. He is everything but a professional draughtsman-surveyor, which Kokkins, or Kokkinides, is. Kokkins is recommended by Julian Whittlesey, but Dinsmoor, who knows him too, says he is almost too Greek to be agreeable company. Yet he wants an excuse to establish in Athens, and perhaps he would be available at some future date.

I have told them both to write to you. You will notice that they both live at International House and I am sure, that if one gets a post the other will kill him. I know we can count on you to do the right thing.

I have an opportunity to write a short semi-popular article (fee $50 which goes into the UM's publication Fund, if any) on the Sea-Raiders, elsewhere thought of as Philistines, Dorians, and so on. I have a good deal of gossip from the Phoenician coast but one of the stipulations is that the article be tied up with one, at least, of the UM's excavations. Is there anything at Lapithos, or at Kourion, to mark and prove the passage of such peoples? Could either have possibly been a Sea-Raider stronghold? Has either one a good ancient harbor? Would you prefer to say that the Sea-Raiders grew to flower entirely in fertile imaginations, or that if they existed they passed Cyprus by? Forgive me for posing such a questionnaire, but I'm honestly curious.

Along about December 1 we will be looking for a report on last spring's work at Kourion, with photos and a sketch plan by DCross, to put in one of the winter Bulletins.

Very sincerely,

Handwritten: signature

PS. You know how complexes are instilled in the adolescent mind. Five years ago while I was a grad. student at Yale one of the younger faculty overheard me refer to Professor Rostovtzeff affectionately as Rosty. He led me into a vacant classroom and gave me a two-hour tongue-lashing which I am sure he now regrets. A few days later the Fellowship awards for the new term were argued and he saw to it that I completed my education elsewhere, though I dare say he did not foresee Penn and Minturno. Anyway, his subject that day was Respect for Elders and Betters: and ever since I have found the most OVER … continues