Читать книгу The Extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya, Final Reports, Volume VIII - Donald O. White - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAcknowledgments
Turning finally to all who have helped to realize this book, the years between the Pennsylvania Expedition’s final 1981 study season and our brief return in 2004 were marked by a progressive drying up of communications between our Libyan colleagues and ourselves, broken only when we met by chance at academic conferences in England, France, and Italy. In this regard, I wish to express to all our Libyan and European colleagues the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s keen disappointment that U.S. State Department regulations prohibited the organization of an archaeology conference which could include Libyan participants at the University of Pennsylvania or at some other U.S.-based venue during these years.
Conversely, it was greatly encouraging when Susan Kane and I were permitted at last to return as CAP (Cyrenaican Archaeological Project) representatives, and in my own case, on three additional occasions as a tour lecturer to meet up again with so many of our old friends and collaborators in the field. Fadul Ali Mohamad, Abdulgadr al-Muzeini, Ramadan Kwader, Mohamad Bu Sherit, Fadlallah Abdulsalam, Abdul Hamid Abdussaid, and Mohamad Aghilla Bulkassim in particular were all extremely generous in their greetings as well as in their repeated expressions of hope for a rapid resumption of the American mission’s work in Cyrene. It came as a special privilege in 2004 to visit Breyik Attiyah el-Jiteily in his home. This initial trip also enabled me to meet Dr. Giuma Anag for the first time. Since then, his support for CAP has been unswerving, and I am pleased to have this opportunity to thank him and his predecessor as President of the Department of Antiquities, Dr. Ali Khadouri, for their on-going assistance.
At the same time, it is painful to have to note how the intervening years have coincided with the passing of so many friends and colleagues. Some in their prime, others only after a fullness of years, all are sorely missed, and certainly none forgotten. I think in particular of Lidiano Bacchielli, François Chamoux, Claudio Frigerio, John Lloyd, Sandro Stucchi, and Jim Thorn. On a happier note I would like to express special thanks to Nicola Bonacasa, Serenella Ensoli, Emanuela Fabbricotti, Andrè Laronde, and Mario Luni for their many years of collegial support and assistance.
The Cyrene project has overlapped with the University of Pennsylvania Museum directorships of Froelich Rainey, James Pritchard, Martin Biddle, Robert Dyson, Jeremy Sabloff, Richard Leventhal, and now, Richard Hodges; and before that when the project was initially sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Ancient and Medieval Archaeology, under the directorships of George Forsythe and Theodore Buttrey. While Ted Buttrey, who has contributed the study of the sanctuary coins which appears as the sixth volume of this series, and Martin Biddle were the only members of this select crowd who managed to overcome the complexities of the Libyan entry and exit system to inspect the site at first hand, all have made important contributions and deserve the project’s continuing thanks.
The two supporting museums’ generous financial support was supplemented over the years by the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as a large number of supporting corporations and institutions listed elsewhere.1 Apart from these, there remain the many private individuals of conspicuous generosity who have volunteered to assist our work with financial help from its inception in 1969 down to the present day. While the contributions of nearly all of these are acknowledged in the usual but entirely inadequate way by listing their names in print, four persons have been omitted, entirely by my error. A familiar Latin bromide runs aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus or “Even the good Homer sometimes sleeps,” in other words, makes mistakes. Not to be confused on any level with Homer, I cannot begin to explain how their omissions occurred. The blameless victims of my appallingly bad memory are John and Sarah Price, whose names should have been added to the series’ first volume twenty-eight years ago, and Edward and Josephine Hueber, who were omitted from the 2007 LS article announcing the establishment of the Cyrenaican Archaeology Project. To them I can only offer another hopefully less fatuous aphorism: auctor pretiosa facit or something like “It is the giver who makes the gift precious.”
As to the many persons responsible for producing the fine photos, plans, sections, elevations, and drawings of the individual architectural frusta which have gone into the making of this book, I would simply like to redirect the reader’s attention to pp. xviii and xxvi of the prefaces of the first and fifth volumes, respectively, of this series, White 1984 and White 1993, to which I am now extremely pleased to be able to add the name of David Hopkins, who has drawn the restoration drawings of the S20 Propylaeum and the later sanctuary’s restoration which serves as the book’s endpapers. The volume would simply not exist without the creative imput of these talented colleagues.
In addition I thank Karen Vellucci for once more extending her friendship and editorial expertise to sort out the many problems in the text and illustrations created by me in my ignorance of computers and other related matters. I wish to salute my two anonymous external readers, who have demonstrated special diligence and exceptional intelligence in contributing their time and skills to improve the text’s quality. And I further wish to thank Jennifer Quick for applying her patience, hard work, and editorial expertise to bringing this book to a point where it could actually be published. This still leaves me, quite appropriately, with the full responsibility for all errors contained therein. Finally, to my peerless wife, Joan, who has put up with forty years of Libya madness, I can only offer my heartfelt appreciation, gratitude, and love.
Cohasset
Christmas 2008
P.S. As this volume was going to press, the sad word of David Hopkins’s premature and accidental death reached me.
1. White 1984, xvii–xviii; White 1993, xxv–xxvi.