Mabel Louise Lang (1917-2010)

12 NOVEMBER 1917 * 21 JULY 2010MABEL LOUISE LANG died peacefully in July 2010 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, a mile from college where she spent seventy years as a student and teacher, worshipped by generations of students and respected by scholars around world.Mabel Lang was born on 12 November 1917 in Utica, New York, and received her A.B. from Cornell in 1939. In fall of 1939 she arrived as a graduate student at Bryn Mawr, where she would remain for rest of her professional career. She completed her graduate work quickly in midst of World War II, receiving her M. A. in 1 940 and her Ph.D. in 1943, and began teaching at college immediately upon finishing. She was employed as an instructor 1943-46, assistant professor 1946-50, and associate professor 1950-59, and became a full professor in 1959. In 1971, upon retirement of Richmond Lattimore, she received title of Paul Shorey Professor of Greek, which she held until her official retirement in 1988. For many years after retirement she continued to teach for Bryn Mawr on an ad hoc basis, allowing more than half a century's worth of Bryn Mawr students to benefit from her extraordinary ability to bring out best in them.Though first and foremost a teacher, Lang also found time to present world with twelve books and more than fifty articles; her contribution to scholarship during twenty-seven years in which she was chair of Greek department and took no sabbaticals is particularly remarkable. Her writings are noted for their accuracy, clarity, and concision and received high acclaim from scholarly community (more than seventy reviews of her books are listed in L'Annee Philologique, many in field's most prestigious journals). Despite being officially in Greek rather than archaeology department, for most of her career Lang worked primarily on archaeological material. Most of her major publications arose from work on excavations at Pylos and at Athenian Agora.In 1947-48 she spent her first year in Greece as a fellow of American School of Classical Studies at Athens, participating in excavations of Agora. Among her memorable actions during year was suggestion that Stoa of Attalus be rebuilt; this idea was received with enthusiasm, and magnificently reconstructed building now serves as Agora museum. Three volumes of publication of Agora excavations were entrusted to her: Weights, Measures, and Tokens (1964), Graffiti and Dipinti (1976), and Ostraka (1990).Before scholarly publications, however, Lang had already made a name for herself with more popular works on Agora. Her first book, published in 1954, was a guidebook for visitors to Agora, which became model for many later editions by directors of Agora Excavations. She then began her long series of Agora picture books with The Athenian Citizen (1960), which was to be followed by Waterworks (1968), Graffiti (1974), Socrates (1978), and Life, Death, and Litigation (1994). These little picture books admirably fulfilled their goal of making Agora results accessible to everyone and were widely praised.Lang also worked on other excavations. From 1950 to 1956 she participated in excavations at Gordion in Phrygia sponsored by Penn Museum, including a full year of study in 1953-54 courtesy of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Her primary achievement there was excavating, reconstructing, and interpreting Gordion frescoes, which she did in a manner described by a colleague as the perfect unity of philology, field archaeology, and useful wit.Her work with Gordion frescoes led Lang to move to Palace of Nestor at Pylos, where fresco fragments were also in urgent need of interpretation. She spent summers at Pylos with University of Cincinnati Expedition from 1957 to 1964, and a full year in 1959-60 on a Fulbright Senior Fellowship. Her most important work was connected with Pylos excavations

Art history · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · World War II · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · History · Law