Per email from Martin Rush 08/01/2022: " HEIR 34108 - 34112 Myres: Greece: Euboea: Achmetaga Service (5 photos)
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Before we start, all thanks to:
(a) Renasha Khan for her story and key journal reference in her 2011 blog posting "The Burning of Judas" in Archaeology Archives Oxford (July 7, 2011), which drew my attention to this set of images.
(b) J. A. MacGillivray, "Minotaur : Sir Arthur Evans and the archaeology of the Minoan myth". New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. p109-110.
(c) Prof Myres himself, for : Myers, John L. “Easter in a Greek Village.” Folklore 61, no. 4 (1950): 203–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256886.
Apologies too for the non-PC terminology in the MacGillivray quote. Please excise if you feel so inclined.
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(1) Heir's collection of Myres photographs sometimes seem to fall into natural groups or subsets: this is often hinted at by the similarity of their captions, or by being presented in HEIR is some sort of numerical sequence.
(2) In this case we have a sequence of five images, linked by HEIR number, negative number, and caption :
34108 - Myres: Greece: Euboea: Achmetaga Service on Easter Sunday afternoon 106.tif (2106 is visible on the negative, top right )
34109 - Myres: Greece: Euboea: Achmetaga Service, kissing the Evangel 107.tif (2107 is visible on the negative) [Evangel = Gospel] [ Easter Sunday afternoon ]
34110 - Myres: Greece: Euboea: Achmetaga Service, Hanging Judas, Easter Sunday afternoon 108.tif (2108 is visible on the negative)
34111 - Myres: Greece: Euboea: Achmetaga Service, He burst asunder in the midst 109.tif (2109 is visible on the negative)
34112 - Myres: Greece: Euboea: Achmetaga Service, the end of the ceremony 110.tif (2108 is visible on the negative)
(3) Myres himself describes this event in detail in : Myers, John L. “Easter in a Greek Village.” Folklore 61, no. 4 (1950): 203–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256886.
“Meanwhile the young men had set up a gallows on the churchyard wall, and hung from it a regular ‘Guy’, in an old suit stuffed full of straw, crackers, cartridges and bags of gunpowder, and sprinkled with pitch: there was a slow-match in one foot. While the priest and choir, followed by the women and children made procession round and round the building - in some places a cord is wound round it and tied - the fuse was lighted”
(4) MacGillivray also describes the event that Myres witnessed (my paraphrase, followed by his quote):
Mid-March 1893. Myres has been sent by Evans and Hogarth to carry out an archaeological survey of prehistoric sites in Greece and the islands. This had to be postponed when Myres hurt his knee and was forced to recuperate at the home of the philhellene Edward Noel, in Euboea, for two months. Myres used the time to study modern Greek and become familiar with local customs. "One that most impressed him was the Orthodox Easter Ceremony: the commemoration of the resurrection of Christ by light and fire, he recounted many years later, might not have happened this particular year had he not heard the priest mutter under his breath that the matches to light the candles were damp; the resourceful Englishman passed a dry box through the screen between the painted icons, to the cleric's heartfelt relief, and heard the soft whisper, 'Thank God, so Christ will rise after all'. The following day the men took part in a distinctly Orthodox Christian event, the 'Shooting of Judas' in the churchyard, a ceremony surrounding an exploding dummy that was vilified and referred to as The Jew" [Note: this differs from the 1950 Myers version, where Myres describes the damp matches incident, but attributes the provision of replacements to "a traveller", rather than claiming it for himself.]
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Notes
(1) What's the current name of the village?
(a) "Achmetaga", which sounds Turkish, does is not very productive in an online search. [Myres, 1950: "The village has its name, as often, from a former Turkish landowner ... "].
(b) A more successful search term is : Achmèt Agà -- this brings up Edmund Lear's illustrated account of his sometimes rather difficult travels in Greece in 1848, which included a visit to the village of Achmèt Agà.
[In one of those invisible but powerful links that permeate HEIR, Lear's remarks about political unrest causing problems with European travel in 1848 recall how John Collingwood Bruce had to cancel his own plans for a European tour in 1848. Bruce's cancellation led directly to his first "Pilgrimage of Hadrian's Wall", which has been running ever since.]
(c) Achmèt Agà is now called Prokopi. It is in the central valley of northern Euboea/Evia [ A BSA search on Achmet Aga states that it is now "modern Prokopi", and returns seven local landscapes donated by Creator Atchley, Shirley Clifford dated no later than 1921. (Neither Prokopi nor Shirley Clifford Atchley appear in HEIR)]. The name Prokopi comes from the population-exchange with Prokopi in Cappadocia.
(2) What's the name of the church in these 1893 images? Myres does not identify it. The current church, a sumptuously-decorated structure with a museum and guesthouse for conferences, has now been built starting in the 1930s and completed in 1951. It is dedicated to St John the Russian, whose relics were brought from Cappadocia in Turkey during the great population-exchanges of the mid-1920s. The earlier and simpler church seen in the Myres photos may be the church of Saints Constantine and Helen. A large English-language website on Prokopi is available here
Whew!
Martin
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ps
(a) Caption to HEIR 34111 - Acts 1:18 (King James Version) :
"Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out."
(b) Tag suggestions:
According to Myres (1950) the men's kilts are "fustanella" kilts, a traditional pleated skirt-like garment worn in Greece and the Balkans, and possibly related to the ancient Greek chiton.
And possibly add "Judas" as a tag in 34111 & 34112?"