#blogjune 23 The First Merchant Venturers

It's winter here in Melbourne and tulip time. I had some lovely tulips for my birthday and yesterday got some more - red and yellow ones. Tulips always remind me of Egyptology and Bill Culican. Bill was an archaeologist and ancient historian who instilled in me a passion for the subject when I was an undergraduate. But tulips and Egyptology? Well, Bill always used to claim that tulips became popular in Holland and Western Europe as a result of an expanding interest in Egyptology in the 18th century.

I don't really know how true this was but it certainly made a good story. What I do know is that one year when I was teaching in his subject he hauled me into his office before a lecture, handed me a bunch of tulips, told me to go quickly to the lecture theatre and not be seen with him. When he referred to the spread of the tulip trade and its links with Egyptology I was to rise up and present him with the tulips :) All of this was to be a joke for the benefit of another lecturer who was going to be present. I duly presented the tulips on cue and Bill continued lecturing without a blink. Peter collapsed with laughter and we moved on. Maybe you had to be there to understand.



Bill's specialty (or one of them) was the Phoenicians and he supervised my honours thesis that looked at potential Phoenician influence on a Roman cult. His publication, The first merchant venturers: the ancient Levant in history and commerce, was published by Thames and Hudson in 1966 and remains a great read. The Phoenicians were and are fairly elusive figures in the history of antiquity. Bill's comparison of them to their favoured pomegranate is one that always sticks in my head and could be said to describe a number of things and people:

" Luscious but hard of skin, wholesome but fragmentary, vivid but shallow, seedy but ever refreshing, ripe but enduring, and if not the most palatable, at least the most shapely fruit."

Bill Culican died an untimely death in 1984 at the age of 54. He was sorely missed then and still is now. You can read Graeme Clarke's eulogy at his funeral here. But every time I have tulips in the house they bring a smile to my face because of him. And it's been great to remember him today.