Sir John Linton Myres Kt OBE FBA FRAI (3 July 1869 in Preston – 6 March 1954 in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

) was a British archaeologist and academic, who conducted excavations in

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Life

He was the son of the Rev. William Miles Myres and his wife, Jane Linton, and was educated at

Winchester College Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of ...

. He graduated B.A. at New College, Oxford in 1892. At the same year he was a Craven Fellow at the British School at Athens with which he excavated at the Minoan sanctuary of

Petsofas Petsofas is the archaeological site of a Minoan peak sanctuary in eastern Crete. It overlooks the Minoan town of Palaikastro and was excavated by John Myres in 1903. He discovered a large number of clay figurines, including animal and human fig ...

. Myres became the first

Wykeham Professor of Ancient History The University of Oxford has three statutory professorships named after William of Wykeham, who founded New College. Logic The Wykeham Professorship in Logic was established in 1859, although it was not known as the Wykeham chair until later. I ...

, at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, in 1910, having been

Gladstone Professor of Greek The Gladstone Chair of Greek is an academic position that was one of the original endowments of the foundation of the University of Liverpool in 1881. The Chair was named in recognition of the scholarship of W. E. Gladstone, the British prime minis ...

and Lecturer in Ancient Geography,

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

from 1907. He contributed to the British ''Naval Intelligence Division Geographical Handbook Series'' that was published during the Second World War, and to the noted 11th edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (1910–1911). Myers was also a member of the

Folklore Society The Folklore Society (FLS) is a national association in the United Kingdom for the study of folklore. It was founded in London in 1878 to study traditional vernacular culture, including traditional music, song, dance and drama, narrative, arts an ...

and served as its President between 1924 and 1926. Later he became president of the Royal Anthropological Institute between 1928 and 1931. And finally president of the Hellenic Society between 1935-1938. Additionally, he was the founder of the journal

Man A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromo ...

and its first editor from 1901-1903. His work in Cyprus spanned several decades, with the German archaeologist

Max Ohnefalsch-Richter Max Ohnefalsch-Richter (7 April 18506 February 1917) was a German archaeologist and antiquities seller. He was born in Saxony in 1850 and arrived in British occupied Cyprus in 1878 to work as a journalist, in the following year he worked for the ...

he published the first catalogue of the

Cyprus Museum The Cyprus Museum (also known as the Cyprus Archaeological Museum) is the oldest and largest archaeological museum in Cyprus. The museum houses artifacts discovered during numerous excavations on the island. The museum is home to the most extensi ...

. In 1894 he participated in the excavations of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

Amathus Amathus or Amathous ( grc, Ἀμαθοῦς) was an ancient city and one of the ancient royal cities of Cyprus until about 300 BC. Some of its impressive remains can be seen today on the southern coast in front of Agios Tychonas, about west o ...

, he also excavated for the British School at Athens, with the support of the Cyprus Exploration Fund, various sites such as the Bronze Age site of Ayia Paraskevi, Kalopsida, Laxia tou Riou and Kition. Myres gave his share of the finds to the University of Oxford where it forms the core of the Cypriot collection of the Ashmolean Museum . Myres Archive is located at the Ashmolean Museum. Additionally, he conducted excavations at

Lapithos Lapithos or Lapethos ( el, Λάπηθος; tr, Lapta) is a town in Cyprus. ''De facto'', it is under the control of Northern Cyprus. Archeologists claim that Lapithos was founded by the Achean brothers Praxandros and Cepheus. According to Stra ...

in 1913 with Leonard Halford Dudley Buxton. Furthermore, in 1914, he published a handbook of the Cesnola collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was an advisor during the drafting of the 1935 Antiquities Law and the setting up of the Department of Antiquities. According to

Robert Ranulph Marett Robert Ranulph Marett (13 June 1866 – 18 February 1943) was a British ethnologist and a proponent of the British Evolutionary School of cultural anthropology. Founded by Marett's older colleague, Edward Burnett Tylor, it asserted that mo ...

, He was a major influence on the British-Australian archaeologist

Vere Gordon Childe Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 189219 October 1957) was an Australian archaeologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and ...

. At Oxford, Myres worked for the Director of

Naval Intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...

Works

*
Excavations in Cyprus in 1894
' (1897)
Copper and Bronze in Cyprus and South-East Europe
(1898) * '' A catalogue of the Cyprus museum, with a chronicle of excavations undertaken since the British occupation, and introductory notes on Cypriote archaeology'' (1899)
Notes on the History of the Kabyle Pottery
(1902) *
Sarcophagus from Amathus, Sarcophagus from Golgi
' (1909-1911) * '' The value of ancient history'' (1910) * '' The Dawn of History'' (New York/London: Holt/Williams and Norgate, 1911)
: Outline Analysis of Books I-Vl''
(Oxford: Hart rinter 1912). * '' Handbook of the Cesnola collection of antiquities from Cyprus'' (1914) *
Notes on the ‘Prison of Saint Catharine’ at Salamis in Cyprus
' (1915) * '' The influence of anthropology on the course of political science'' (1916) * '' The Political Ideas of the Greeks'' (1927) * ''Who were the Greeks?'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930), Sather Lectures
The Early Pot-Fabrics of Asia Minor
(1930) *
The Cretan Labyrinth: A Retrospect of Aegean Research
' (1933)
The Amathus Bowl: A Long-Lost Masterpiece of Oriental Engraving
(1933)
A Modern 'Kernos' Vessel from Tiflis
(1937)
A 'Kernos,' or Ring-Vase, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
(1939) *
Excavations in Cyprus, 1913
' (1940-1945)
Concentric Circle Ornament on Vessels of Wood from the Taurus
(1952) * '' Herodotus, Father of History'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953)

References

External links

* *
Article on Myers at the Pitt Rivers Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Myres, John Linton 1869 births Writers from Preston, Lancashire 1954 deaths British archaeologists Wykeham Professors of Ancient History Prehistorians Victoria Medal recipients Alumni of New College, Oxford Presidents of the Folklore Society Knights Bachelor Fellows of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Presidents of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland