James Theodore Bent | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 30 March 1852 Liverpool, England |
| Died | 5 May 1897 (1897-05-06) (aged 45) London, England |
James Theodore Bent (30 March 1852 – 5 May 1897) was an Englishexplorer,archaeologist, andauthor.
James Theodore Bent was born in Liverpool on 30 March 1852,[1] the son of James (1807-1876) and Eleanor (née Lambert, c.1811-1873) Bent of Baildon House,Baildon, nearBradford,Yorkshire, where Bent lived in his boyhood. He was educated at Malvern Wells preparatory school,Repton School, andWadham College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1875. His paternal grandparents were William (1769-1820) and Sarah (née Gorton) Bent;[2] it was this William Bent who founded Bent'sBreweries, a successful business which, in various guises, was still in existence into the 1970s, and which helped generate the family's wealth.[3] One of Bent's uncles,Sir John Bent, the brewer, wasLiverpool mayor in 1850–51.
In 1877, Bent marriedMabel Hall-Dare (1847-1929) who became his companion, photographer, and diarist on all his travels. From the time of their marriage, they went abroad nearly every year, beginning with extended travels inItaly andGreece. In 1879, he published a book on the republic ofSan Marino, entitledA Freak of Freedom, and was made a citizen of San Marino; in the following year appearedGenoa: How the Republic Rose and Fell,[4] and in 1881 aLife of Giuseppe Garibaldi.[5] The couple's researches in theAegean archipelago over the winters of 1882/3 and 1883/4 culminated in Bent'sThe Cyclades; or, Life among the Insular Greeks (1885).[6][7][8]
At the time of Bent's death in 1897, the couple resided at 13 Great Cumberland Place, London, andSutton Hall, outsideMacclesfield, Cheshire, UK.
From this period Bent concentrated particularly on archaeological and ethnographic research. The years 1883-1888 were devoted to investigations in the Eastern Mediterranean andAnatolia, his discoveries and conclusions being communicated to theJournal of Hellenic Studies and other magazines and reviews; his investigations on the Cycladic island ofAntiparos are of note.[9] In 1889, he undertook excavations in theBahrein Islands of thePersian Gulf, looking for evidence that they had been a primitive home of thePhoenician civilization; he and his wife returned to England via Persia (Iran), being introduced to ShahNaser al-Din Shah Qajar along the way.[10] After an expedition in 1890 toCilicia Trachea, where he obtained a valuable collection of inscriptions, Bent spent a year inSouth Africa, with the object, by investigation of some of the ruins inMashonaland, of throwing light on the vexed question of their origin and on the early history ofEast Africa. Bent believed theZimbabwe ruins had originally been built by the ancestors of theShona people.[11] To this end, in 1891, he made, along with his wife and the Glaswegian surveyor Robert McNair Wilson Swan (1858-1904),[12] a colleague from Bent's time on Antiparos in 1883/4,[13] the first detailed examination of theGreat Zimbabwe. Bent described his work inThe Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892). Famously,Victor Loret andAlfred Charles Auguste Foucher denounced this view, and claimed that a non-African culture built the original structures. Modern archaeologists now agree that the city was the product of aShona-speaking African civilization.[14][15]
In 1893, he investigated the ruins ofAxum and other places in northernEthiopia, which had previously been made known in part by the researches ofHenry Salt and others. His bookThe Sacred City of the Ethiopians (1893) gives an account of this expedition.[16][6]
Bent now visited at considerable risk the almost unknownHadramut country (1893–1894), and during this and later journeys in southernArabia he studied the ancient history of the country, its physical features and actual condition. On theDhofar coast in 1894-1895, he visited ruins which he identified with theAbyssapolis of thefrankincense merchants. In 1895-1896, he examined part of the African coast of theRed Sea, finding there the ruins of a very ancient gold-mine and traces of what he consideredSabaean influence.[17] While on another journey in South Arabia andSocotra (1896–1897), Bent was seized withmalarial fever, and died inLondon on 5 May 1897, a few days after his return.[18][6]
Mabel Bent, who had contributed by her skill as a photographer and in other ways to the success of her husband's journeys, published in 1900Southern Arabia, Soudan and Sakotra, which she recorded the results of their last expedition into those regions.[6]
The majority of Bent's collections (hundreds of artefacts but relatively few on display) is to be found in theBritish Museum, London. Smaller collections are kept at:The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, UK;The Victorian and Albert Museum, London, UK;Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, London, UK;The Natural History Museum, London, UK;Sulgrave Manor, Banbury, UK;Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, UK. Overseas:The Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece;The Archaeological Museum, Istanbul, Turkey;The South African Museum, Cape Town, South Africa;The Great Zimbabwe Museum, Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Some manuscripts are archived atThe Royal Geographical Society, London, UK;The Hellenic and Roman Library, Senate House, London, UK;The British Library, London, UK.
The Natural History Museum, London, has small collections of shells and insects the Bents returned with in the 1890s. Some shells carry the Bent name today (e.g.Lithidion bentii andBuliminus bentii).[19] Several plants and seeds the Bents brought back from Southern Arabia are now in the Herbarium atKew Gardens; one such specimen beingEchidnopsis Bentii, collected on his last journey in 1897.[20] Bent is also commemorated in the scientific name of a species of Arabian lizard,Uromastyx benti.[21]
Some of Bent’s original notebooks held in the archive of the Hellenic Society, London, and unpublished, have now been digitized and are available on open access.[22]
{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bent, James Theodore".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 746.
