George E. Mylonas

George Emmanuel Mylonas (Γεώργιος Εμμανουήλ Μυλωνάς, December 9, 1898, in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey) – April 15, 1988, Greece) was a prominent Greek and Aegean archaeologist.

While a student in Athens during the Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, he joined the Greek Army and was later taken prisoner. While a prisoner of war he lost enough weight that the permanent ID band that was welded onto his wrist was easily taken on and off and exchanged with other prisoners. His future wife fled Asia Minor with only her tennis racket and spent the war living with family friends in Greece.

Mylonas was in Smyrna when the city was destroyed by the Turks in late September 1922. He remarked that the family silver was saved for him by a Turkish neighbor, though the rest of the family home, with the artwork, was confiscated by the government and never repatriated.

Following the war, he returned to his studies (he had been awarded his B.A. from the International College in Smyrna in 1918) and earned a doctorate from the University of Athens in 1927 with a dissertation entitled The Neolithic Period in Greece. About this time he also worked as bursar at the American School for Classical Studies at Athens. In 1928, he emigrated to America to study at Johns Hopkins University and from that institution received a second Ph.D. the following year. At Johns Hopkins he was a student of David Moore Robinson. He was married to Lela, both of them having been born in Asia Minor.

Before being naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1937, Mylonas began teaching at Washington University in St. Louis where he would remain from 1933 to 1968. There he was the founding chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology. A former student who arrived at the school in 1961 recalled that Mylonas was a "marvelous teacher"; by then he had been awarded the title of "Distinguished Professor" in the Arts and Sciences. He also taught at the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, and during the Second World War he worked for the Greek War Relief Organization. He renounced his American citizenship to avoid conflict issues as to allocation of archeological sites and status during the same time as the Vietnam War, which led to some of his American relatives being denied security clearances.

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