Serope Armenag Gurdjian was an Armenian from Turkey who became a naturalized U.S. citizen and earned a college degree from Bowdoin College in 1877. Having been detained in Istanbul in October 1890 on suspicion of participating in a revolutionary committee, he was released based on his U.S. citizenship and then traveled to Athens, where he met and befriended William Sachtleben and Thomas Allen.
Photograph of, L to R, Thomas Allen, Serope Gurdjian, and the two brothers Aristotelis and Konstantinos Rhomaides (photographers specializing in the documentation of archeological sites) on a narrow street in Athens, perhaps near the Rhomaides' atelier (listed in 1907 as "3 Place de la Constitution" which is now Constitution Square, or Syntagma Square).
Photograph of Serope Gurdjian (probably) seated on a column base at the southeast end of the colossal Olympieion. A bicycle is parked next to him in front of a Corinthian column.
Photograph of Serope Gurdjian, a sightseeing companion of William Lewis Sachtleben and Thomas Gaskell Allen, in the Kerameikos area of Athens on top of a recently excavated Roman sarcophagus near the Street of Tombs in Athens deciphering the inscription. A bicycle is parked against a mound in front of the tomb and a low stone wall is in visible the background.
