Following Odysseus Not the end of the world Amarna city of light ...

ObituaryMr Mellaartcomfortable caves and a hunter-gathererexistence, to settle beside the spring atJericho and build a village based on agricultureand the domestication of animals –the first definite evidence of a link betweenthe historical past and prehistory, some timearound 9500 BC. It was Jimmy’s scepticismthat had been the trigger for this momentousdiscovery.James Mellaart was born in 1925 inLondon, of a Dutch father and an Irishmother. The family moved to Amsterdamin 1932, where his mother died and hisfather remarried, moving in 1940 moved toMaastricht. As a young man Jimmy workedat the National Museum of Antiquitiesin Leiden and studied Egyptology. Hereturned to England in 1947 to start a BA atUniversity College in London.Jimmy was conspicuously proud of hisScots ancestry, as a member of the Maclartyclan, a branch of the Macdonalds. Thisled to a fervent admiration of everythingScottish and a lifetime’s happy consumptionof whisky, one of the many endearingaspects of his singular personality.In England he participated in one ofKathleen Kenyon’s postwar excavations atSutton Walls, an Iron Age site in south-westEngland. He graduated from the Instituteof Archaeology in 1951, and was promptlygiven a two-year Fellowship at the BritishInstitute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA).There he devoted himself to exploring muchof south-western Turkey, either on foot orusing buses and trains for transport. It wasthen that he revealed his remarkable stamina,tireless in his search for Chalcolithicand Bronze Age sites, of which he foundnumerous examples, including Beycesultan.He also learned fluent colloquial Turkishby staying overnight in villages anywherehe could find a bed, and being interrogatedby his inquisitive hosts about his motivesbefore being allowed to go to sleep.In 1952 he met Arlette Cenani, whom hemarried in 1954 and who bore him a son,Alan, in 1955. This was also the momentwhen the curious incident of the DorakAffair happened. As he told the story, he wasaccosted while on a train journey to Izmirby an attractive young Greek woman, AnnaPapastrati, wearing an ancient gold bracelet.She took him into her confidence, told himthe bracelet was part of a fabulous treasurehoard reputedly unearthed in the village ofDorak in Bursa province. She then invitedhim back to her house to see the hoard andallowed him to draw it and to make notesabout it. In return he gave his word to keepMinerva November/December 2012it secret (which he did) until she told himhe could release the news. But she and thehoard both vanished into thin air. In 1958,he revealed his manuscript of over 60,000words and annotated drawings, which werethen published in the Illustrated LondonNews. This caused a sensation, and a publicoutcry in Turkey, which accused him ofbeing a party to a criminal theft. He deniedthe charge, and an independent investigationby the BIAA exonerated him. The entiremanuscript has remained locked up by theBIAA till this very day. The few individualswho have seen it were astonished by thedepth and detail of his record, which wentway beyond the imagination of any scholar.The truth of the Dorak Affair has gone withJimmy to his grave.Arlette was his devoted partner at thistime and remained so for the rest of his life.I remember meeting both of them when Iwas passed on by Kathleen to Seton Lloyd,Director of the BIAA, to work as a draughtsmanbetween her seasons at Jericho, followedby a similar instruction to SinclairHood, Director of the British School ofArchaeology in Athens, to keep me occupiedin Athens and subsequently at Knossos.At Beycesultan, where Seton Lloyd andJimmy were working in tandem, I again waspaid a nominal sum, and accommodated in atent in the grounds of the old AnatolianThe formidable archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon,or the Great Sitt, as she was known to the Arabworkmen who helped her excavate Jerichoduring the 1950s. (Photograph PA)house in the village which housed the archaeologists.One day, working on the site, I contractedsunstroke and was carried back to thevillage in a bullock cart. Arlette, who wasacting as interpreter, photographer and generalmanager, took a maternal interest in myrecovery. Later I stayed with the Mellaarts inArlette’s stepfather’s magnificent wooden yaliat Kanlica, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.Sadly it was destroyed by a fire which alsoburnt many of Jimmy’s excavation notes.Seton Lloyd was a highly intelligent manwho early on recognised Jimmy’s extraordinarytalents, making him Assistant Directorof the BIAA from 1959 to 1961 and, as Ihave said, jointly excavating Beycesultanwith him. The only thing that disconcertedme was the fact that Jimmy proceeded toredraw all my pottery drawings. I realisedmany years later that this was not becausethey were inaccurate, but simply to etchthe images in his own prodigious memory.That this can happen I can testify from myown experience, for I can remember almostto this day thousands of drawings I madeat Jericho, which are indelibly etched intomy consciousness.I also remember being asked to make acopy of a wall painting at Beycesultan whichthey were convinced depicted a man leapingover a bull’s horns. I simply could notsee this, and decided I would just copy themarks on the wall as best I could. They wereperfectly happy with the result.Jimmy’s real moment of glory came withhis discovery of Çatal Höyük in 1958 andits subsequent excavation. This conclusivelyproved that the development of mankindwas not limited to the Levant and theFertile Crescent, but extended westwardinto the Cenani Anatolian heartland. Thisrevolutionary discovery gave him fame andsecured his immortality. Its extensive settlementand extraordinary array of artefactscan be dated to circa 7500-5700 BC.Finally established as Lecturer inAnatolian Archaeology at the Institute ofArchaeology in London, and disdainfulof committees and any formal academicresponsibilities, James Mellaart inspiredgenerations of young scholars with his sheerenthusiasm and breadth of knowledge.His name has been linked to the conceptof genius, which he may well have been.But for his many friends he will be rememberedmuch more as a lovable human being,with all those eccentricities that made himutterly unique.• James Mellaart(14 November 1925–29 July, 2012)9