| RefNo | EC/1901/04 |
| Previous numbers | Cert XII, 124 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Evans, Sir Arthur John: certificate of election to the Royal Society |
| Citation | Hon Fellow of Brasenose College, Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Distinguished as an archaeologist and anthropologist. Mr Evans's recent discoveries in Crete have been of the highest importance as throwing an entirely new light on the early civilisation of the AEgean and Mediterranean areas, and proving the hitherto unknown fact that a Prae-Phoenician form of writting was in use within those areas during the Mycenaean period. Starting from certain engraved gems, some of them found in Crete, the figures on which he suspected to be alphabetic or syllabic signs, he was led by inductive reasoning to infer that in that island there must exist monuments of a praehistoric system of writing. For some years he has carried on investigations in Crete, with the final result of bringing to light, in what seems to be the Palace of King Minos, or the famous Labyrinth, upwards of a thousand clay tablets, inscribed with documents in both a pictographic and a linear system of writing, as well as remains of artistic work of remarkable interest. The existance of a high stage of Mediterranean culture, about 2000 BC, has thus been established, and the use of writing among Hellenic peoples has itself been carried back to a date at least 500 years earlier than has hitherto been regarded as possible. Of Mr Evans's other published works may be cited his researches in the anthropology and antiquities of Illyricum and Dalmatia, and his numerous memoirs relating to the Iron Age, the Mycenaean Period, the late Celtic or Early Iron Period, and generally the connection of Egypt and the East with the dawn of European civilisation. His works on the coinage of Tarentum and Sicily are standard authorities, and after the death of Professor Freeman he completed that eminent writer's 'History of Sicily.' |
| Proposers | E B Tylor; Avebury; John Evans; Halsbury; A Macalister; W Greenwell; J Beddoe; F Galton; W Boyd Dawkins; A C Haddon; T McKenny Hughes; T G Bonney; E B Poulton; William Turner; J Bruce; D J Cunningham; W F R Weldon; R B Clifton; W J Sollas |
| Extent | 1 sheet |
| AccessStatus | Open |
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Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA6065 | Evans; Sir; Arthur John (1851 - 1941) | 1851 - 1941 |