• Introduction
• Collection Description
• Report on the Collection by Flora Karagianni
• Box/Folder Listing

Introduction

Range of Collection Dates: late 19^th to early 20^th century

Size: 2.0 linear feet (5 archival boxes)

Language: Greek

Photocopying, literary rights, and citation: Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. No further photoduplication of copies of material in the collection can be made when Princeton University Library does not own the original. Permission to publish material from the collection must be requested from the Associate University Librarian for Rare Books and Special Collections. The library has no information on the status of literary rights in the collection and researchers are responsible for determining any questions of copyright. Citations should be as follows: Greek Inscriptions Collection, Box #, Folder #, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library

Collection Description

Consists of manuscript copies of Greek inscriptions from Orthodox churches, monasteries, and icons in Greece, Asia Minor, the Greek islands, and Serbia that were compiled and written on slips of paper (12 x 22 cm.) in the late 19th and early 20th century by the Greek epigrapher Giorgios Lampakes.

Arrangement

The collection has been organized alphabetically (Greek alphabet) by place-name. Greek names have been transcribed into English.

Added Entries

The following added entries have been assigned to this collection to highlight significant sources (other than the main entry), subjects, and forms of the collection's materials. Where possible Library of Congress Subjects Headings have been used, and the forms of names reflect international cataloging standards. As a result, all of these entries may be searched in the Library's online catalog, the Department's database (MASC), and other bibliographic catalogs, to find related material.

    Person:

    Lampakes, Giorgios, 1854-1914

    Subject Headings (in uppercase) / Form Headings (in upper and lower case):

    Inscriptions, Greek
    Manuscripts, Greek--19^th century
    Manuscripts, Greek--20^th century
    MONASTERIES, ORTHODOX EASTERN--GREECE
    MONASTERIES, ORTHODOX EASTERN--SERBIA

Report by Flora Karagianni

The Archive includes five boxes with numerous cards where over 4000 inscriptions have been registered. I had the opportunity to browse three of these boxes, and to have a quick look at almost 2500 inscriptions. After my brief study due to the limited time I had, I came to the following conclusions:

1. The person who kept the notes and registered all the inscriptions was undoubtedly George Lampakes. Since he was the Personal Secretary of Queen Olga, he accompanied her on many trips in Greece and abroad. It seems that during these trips he took notes of the inscriptions that he saw, focusing on the Byzantine and particularly the post-Byzantine inscriptions written on icons and mural paintings, and carved on stones and metallic objects. The attribution of the cards’ paternity to George Lampakes can be proven by the following factors:

First of all, according to comments found in most of the cards, the cards were written in a period of almost 20 years, between 1887-1906, by a Greek traveler, who visited many places in Greece and beyond, such as Asia Minor, Italy (Venice), Austria (Vienna), European Turkey, Thrace, and many sites of Greece, from Macedonia and Thrace to the Peloponnese   and the islands. As shown by the notes that he kept on over 4000 inscriptions, he had a special interest in Byzantine and post-Byzantine culture and a remarkable knowledge of Christian art.

George Lampakes is probably the only person who matches all the aforementioned qualifications and characteristics. We do know that by that time Lampakes traveled a lot and visited all these places, as he accompanied Queen Olga, the wife of King George A’. Until now we were aware of the fact that he took photos of the places and the monuments that he saw, some of which were published in his “Periigiseis” and in his album entitled “Memoire sur les antiquités chretiennes de la Grèce” (Athènes 1902), and some others in the recent calendar of the year 2000 edited by the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens. ”His photos are of great worth, since many of the monuments that he saw at the end of the 19th century are no longer in existence. Now, due to the archive of his notes, we will be able to acquire a lot of information on the murals  and several objects of ecclesiastical art, such as icons, vestments, holy vessels and manuscripts.

An even more convincing fact linking the archive with Lampakes is a letter found in one of the envelopes kept in the boxes, dated September 10, 1906, probably a few months after Lampakes’s visit to Angelokastro. The recipient of the letter, as written on its envelope, is “George Lampakes, the Personal Secretary of her Majesty the Queen, Athens." It seems that at Lampakes’s prompting, the sender of the letter, Daniel, went to Angelokastro and, although he tried, he couldn’t see the inscriptions on the tower of Saint George that Lampakes had observed some months ago. What is more interesting is a comment written at the end of his letter, where he says that the abbot of the monastery regretted the fact that he didn’t ask him for money. It is an indication that Lampakes visited the monastery either as a member of the Queen’s suite, or her representative, who had the authority to give a donation under her orders, in her name.

The other factor that leaves no doubt regarding the paternity of the archive is the fact that in the card with the inscriptions of the Daphni Monastery, the writer records some inscriptions (see my “Christianike Archaeologia tis Mones Daphniou”). In 1889, under this title, Lampakes published his book on the Daphni Monastery, in which, as I checked, he has recorded some inscriptions (Roman, Latin, Byzantine and post-Byzantine) found in the Monastery that are also included in the Archive. It is interesting to note that in the cards one can find references to the book and especially to specific pages of the chapter entitled “History” (in Greek), where all of them are recorded. So, there is no doubt that in both cases the writer is the same person, George Lampakes.
 
 2. The Archive is very well organized. There are envelopes with cards, in which Lampakes has recorded the inscriptions that he saw at each monument he visited. Every envelope has the name of the town where the inscribed objects were found, and includes cards where he gives a transcription of the inscriptions carved in stone and mostly painted on icons or on murals. What is interesting is that, as a Byzantinologist, in many cases he commented on the artistic value of the paintings and the icons that he saw. For example, in some cases, especially with regard to old icons, he remarks: “of special artistic value”.

Lampakes very often gives descriptions of the icons and writes several comments on their art. His cards, written during his visit to the Church of Saint George in Venice are full of notes of this kind. The icons kept in that monument, which was the main church of the Greek diaspora in Venice, were made by famous painters of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, such as Damascenus, Emmanuel Tzanes, George Klotzas, etc. The first systematic study of the collection was made in 1962 by Manolis Chatzidakis in his book entitled Icônes de Saint-Georges des Grecs et la collection de l’Institut. From that time until today, due to the great artistic value of that collection, many Byzantinologists, such as G. Gerola, S. Bettini, A. Xyngopoulos, and N. Drandakis have turned their attention to particular groups or individual icons of the collection and some very important publications have been produced, the most recent being N. Tsilente – Papadopoulou, Icons of the Greek Confraternity of Venice from the 16th to the first half of the 20th century (Athens, 2002). None of them knew that Lampakes, almost one century ago, had seen many of these icons and kept invaluable notes on them.

3. The value of the Archive is enormous. Lampakes visited the most important monuments of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods preserved at the end of the 19th century both in Greece and abroad. His contribution comprises a very important catalogue of Christian cultural heritage and is a valuable testimony which can be used as a guide for Byzantine and post-Byzantine inscriptions preserved in many kinds of art (icons, murals, holy vessels, textiles, manuscripts). Many of the inscribed objects, or the monuments where they belonged, do not exist today. They have been lost, removed or destroyed through the years, and mostly during the wars.

For instance, during his visit to Veria Lampakes recorded the inscriptions that he saw in the churches of Panagia Kyriotissa and Saint Nicolas. Both of these churches which were very important monuments of the late Byzantine era, were destroyed some decades ago, and our knowledge of them is very sparse. Thanks to a photo published in 1902 by Lampakes, we have an idea about the magnificent external decoration of the church of St Nicholas. Since that photo is the only archaeological evidence available until now about the monument, the notes kept in Lambakes’s archive can prove very useful because they can fill a lot of gaps on the paintings, icons and inscriptions of this church and of other churches as well. Meanwhile, they can also contribute significantly to an effort made by the Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities to identify the origin of a great number of icons kept today in the local museum and in other churches.
 
In a great number of examples, the inscriptions mentioned in the archive are not visible today. For instance, at the end of the 19th century, Lampakes read, on the columns of the Erechtheion (Acropolis, Athens), incised inscriptions - such as the ones at the Parthenon that were published by Anastasios Orlandos - the existence of which was unknown to us. Having always in mind that texts of this kind, incised or written on the surface of columns and walls, are always valuable, not only for the study of the development of writing, but also because they often offer interesting information about the daily and religious life of the towns, I consider their “discovery” in Lampakes’s archive extremely interesting and important.

In other cases, as I had the opportunity to find out, Lampakes records inscriptions or texts written in manuscripts kept in some of the monasteries or churches that he visited. One of the most interesting examples among the cards I browsed, is the case of the Varkakova Monastery, where he saw a very important manuscript, in which the property of the monastery in 1696 was recorded. During the 19th-20th century, several scholars (Buchon, Sathas, Lamprou, Orlandos, Yannopoulos, Katsaros) wrote about that manuscript, but all of them were unaware that Lampakes had visited the monastery and kept notes on that manuscript. Moreover, as regards the same monument, Lampakes’s testimony on the inscriptions observed on its murals is unique, because these paintings are no longer in existence.

4. I noticed that many of the cards were numbered and although they were sorted alphabetically, their numbers were not in order. I suppose that maybe Lampakes himself had given numbers to the inscriptions in an effort to catalogue and probably publish them sometime later, something that never happened. Of course, there is always the possibility that they were numbered and sorted by another person who worked on this archive. According to a small enquiry I made, the Christian and Byzantine Museum of Athens which owns the photographical archive of Lampakes, threw away a lot of material kept in its stores some decades ago. Perhaps the cards that were unnamed and “without interest” since they mostly referred to post-Byzantine inscriptions had been among this material. So, if the Museum’s staff had not realized their paternity or worth, then they might have thrown them away and maybe that is how they ended up at a second-hand dealer.

5. The publication of the archive could prove valuable for various research efforts in many fields of Byzantine art that deal with the study of monuments, paintings, icons, objects of ecclesiastical art and inscriptions. Meanwhile, since it was written by a very respectable scholar, it could serve as reliable documentation on the possession of cultural products in the Christian churches in Greece and abroad by the end of the 19th century.

I do believe that the existence of these 4000 cards with Lampakes’s notes on Byzantine and post-Byzantine inscriptions should become known to the scientific community because they can be very helpful in several kinds of studies, and can substantially enrich the knowledge of Byzantine heritage. But before that, someone should study it more thoroughly and try to find a connection among the numbered cards. I am sure that a lot of very interesting things can come to light through such an endeavor.

       Flora Karagianni

      Thessaloniki, September 2004

Box/Folder Listing