Clark Hopkins (

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

, 16 September 1895 – 1976) was an American archaeologist. During the 1930s he led the joint French-American excavations at

Dura Europos Dura-Europos, ; la, Dūra Eurōpus, ( el, Δούρα Ευρωπός, Doúra Evropós, ) was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the vi ...

. In later years he was professor of art and archeology at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

Biography

Clark Hopkins was a son of

Edward Washburn Hopkins Edward Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D. (September 8, 1857 July 16, 1932), an American Sanskrit scholar, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He graduated at Columbia College in 1878, studied at Leipzig, where he received the degree of Ph.D. i ...

, who was a Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Yale University. Hopkins studied at Yale (A.B., 1917), Oxford (Rhodes Scholar, 1919-1921; A.B., 1921 and A.M., 1926) and the University of Wisconsin (Ph.D., 1924). In 1926 Clark Hopkins married the archaeologist

Susan M. Hopkins Susan M. Hopkins (1900–1969) was an archaeologist known for her work on the excavations at Dura-Europos. __TOC__ Biography Hopkins was born in 1900 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. She studied at Cedar Falls Teachers College in Iowa and the Un ...

and they moved New Haven, CT. In the summer of 1928 both Susan and Clark Hopkins attended the summer schools of the

American Academy in Rome The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome. The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. History In 1893, a group of American architects ...

and the

American School of Classical Studies at Athens , native_name_lang = Greek , image = American School of Classical Studies at Athens.jpg , image_size = , image_alt = , caption = The ASCSA main building as seen from Mount Lykavittos , latin_name = , other_name = , former_name = , m ...

, and afterwards joined an excavation at

Olynthus Olynthus ( grc, Ὄλυνθος ''Olynthos'', named for the ὄλυνθος ''olunthos'', "the fruit of the wild fig tree") was an ancient city of Chalcidice, built mostly on two flat-topped hills 30–40m in height, in a fertile plain at the he ...

. He taught at Rice Institute, Yale and the University of Michigan. He studied at Athens in 1927-1928, and in 1928-1929 was an Assistant Director of Yale's excavations at

Dura-Europos Dura-Europos, ; la, Dūra Eurōpus, ( el, Δούρα Ευρωπός, Doúra Evropós, ) was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the v ...

. In 1931-1935 he was Field Director of excavations there. Hopkins was also a reserve officer of the U. S. Army; he served in the World War I as a 2nd Lieutenant of Infantry, and in the World War II as a Major in the Sixth Service Command's Training Division. Later he was a Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan. Clark Hopkins is best known for his work at Doura Europos, where he was excavation director in 1932-1933 when the Franco-American mission made the extraordinary discovery of the synagogue. He left the detailed account of this discovery that would revolutionize the conceptions of Jewish and Christian art in several articles and in a posthumous work, ''The Discovery of Dura-Europos'', published in 1979:

It was like a dream! In the endless space of the clear blue sky and the empty gray desert, a miracle occurred, an oasis of paintings arose from the monotonous earth.Joseph Gutmann (éd.), ''The Dura-Europos synagogue, A Reevaluation'' (1932-1972), 1973, p. 16.

Hopkins co-authored the preliminary excavation report, the final report was published in 1956 by Carl Herman Kraeling. Clark Hopkins also led the last excavation campaign in Seleucia, Iraq on behalf of the University of Michigan.

Bibliography

* ''Christian Church at Dura-Europos'', New Haven, 1934. * ''The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Preliminary Reports. Sixth Season, 1932–1933''. Codirigé avec M. I. Rostovtzeff, A. R. Bellinger, and C. B. Wells. New Haven, 1936. * ''Introduction to Classical Archaeology: Crete and Greece''. Ann Arbor, 1950. * ''Topography and Architecture of Seleucia on the Tigris''. Ann Arbor, 1972. * ''The Discovery of Dura-Europos''. New Haven, 1979.

References

1895 births 1976 deaths University of Michigan faculty 20th-century American archaeologists Dura-Europos {{archaeologist-stub