From 1934 to 1954 the Penn Museum conducted excavations at the site of Kourion, in Cyprus, encompassing a range of sites and time periods. As international political tensions rose in the late 1930s, excavators at Kourion were optimistic and determined to continue their work despite World War II. The Kourion Expedition records in the Penn Museum Archives include some of the correspondence between the excavators and friends, family, and colleagues both in Philadelphia and Athens, as well as excavation notebooks. These allow us to reconstruct what the excavators at Kourion experienced in these tense years.
Through the letters in the Archives, we are introduced to people who dedicated years of their lives to the excavations at Kourion. Among them are George McFadden, the researcher who financially supported the project, and Virginia Grace, an esteemed classical archaeologist. We also meet John Franklin Daniel (who often went by “Pete”), an enthusiastic young doctoral candidate, and Bert Hodge Hill, an experienced excavator who oversaw and mentored the other team members.
The Kourion records reflect little concern for building tensions across Europe until the very late 1930s. Many nations were arming, but war did not yet seem imminent. Despite Nazi Germany annexing Austria in March 1938, records from this time show enthusiastic reports of finds and excavation, as well as plans for publications and travel.
Over the summer of 1938, tensions mounted as Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia. In September, the first allusions to political escalations began to appear in the Kourion correspondence.
McFadden sent a telegram to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens on September 25th, planning to get back to digging despite the imminent war and valiantly promising to “risk any situation that might arise.” Two days later, Bert Hodge Hill wrote to his friend and illustrator Lewey T. Lands to discuss possible travel complications to and from Cyprus. Hill responded to McFadden’s telegram on the same day, with the same concerns. With hope—or maybe naïveté—Hill added, “I sincerely hope that by the time you see this letter the threats to the peace of the world may have wholly disappeared.”
After Great Britain, France, and Italy agreed to turn over the Sudetenland to the German state, the Kourion correspondence resumed some sense of normalcy, with many congenial letters from John Franklin Daniel.
The archives reflect this ease in tension through early 1939. McFadden wrote to Hill on January 3rd with cheerful updates and holiday tidings. On March 10th, McFadden wrote again, “everything is going smoothely [sic] except the weather which has been fierce ever since we arrived.” A letter from McFadden on March 13th anticipated a leisurely summer trip around the Mediterranean. Just two days later, Germany invaded unceded areas of Czechoslovakia, an unequivocal act of aggression.
On April 7th, the conflict came closer, when the Italian army invaded Albania. This move frightened many in Greece and Cyprus. Italian blockades began draining goods like sugar and coffee from shelves and obstructing mail.
Around this time, the correspondence begins to reflect more acute concern over current events. On April 26th of 1939, Daniel wrote to the acting director of the Penn Museum, Dr. Edith Hall Dohan:
“We all feel that we are sitting on the rim of a volcano which may erupt any minute, the political situation of the world being what it is. Cyprus would almost certainly see something of the war which would break out now. Fortunately some big Hellenistic tombs near here should prove bomb-proof.”
Tension continued to simmer. On August 25th, two days after the Russo-German Nonaggression Pact, McFadden wrote to Hill, “I have just heard over the Radio that no German ships are leaving German ports so fear we’ll not be able to sail on the ‘Europa’.”
Just a few days later, Germany invaded Poland. On September 3rd, Britain and France declared war.
On September 18th, McFadden wrote to Hill again recounting his frenzied escape. He had been in Germany when war was declared, and barely managed to flee (most likely back to the United States). However, McFadden was still optimistic, and wrote to Hill, “as things are at present I should think there would be nothing to impede our work there [in Cyprus].”
Excavations at Kourion continued. Even when McFadden was not present on the island he received updates from Daniel, though at odd intervals due to the disrupted mail system.
McFadden returned to Kourion in September of 1939 and continued working without major interruptions until April 1940, a period colloquially called “Phoney War” because there was little actual armed conflict.
The correspondence in early 1940 shows cautious optimism. McFadden wrote to Hill on January 1st to say gas was no longer rationed and mentioned Daniel, but saying “of course, we’d have to risk his being suddenly called home by the war.” Virginia Grace also joined McFadden at Kourion, praising the climate and beauty of Cyprus. Hard at work, they rested only on Sundays.
The excavation notebooks of Grace and McFadden hold clues to their activities and impressions of the war where the correspondence lacks. For example, from May 25th to June 6th of 1940 Grace recorded a trip around the Eastern Mediterranean stopping at workrooms and archaeological collections in modern Israel and Lebanon to look for material, it seems, for her research at Kourion.
On June 9th of 1940, Grace wrote, “working on Sunday, seems we may have to leave Cyprus Thursday on the last boat.” They excavated until the last moment before leaving. The next day, Mussolini officially allied with Hitler, and the Axis powers declared war on Britain. On June 11th, Italy began attacks on British-occupied Egypt. The war had finally reached their doorstep.
Around June 15th, Grace began to nurse British soldiers evacuated from North Africa. On June 23rd, Grace returned to Athens to secure passage home, but gave up her seat to a family in need. McFadden continued digging through July. Germany continued inching closer to Greece.
Grace was the last American archaeologist to leave Greece. On October 5th, the day after Hitler and Mussolini famously met at Brenner Pass, she caught a train to Turkey, where McFadden picked her up. They returned to Cyprus to resume digging in the early winter of 1940.
According to some sources, Grace and McFadden “fled” from Cyprus to Alexandria, Egypt in mid-April of 1941, but the Kourion archival catalogue includes some excavation photos dated to April 24th. A May 1st letter from Daniel to McFadden, sent from the United States to Kourion, indicates that McFadden and Grace were still digging. Daniel writes that he gave the annual lecture at the Museum telling McFadden that, “the audience interrupted me to give you an ovation.…That must be just about the only excavation in the Near East. So you may feel very sure that your activities are being watched with great and sympathetic interest. We only hope that you will be able to continue.”
Complications continued to arise. Excavation funds in Greece were frozen. Their day-to-day safety was uncertain. On May 19th, Alice M. Goudy, the assistant director of the Museum at the time, wrote to McFadden, “we were very glad to hear from Mr. Logue that you were apparently safe and well a few days ago,” supposing their situation could change at any moment. On this same day, Grace’s excavation entries resume, describing a very hot excavation day. The team began taking Sundays off again.
On June 4th, Grace’s mother wrote a poignant letter to the Museum asking after her daughter. Three days later, Goudy responded reassuring Mrs. Grace that her daughter was with McFadden and expressing her confidence in him to keep them safe. On June 27th, Grace optimistically extended the trench that they were working in. On July 13th, we get the last dated discovery of objects from 1941 in Grace’s notebook. What follows are drawings and artifact catalogues, all of which could have been added after she left Cyprus. After that, there were no new entries until 1942.
When they stopped excavating, Grace went to work as a clerk in the American Consulate in Alexandria and—in anticipation of further conflict and insecurity—buried some records she had in a Giza tomb for safekeeping. Later, Grace ended up in Ankara working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). On December 17th of 1941, Grace wrote to Daniel from Cyprus that she anticipated leaving soon, so at some point she did return to Cyprus. There is then a gap in the correspondence until April 1942.
At the beginning of March 1942, we find another entry in Grace’s notebook, though her entries end again after March 13th. On April 5th, she sent a letter to Dohan, explaining their system for creating and mailing duplicates of their findings to prevent loss in the unreliable wartime mail system. She also writes, “we are planning to leave Cyprus very shortly for Egypt. We have been trying for some time to get definite transportation arranged…but it seems the only way is to appear on the spot and wait.” After this, there is again a gap in the correspondence until June 4th, 1944.
June 6th, 1944, D-Day, marked a turning point in the war and was followed by a slew of Allied victories. On June 7th, the secretary of the Museum Marian Godfrey wrote to McFadden thanking him for funding the excavations and affirming their intent to resume. From other sources, we know Grace spent 1944 working with the OSS.
Finally, on May 7th, 1945, Germany surrendered. On September 15th, Kourion correspondence resumed, and McFadden wrote to Hill that he hoped to be released from the Navy soon to return to Kourion. On October 11th, Godfrey, by then acting director of the Museum, wrote to McFadden notifying him of his reappointment as a research fellow. McFadden continued in active duty with the Navy until winter when he was released. Grace also stuck with the project in Kourion for several more years. The project continued with McFadden’s financial support until 1954.
There are other records and correspondence from the Kourion project housed in archives in Athens, so the story here is not a complete picture but a vignette. Through the correspondence and field notebooks preserved from the excavations at Kourion in the Penn Museum Archives, we get just a glimpse into the experience of Penn archaeologists during World War II.
The Kourion records illustrate a group of determined and courageous individuals committed to seeing the project through while contributing to wartime intelligence efforts. These people were more than archaeologists: they were dynamic actors at a crucial moment in modern history and are a fascinating bridge between the ancient Mediterranean, Europe in the mid20th century, and our historical eye today.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Alex Pezzati of the Penn Museum Archives for all of his help with the research and archival scans for this project. All images used are from the Kourion, Cyprus, Expedition Records in the Penn Museum Archives.