[13] In the person of Sir William Ramsay (1851-1939) one finds a rare combination. He was, on the one hand, a classical scholar and archaeologist, "the foremost authority of his day on the topography, antiquities, and history of Asia Minor in ancient times" 1; at the same time he was one of the foremost authorities in the study of the New Testament, especially the Book of Acts and the letters of Paul. Few men are able to become masters in one field of study; Ramsay was master in two.

William Mitchell Ramsay was born the youngest son of a third-generation lawyer in Glasgow, Scotland, on March 15, 1851. His father passed away when he was six years old. Shortly thereafter the family moved from the city of Glasgow to the family home in the country district near Alba.

His older brother and maternal uncle, Andrew Mitchell, made it possible for him to have the best education attainable. He received excellent preparation for university at the Aberdeen Gymnasium and from there went on to study at the University of Aberdeen, where he achieved high distinction. In March, 1868, at the end of his second year at the university, he was enjoying his college work immensely and finding every moment spent in classwork or in preparation a delight. Of this time he later wrote, "The idea was simmering unconsciously in my mind that scholarship was the life for me: not the life of teaching, which was repellent, but the life of discovery." 2 When [14] the final day of the school term arrived, the members of the second-year class were all gathered in the Latin classroom. Ram-say later remarked that he had the feeling that something significant was going to happen that morning. Both the Professor of Greek and the Professor of Latin announced to the class that he was the number one student in each subject. Then and there his life was determined; he formed the resolve to be a scholar and to make everything else in his life subservient to that purpose and career. 3 Forty-five years later, he looked back on that day:

In the class-room, also, one other matter settled itself. The border-land between Greece and the East, the relation of Greek literature to Asia, had already a vague fascination for me; and this was to be the direction of the life that I imagined in the future. As it turned out that thought of the relation between Greece and the East was an anticipation of my life; but the form developed in a way that I did not imagine until many years passed. I thought of work in a room or a library, but it has lain largely in the open air and on the geographical frontier where Greek-speaking people touched the East. I thought of Greek literature in its relation to Asia; but the subject widened into the relation between the spirit of Europe and of Asia through the centuries. 4

How was he to achieve his goal to be a scholar? He knew the only path lay in an Oxford Fellowship, so before the meeting ended he had made his plans in that direction. However, he was careful to tell no one but his closest friends, for his family had intended that he compete for an appointment in the Indian Civil Service. When he finally did tell them three years after that memorable day in March, there was strong disapproval on the part of some; they thought it was foolish to turn to a life of scholarship with its vague uncertainties. But in 1872, the year following his graduation, he began what turned out to be five years of study at Oxford University with the aid of an Aberdeen graduate scholarship and another scholarship from St. John's College, Oxford. Here he received further academic honors.

During the course of his second year at Oxford, he was enabled by his uncle to spend a time studying Sanskrit at the University of Goettingen, Germany, under the great scholar, Theodor Benfey. This experience was, in his own words, a critical event in his life.

Then for the first time, under the tuition of Professor Theodor Benfey, I came into close relations with a great scholar of the modern type, and gained some insights into modern methods of literary investigation; and my thoughts have ever since turned towards the border lands between European and Asiatic civilization. 5

He later wrote of this experience:

[15] The way of scholarship had been hitherto arid in my education, the sense of discovery was never quickened, and the power of perceiving truth was becoming atrophied. Scholarship had been a learning of opinions, and not a process of gaining real knowledge. One learned what others had thought, but not what truth was. Benfey was a vivifying wind, to breathe life into dry bones, for he showed scholarship as discovery and not as a rehearsing of wise opinions. 6

Further inspiration was received from Henry Jardine Bidder, of St. John's College, Oxford, "who first opened his eyes to the true spirit of Hellenism and so helped to fit him for the work which he had in view." 7

In July, 1879, while vacationing in Scotland with his recently acquired wife, he received a letter from Mr. Stuart Poole, Keeper of the Coins in the British Museum, telling of a travelling studentship offered by Exeter College, Oxford, for three years "travel and research in the Greek lands"; Mr. Poole advised Ramsay that he should come to the museum and study in preparation for it. The letter mentioned one other outstanding candidate for the award, a recent graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. That candidate turned out to be the later famous scholar, critic, dramatist, and poet, Oscar Wilde. Ramsay won the scholarship; and, being advised by Sir Charles Newton of the British Museum to go to the west coast of Asia Minor rather than to Athens, he and his young wife set off for Smyrna (now Izmir). There they landed early in May of 1880.

At Smyrna he met Sir Charles Wilson, who was then British consul-general in Anatolia and an experienced explorer. Wilson gave him helpful advice concerning the exploration of the unknown inland regions of the country, and he invited him to accompany him on two long journeys into the interior. This gave him his first opportunity to study the geography and archaeology of Roman proconsular Asia, Phrygia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and Galatia at firsthand and to begin an exploration that was continued, except for one break (1891-1899), 8 until 1914, and to embark on a long life of devotion to Anatolian studies.

We are given two interesting portraits of Ramsay the archaeologist at work by two of his fellow workers. The first is from The Accidents of an Antiquary's Life, the autobiography of D. G. Hogarth, another great archaeologist.

[16] The apparatus of travel, which we gathered in Smyrna, was of the simplest -- a single tent and a few pots and pans, but no canned stores; and two simple villagers were hired to serve us. The qualifications of the one chosen to cook became manifest on the second night in camp. We had left railhead at Seraikeuy, and ridden up the Lycus valley to the foot of the white cliffs of Hierapolis. Mehmet bought a turkey of the peasants of Pambuk Kalessi, and was bidden to have it ready for the next night's supper. Early on the morrow we went up to the site, and all that day, under a broiling sun and among some of the best-preserved Roman tombs in Asia Minor, I entered on an arduous apprenticeship to the best epigraphist in Europe. Sharpset at nightfall we hurried down, expectant of our turkey. Mehmet sat placid, the bird at his feet. It was a corpse, indeed, but no more, not even a plucked one. "What am I to do with this?" said Mehmet. He learned better as time went on; but throughout that journey we had little except sodden messes to eat, faring worse than any traveller need fare. It was partly because our leader cared little for what he ate, but more because, like his followers, he journeyed on a slender purse. Ramsay had made to himself a European reputation as an explorer of Asia Minor at a cost which another man would think scarcely sufficient for the tour of Germany; and it had become his principle, as, for similar reasons, it has become Petrie's, to suffer none but the barest means to his end. If both have pushed their practice to exceeding discomfort, both have taught several young Britons how little is necessity and how much superfluity; and it is not the least of my many debts to Ramsay that I gained in my first tour of exploration the will and the capacity to go farther at less cost than perhaps anyone but my master. 9

The second picture is a description of Ramsay at work from two letters of Miss Gertrude Bell, who shared some of his travels and researches.

Madan Shehar
May 25, 1907
The Ramsays arrived yesterday. I was in the middle of digging up a Church, when suddenly two carts hove into sight and there they were. It was about three in the afternoon. They instantly got out, refused to think of going to the tents, Lady R. made tea (for they were starving) in the open, and R. oblivious of all other considerations was at once lost in the problems the Church presented. It was too delightful to have someone as much excited about it as I was....

Daile
June 8, 1907
We are getting so much material that it will certainly make a book. Our plan is that Sir W. shall write the historic and epigraphic part and I the architectural. It will be worth doing, for this is the first time that an accurate study has been made of any one district in these parts; hitherto people have only travelled through and seen what they could see and gone on . . . . I should have been helpless without Sir W., and the more I work with him the more I like him and respect his knowledge. In fact, it is being a magnificent success, quite everything I hoped it would be. 10

[17] In 1885 Ramsay became the first Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford. The following year he was appointed Regius Professor of Humanity, as the Latin professorship is called, at his alma mater, the University of Aberdeen. There he remained until his retirement in 1911. 11 Ramsay was knighted in 1906 on the occasion of the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of the University of Aberdeen for his distinguished service to the scholarly world. In addition to this honor he received many other academic distinctions in his lifetime. He was recipient of three honorary fellowships from Oxford colleges (Exeter in 1898, Lincoln in 1899, and St. John's in 1912), and he was honored by doctorates from nine universities: Oxford, St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Edinburgh, New York, Bordeaux, and Marburg. He was one of the original members of the British Academy and an honorary member of just about every scholarly association devoted to archaeological and historical research. In 1893 he was awarded the Gold Medal of Pope Leo XIII and in 1906 the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His travels took him not only to Turkey, but also to the great universities of the world for lectures; he visited America on three occasions (1894, 1910, and 1913) for special lectures at leading universities and seminaries. 12

According to his obituary notice in The Times (London),

Ramsay's abiding fame will rest first on his comprehensive exploration of Asia Minor; ... and secondly, on the new method which he developed and taught to students of ancient geography. On account of both he received worldwide recognition. 13

In his work in Asia Minor he was concerned primarily with the problem of geographical identification. When he first began, very few historical places could be identified with any certainty, especially in the interior.

Taking into his purview sites of all periods down to the Byzantine, he sought the help of evidence neglected or little used before, notably that of local coin types, and that of Christian authors and legends, and set out to interpret the ancient geography of Asia Minor by noting the relative positions of points on roads and by applying the method of exclusion to administrative groups of towns, of which some members were already fixed with fair certainty in the map. 14

[18] This was combined with extensive exploration and excavation throughout the south-central part of the sub-continent.

In the year of his first visit to Asia Minor (1879), Ramsay contributed about one hundred articles on classical subjects to the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; most of these were too short to have a signature. At the very beginning of his exploration Ramsay made a name for himself by publishing the results of his discoveries in various European scholarly journals, most notably the Journal of Hellenic Studies. Because his articles were scattered throughout SO many different periodicals, the French archaeologist Perrot was moved to sigh, "What trouble Ramsay would have spared us all by writing one book!" 15 That book came at last when his monumental work on The Historical Geography of Asia Minor 16 was published by the Royal Geographical Society in 1890.

This work did not appear, however, without a great deal of labor and discouragement. Ramsay explains in his preface:

In May, 1886, the first sketch of it was read before the Society. The difficulty of the subject, and the distraction caused by other work both as a Professor (first in Oxford and afterwards in Aberdeen), and as a traveller (I left London for Smyrna the day after reading the paper, and spent considerable part of the summer of 1886, 1887, and 1888 in Asia Minor), delayed the completion and publication of the sketch. In the beginning of April, 1888, I brought the complete MS. with me to London to hand over to the printer. I discovered, thirty-six hours after starting from Aberdeen, that the manuscript was no longer in the bag where I had placed it, and which had been for the most of the time close to my hand, and I have never found the slightest clue to the time or manner of its loss.... All notes for it had been destroyed... . 17

This would have crushed a lesser man. Ten years of research gone! Yet Ramsay did his best to rewrite the book and even added a second part, which included a collection of new material for the history and antiquities of the area. Even though the rewritten book - on the author's confession - was a less finished work than the original had been, it marked an epoch in the study of ancient geography and established Ramsay's prominence in the field. The Historical Geography is foundational for all later study in the history and geography of Asia Minor.

The presupposition of all Ramsay's work is this:

Topography is the foundation of history. No one who has familiarized himself with Attic history in books and has afterwards ascended Pentelicus an(I seen that history spread forth before him in the valleys and mountains and sea that have moulded it will ever disbelieve in the value [19] of topography as an aid to history.... If we want to understand the Ancients, especially the Greeks, we must breathe the same air as they did and saturate ourselves with the same scenery and the same nature that wrought upon them. For this end correct topography is a necessary though humble servant. 18

And this is exactly what Sir William Ramsay did: he saturated himself with the geography and history of the Graeco-Roman world. He always insisted upon originality in research and firsthand acquaintance with the facts. Throughout his life he had little time for those who would assume the position of authorities on the history and geography of Asia Minor or the missionary travels of the Apostle Paul without having a firsthand acquaintance with the facts of the matter.

Two things characterize Ramsay above all else. He was original and he was thorough. He writes this in the introduction to his Historical Geography:

My scheme has been (after several experiences of the difficulties caused by accepting wrong conjectures of modern writers) to make an absolutely fresh work founded on the ancient authorities alone, in which the geographical situation, the natural surroundings and the commercial advantages of each city should be set forth in an account of its history. 19

Ninety-five per cent of the references made to ancient writers in his work, the reader is assured, were found by the author in his own perusal of the original authorities, most of whom were read several times in the original. 20 This is quite a feat, for he quotes from ninety different ancient writers, from classical historians to early church fathers, in both Greek and Latin.

Ramsay's Historical Geography is divided into two parts. The first is entitled, "General Principles," and the second, "A Sketch of the Historical Geography of the Various Provinces." Part one begins with a discussion of the conflict between Orientalism and Hellenism in Asia Minor. His observations here laid the foundation for much further thought on the matter culminating in his Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh for l9l5 - l9l6. 21 The very character of the plateau as a borderland between the East and the West has, according to Ramsay, marked it out as a battleground between the Oriental and European spirit.

The idea of this great struggle was a formative principle which moulded the gradual development of the Iliad, and gave the tone to Herodotus's epic history. We can trace its main features from that time onwards. Greece and Persia were the representative antagonists for two centuries. Then the conquests of Alexander, organized and consolidated later by the genius of Rome, made the European spirit apparently victorious for many centuries.

[20] But the conquest was not real. Romans governed Asia Minor because, with their marvellous governing talent, they knew how to adapt their administration to the people of the plateau. It is true that the great cities put on a western appearance, and took Latin or Greek names; Latin and Greek were the languages of government, of the educated classes, and of polite society. Only this superficial aspect is attested in literature and in ordinary history, and when I began to travel the thought never occurred to me that there was any other. The conviction has gradually forced itself on me that the real state of the country was very different. Greek was not the popular language of the plateau even in the third century after Christ: the mass of people spoke Lycaonian, and Galatian, and Phrygian, although those who wrote books wrote Greek, and those who governed spoke Latin. The people continued to believe in their own religion, their gods were identified by educated persons with the gods of Greece and Rome, and called by Greek names; but they had none of the Greek or Roman character, they were Asiatic deities. Christianity conquered the land, and succeeded in doing what Greece and Rome had never done: it imposed its language on the people. But the Christianity of Phrygia was never like the Christianity of Europe....

The foundation of Constantinople was a sign that the West had not really conquered Asia Minor. 22

He carries on with an important discussion of the great roads and trade routes of ancient Anatolia, from the so-called "Royal Road" of the Persian period to the Byzantine roads, which were the basis of the modern Turkish road system. He discusses the value of the various ancient geographical authorities for Asia Minor and concludes with an important note on the change of site of ancient cities. In part two, after a brief general introduction to the area as a whole, he goes through the various provinces, city by city, listing all of the available geographical and historical information that he has been able to uncover in the study of historical sources and in his extensive explorations. The order is to a great extent the order of discovery. This, together with the limits of Professor Ramsay's travels (principally in Asia, Phrygia, Galatia, Lycaonia, and Cappadocia), prevents the book from being a full-fledged and systematic discussion of the historical geography of Asia Minor as a whole - as the title might indicate.

The second great work Ramsay produced in the area of archaeology was the monumental volume, The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia. 23 This is described in the sub-title as "an essay of the local history of Phrygia from the earliest times to the Turkish conquest." The work was intended to be a multi-volumed work, but only one volume (in two parts) was completed due to lack of evidence. The first part, published in 1895, surveys those [21] cities in the area of the Lycus (Lycos) River valley; Laodicea, Hierapolis, Colossae, and other less important cities. The second part, published in 1897, covers the cities of west and west-central Phrygia, the most important of which are Eumereia and Apameia. This latter section includes two important chapters on early Christian inscriptions and one on the Jews in Phrygia. Basing his argument on a tradition of the Talmud, he argues that the Jews of this region were generally absorbed into the Christian church at an early date. 24

Perhaps the least known of Sir William Ramsay's contributions to the study of ancient history and geography are the articles he wrote for the five volumes of Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible between 1898 and 1904. These are sixty-three in number and deal primarily with cities and geographical terms of Greece and Asia Minor. 25 The two most important in this series are the extensive essays in the extra volume on the "Religion of Greece and Asia Minor." 26) and "Roads and Travel in the New Testament." 27 The first of these begins with the primitive Anatolian and pre-Hellenic religion and carries the story down to the Christian era; it includes valuable sections on the cult of the Great Mother, the mysteries, and the attitude of St. Paul to Greek philosophy. The second answers just about any questions one would have about travel in the time of the New Testament and includes two excellent maps, the first tracing the most important routes by land and sea in the Roman Empire and the second covering Asia Minor in detail.

Under the general category of archaeology one should mention the three articles contributed to the volume written by Ramsay and six of his early students for the quatercentenary of the University of Aberdeen, 28 the publication of the results of [22] his and Miss Gertrude Bell's excavation of the "Thousand and One Churches" (actually only about 28 -- a typical example of Oriental exaggeration!) in the region of Kara Dagh (Black Mountain) , 29 and his Gifford Lectures on the Asianic Elements in Greek Civilizatzon. The end of his life found him laboring on an extensive work on The Social Basis of Roman Power in Asia Minor, edited and published posthumously by his former student, Professor J. G. C. Anderson of Oxford. 30

This survey of the work of Sir William Ramsay, the historian and archaeologist, could not be concluded without focusing attention upon what is probably the best popular essay on the historical geography of Asia Minor ever written. This appeared in The National Geographic Magazine in 1922 under the title, "A Sketch of the Geographical History of Asia Minor." 31 It began with this excellent description of Asia Minor:

In shape the peninsula of Asia Minor may be compared by a rough analogy to the right hand laid palm upward, with the fingers pointing to the west. The palm is the central plateau, which is surrounded with a rim of mountains. Like fingers, five chains of mountains extend from the plateau, most of them stretching far out into the Aegean Sea, as if they were trying to force their way to Europe.

These mountain chains are continued by chains of islands, which form, as it were, stepping-stones for the march of a giant from Asia to Europe. 32

FOOTNOTES:

1 J. G. C. Anderson, "Sir William Mitchell Ramsay," Dictionary of National Biography 1931-1940, p. 727.

2 BRD, p.7.

3 BRD, pp. 9 - 10.

4 BRD, p. 10.

5 Letter of dedication to Andrew Mitchell, Esq., appended to first edition of SPT.

6 BRD, p.13.

7 Anderson, op. cit., p.727.

8 An attack of cholera, contracted on a ship coming from Alexandretta, Turkey, incapacitated him for these years; during this time he aimed at finding and financing a successor rather than continuing his field work himself. He found a successor in a pupil of his earliest years at Aberdeen, J. G. C. Anderson, later Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford. BRD, p.29.

9 Quoted in W. F. Howard, The Romance of New Testament Scholarship (London: Epworth Press, 1949), pp. 143 - 144.

10 Quoted in Stethen Neill, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861 - 1961 (London: Oxford university Press, 1964), p. 141.

11 Howard, Romance, p. 1 39, suggests that Ramsay retired due to ill health. if this is correct, he certainly recovered quickly, for he was active as a writer and lecturer until the end of his life. In a personal letter to the author, Professor F. F. Bruce suggests that he was able to retire at the rather early age of sixty due to the steady income derived from the publication of his books -- which went through many editions -- by Hodder and Stoughton. "In those days there was no fixed retirement age for Scottish professors, who were appointed ad vitam aut culpam, and some went on into their eighties!"

12 Anderson, op. cit., pp.727-728.

13 April 22, 1939, p. 14.

14 Ibid.

15 The Times (London), April 22, 1939, p.14.

16 Royal Geographical Society, Supplementary Papers, Vol.4 (London: John Murray, 1890; repr. Amsterdam: Adolph M. Hakkert, 1962).

17 HG, p 3.

18 HG. pp.51 - 52.

19 HG, p.6.

20 HG, pp. 6 - 7.

21 Asianic Elements in Greek Civilization (London: John Murray, 1927).

22 HG, pp. 24 - 25.

23 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895, Vol. 1, pt. 1; 1897, Vol. 1, pt. 2).

24 CB, part i, pp.674 - 676. However, according to Jastrow's Dictionary of the Talmud, the reference is not to Phrygia, but to Prugitha, a district in Northern Palestine known for its wine.

25 Cf. Appendix I.

26 HDB, extra Vol., pp. 109 - 156.

27 HDB, extra vol., pp.375 - 402.

28 "Preliminary Report to the Wilson Trustees on Exploration in Phrygia and Lycaonia," "The War of Moslem and Christian for the Possession of Asia Minor," "The Tekmoreian Guest-Friend: An Anti-Christian Society on the Imperial Estates at Pisidian Antioch," in Wirnam M. Ramsay (ed.), Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1906), pp. 231 - 377. The influence of Ramsay in inspiring research in Asia Minor can be seen from this quotation from the preface: "We venture to lay before the University and the distinguished guests, both strangers and graduates, who come to greet its entrance on the fifth century of work, a sample of the research that has been performed in one line alone of classical study by its students. It was the writer's wish to compile a bibliography of Asia Minor exploration during the last twenty-seven years . . . but this volume could not have appeared in time if the compilation had been included. The bibliography would show in statistics that, notable as have been the writings in that department of a series of excellent scholars, many of whose names are now household words in the world of learning, the bulk at any rate of the work of Aberdeen graduates in the department equals the bulk of all the rest, even taking into account the stately German folios on Pergamon, Lycia, etc., and the beautiful French volumes on Myrina" (pp. ix - x, italics mlne).

29 Sir William M. Ramsay and Miss Gertrude L. Bell, The Thousand and One Churches (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909).

30 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1941). Ramsay had evidently made an agreement with Professor J. R. S. Sterrett (d. 1914), of Cornell University, to make use of some of his discoveries and to publish the results in this work.

31 42 (Nov. 1922): 553 - 570.

32 Ibid., p. 553.