Outspoken archaeologist and socialite found the long-lost Temple of Aphrodite
Iris Love, who has died aged 86 after being diagnosed with Covid-19, was an inveterate socialite and a breeder of champion dachshunds; but she was also a passionate archaeologist, her greatest contribution being her role in the 1969 discovery of the Temple of Aphrodite.
She arrived with her team in Knidos, at the tip of the Datca peninsula of southwestern Turkey, in the summer of 1969 during a break from her work as a college teacher. The group came in search of one of the most elusive sites in ancient history: a ruined sanctuary said to contain a statue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, that dated back to the 5th century BC.
This white marble artefact was so renowned in the classical world that the
Roman historian
Pliny, writing in the 1st century AD, had declared: ‘‘With this statue [the sculptor] Praxiteles made Knidos a famous city.’’ Yet, like the ruins of the perhaps mythical Troy, it had long eluded archaeologists.
By 1967, when Iris Love was appointed research assistant professor of art history and archaeology at Long Island University, she was in a position to attempt a trip of her own. In preparation she had made a study of Pliny’s account, concluding that the sanctuary would have to be circular if it was to show off the statue from every angle.
A piece of serendipity led her to the peninsula. Sailing down the coast of Asia Minor with the Turkish archaeologist Askidil Akarca, she spotted a school of dolphins (animals sacred to Aphrodite) headed for the Bay of Knidos. Taking this as a good omen, she obtained permission from the Turkish government to dig and spent the next three summers exploring the most promising site. This lay atop a rounded cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea.
On July 20, 1969 – coincidentally the day of the Moon landing – she had a breakthrough. Climbing to a high terrace to look at the site ‘‘as the crow flies’’, she spotted a circular ‘‘spill’’ that she recognised as the buried rubble that packed the foundations of the sanctuary itself. Her discovery made the front page of the New York Times.
It was verified, as she later put it, ‘‘for all eternity’’ in 1970, when a huge slab of marble with an inscription relating to Praxiteles’ Aphrodite was found between some nearby walls. Though only fragments of the famous statue have been uncovered, she trusted in the divinity of the goddess to keep the site safe.
Despite admitting the odds of success were ‘‘about one in 50 million’’, she continued to hope the discovery of the Knidos Aphrodite’s body might one day be hers to claim. To date, only Roman copies have been found.
Iris Cornelia Love grew up on Park Avenue in New York. Her father, Cornelius Love, was a stockbroker and diplomat. Her mother, Audrey, was a lifelong philanthropic volunteer and a patron of the arts. The paternal side of the family owned a 75-acre farm in Goshen, Orange County, where the young Iris spent many happy hours hunting unsuccessfully for American Indian burial sites.
At first her education was shaped by an English governess, who passed on a love of Greek and Roman mythology. There were visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Iris always sought out the Roman peristyle and its collection of Etruscan terracotta warriors (these were later declared to be fakes).
She then attended Brearley School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, followed by Madeira School in Virginia, where she was mocked for her Jewishness. She performed brilliantly in exams and, having decided on her classical ‘‘destiny’’, majored in art and archaeology at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. After studying
Andy Warhol wrote of her in his diaries, Mick and Bianca Jagger visited the dig in Knidos, and Barbra Streisand asked for lessons on Agamemnon. ‘‘She told me it was interesting,’’ Love recalled, ‘‘but preferred talking about herself.’’
for her graduate degree in archaeology at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, she went into teaching.
It was not long after her history-making find at Knidos that she began to build a reputation for outspokenness, being unafraid to criticise or exult her colleagues in public fashion. In November 1970 she caused a stir by claiming to have found the head of Praxiteles’ Aphrodite statue tucked away in the depths of the British Museum – a claim that caused an uproar from the museum itself, not least because she had been peremptory in going straight to the New York Times rather than wait for the head to go on display.
The resulting exhibition was short-lived, and doubts soon grew as to whether it was a likeness of Aphrodite at all. A 1978 interview with the New Yorker found Love unrepentant, proud of the work she had achieved and determined to carry on making discoveries. By 1981 she was lecturing on a new find, an ‘‘extremely rare, superior reproduction souvenir copy of the Aphrodite of Knidos’’ uncovered in Hartford, Connecticut.
During these years her reputation as a socialite and amiable eccentric saw her establish a wide-ranging social circle. Andy Warhol wrote of her in his diaries, Mick and Bianca Jagger visited the dig in Knidos and Barbra Streisand asked for lessons on Agamemnon. ‘‘She told me it was interesting,’’ she recalled of her famous pupil, ‘‘but preferred talking about herself.’’
In later years Iris Love settled into a romantic relationship with the New York gossip columnist Liz Smith. When that ended they continued to live together in an Upper East Side apartment, while Iris took up breeding dogs.
Her Pekingese won the Best in Show award at the 2012 Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, and at one time she owned no fewer than 42 champion dachshunds. Every February she would throw a dog party in anticipation of the Westminster show, at which famous faces, dachshund fanciers and the animals themselves were all welcome. –