Sterling Dow (19 November 1903,

Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropol ...

– 9 January 1995,

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

) was an American

classical archaeologist Classical archaeology is the archaeological investigation of the Mediterranean civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Nineteenth-century archaeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann were drawn to study the societies they had read about i ...

epigrapher Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

, and professor of archaeology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. (with Dow's publication list) After secondary education at

Phillips Exeter Academy (not for oneself) la, Finis Origine Pendet (The End Depends Upon the Beginning) gr, Χάριτι Θεοῦ (By the Grace of God) , location = 20 Main Street , city = Exeter, New Hampshire , zipcode ...

, Dow matriculated in 1921 at Harvard University (This article has the misspelling "Burt Hodge Hill" instead of the correct "Bert Hodge Hill".) and graduated there in 1925 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. As the winner of the Fiske Scholarship, Dow spent the academic year 1925–1926 studying ancient history at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

. Returning to Harvard in 1926, he graduated with M.A. in 1928 and Ph.D. in history in 1936. His doctoral supervisor was the Canadian ancient historian William Scott Ferguson (1875–1954). Dow married Elizabeth Sanderson Flagg in 1931. Sterling and Elizabeth Dow spent the years from 1931 to 1936 in Athens, Greece and often worked together on making paper impressions of stone inscriptions unearthed from the

Ancient Agora of Athens The ancient Agora of Athens (also called the Classical Agora) is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora, located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill kn ...

by excavations sponsored by the

American School of Classical Studies , native_name_lang = Greek , image = American School of Classical Studies at Athens.jpg , image_size = , image_alt = , caption = The ASCSA main building as seen from Mount Lykavittos , latin_name = , other_name = , former_name = , mo ...

. A Guggenheim Fellowship for the academic year 1934–1935 and various Harvard awards supported Dow in Athens. He benefitted from working with the epigrapher Johannes Kirchner (1859–1940). During his career Dow was awarded two more Guggenheim Fellowships (in 1959 and 1966). Dow's colleagues in Athens included

Bert Hodge Hill Bert Hodge Hill (March 7, 1874 – December 2, 1958) was an American archeologist and the director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1906 to 1926. Early life and education Bert Hodge Hill was born on March 7, 1874 in ...

Homer Thompson Homer Armstrong Thompson (September 7, 1906 – May 7, 2000) was a Canadian classical archaeologist of the twentieth century, specializing in ancient Greece. While studying for his doctorate at the University of Michigan, Benjamin Dean Mer ...

William Bell Dinsmoor William Bell Dinsmoor Sr. (July 29, 1886 – July 2, 1973) was an American architectural historian of classical Greece and a Columbia University professor of art and archaeology. Biography He was born on July 29, 1886, in Windham, New Hampshire. ...

Virginia Grace Virginia Randolph Grace (1901–1994) was an American archaeologist, known for her lifelong work into amphoras and their stamped handles. As a result of this work, amphoras and their stamped handles are now useful as a tool for closely dating ar ...

, and Lucy Shoe. At Harvard, Dow was an instructor from 1936 to 1941, an associate professor from 1941 to 1948, Professor of History and Greek from 1946 to 1948, and the John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology from 1949 to 1970, when he retired as professor emeritus. During WW II, he was given an academic leave of absence and served as a member of the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

in Washington, DC, and in Egypt. During the academic year 1966–1967 he was on sabbatical in Athens as the Annual Professor at the American School of Classical Studies. From 1970 to 1977 he was a professor of Greek civilization and history at Boston College. For the academic year 1977–1978 he was a professor of classics at Vassar College. Dow was given three honorary degrees. He was a founder of ''Archaeology'' magazine and the

American Research Center in Egypt American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

. From 1946 to 1948 he was the president of the American Institute of Archaeology. In 1984 Duke University Press published a

festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

in honor of his 80th birthday. Ohio State University's Center for Epigraphical and Paleographical Studies administers The Sterling and Elizabeth Dow Fellowship in Greek epigraphy and history. His wife died in 1990 and he died in 1995. There was a memorial service for Dow in Harvard's Memorial Church on 8 April 1995.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dow, Sterling Classical archaeologists Epigraphers Phillips Exeter Academy alumni Harvard College alumni Harvard University faculty Academics from Portland, Maine 1903 births 1995 deaths Presidents of the Archaeological Institute of America