"Weeping Caryatids": An impressive mural by the artist INO in Monastiraki

"Weeping Caryatids": An impressive mural by the artist INO in Monastiraki

A new impressive mural by the artist INO adorns a building in Ermou in Monastiraki, entitled: "Weeping Caryatids".

 This unique large-scale work depicts three black and white Caryatids with blue tears.

Wooden Statue Discovered in Piraeus!

A wooden statue of a male figure was found in the excavations that are being carried out for the extension of line 3 of the Athens Metro, in Agios Konstantinos Square of Piraeus.

Specifically, according to the announcement of the Ministry of Culture, the archaeological exploration of the ancient wells that were located in the Station "Demotiko Theatro" which is still under construction, on the Agios Konstantinos Square. In one of them, at a depth of 14,17 m, "was discovered and recovered a wooden sculpture in the round, of a dressed male figure".

The statue was located in contact with the northern wall of the well. At the same point parts of ceramic vessels dated to the end of the Hellenistic period (100-85 BC) were discovered, along with other remnants of living quarters (tiles, metal objects and small bits of wood). At approximately the same depth as the wooden sculpture, part of a marble sculpture was discovered (possibly Artemis) sitting on the back of a deer.

The wooden sculpture misses the head and the upper and lower extremities. Its greatest preserved height is 0,47 m and width 0,21 m. The figure is shown standing with a slight walking movement, as can be seen from the counterpoised legs: the right is bent forward, while the left stretched to the rear. The figure wears a short chiton and has its elbows bent at waist height, with hands outstretched.

The sculpture was immediately transported to the conservation laboratory of the 26th Ephorate following the current rules for the safe transportation of antiquities.

Source: Ta NEA, 21/10/2014 (translated by A.M.)

The Skyphos (Drinking Cup) of Pericles?

A simple black-slip 5th century skyphos (drinking cup) was discovered in a poor grave in Kifissia - a suburb of Athens. What makes the find exeptional are six names etched on the side in the genitive form: Aristidou, Daisimou, Arriphronos, Perikleous, Eukritou (Αριστείδου, Διοδότου, Δαισίμου, Αρρίφρονος, Περικλέους, Ευκρίτου). This allowed archaeologists to speculate not only that this cup of just 12 cm height might have been used by the famous Greek statesman himself, but that the signture on the cup might have been etched with his own hand...

Sources (in Greek):
Ta Nea, 30.07.2014, http://www.tanea.gr/news/culture/article/5145862/ena-pothri-krasi-parea-me-ton-periklh.
To Vima, 30.07.2014, http://www.tovima.gr/culture/article/?aid=619563

Athens & Epidaurus Festival

Athens & Epidaurus Festival

The larger modern Greek cities often strike the arriving visitor as an inhuman monstrosities, sweltering masses of ugliness and chaos. Yet, as is sometimes the case, first impressions can be mistaken, and islands of beauty can be discovered by the discerning eye, carefully hidden from those too sloth to seek them.

This is inevitably the case of Athens, whose millennia of history guarantee that there are hidden treasures to satisfy all.

Yet today I shall speak of a thing of beauty that should not be considered a secret or a mystery, as it is an official festival of the Greek state, and thus should be widely publicised. Indeed for many locals it is an event eagerly awaited each year, yet few foreigners ever get to hear about it.

I refer to the Athens & Epidaurus Festival, which takes place each year from July to early September. Its programme includes performances of music, dance, theatre and exhibitions of visual arts, with the participants often being the most illustrious companies from around the world.

The Herodus Atticus Odeon at the foot of the Acropolis.

And yet it is not the performers - who usually range from excellent to superb - that make this festival unique. It is the venues that make the experience unique both for those on the stage as for those watching. My first experience of this was at the age of four, when I was taken to the Ancient Odeon of Herodus Atticus at the foot of the Acropolis, to listen to a magnificent Carmina Burana. Despite my age and the late hour at which the performance ended I was so enchanted that I wanted to stay on after its ending, not wishing to leave the magic which I felt all around me...

The Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus

Since then I have eagerly gone to performances both in the Herodus Atticus Odeon -especially for classical music - and the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, where modern productions of both ancient dramas and modern theatre in a truly unique setting, allow for the added experience of feeling how the ancients must have experienced theatre.

Maybe it is because I am not going to Greece this summer that I wanted to share this, hoping for a dreamy echo of some mystical magic...

If you want to fit in a performance or two while in Greece, the best place to start is the official site of the festival with information on venues and the full programme and offers the possibility to buy tickets online. Although many people do not respect this, it should be remembered that the two sites mentioned are archaeological sites and should be respected as such. Please do not litter and do not wear high heals!

Who Draws the Borders of Culture?

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

IT was gridlock in the British Museum the other morning as South African teenagers, Japanese businessmen toting Harrods bags, and a busload of German tourists — the usual crane-necked, camera-flashing babel of visitors — formed scrums before the Rosetta Stone, which Egyptian authorities just lately have again demanded that Britain return to Egypt. From the Egyptian rooms the crowds shuffled past the Assyrian gates from Balawat (Iraq is another country pleading for lost antiquities) and past the Roman statue of the crouching Aphrodite (ditto Italy), then headed toward the galleries containing what are known in Britain as the Elgin marbles (but in Greece as the Parthenon marbles, or simply booty), where passers-by plucked pamphlets from a rack.

The British Museum is Europe’s Western front in the global war over cultural patrimony, on account of the marbles. The pamphlets give the museum’s version for why they should stay in Britain, as they have for two centuries — ever since Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte at Constantinople, and with the consent of the ruling Ottomans (not to mention a blithe disregard for whatever may have been the wishes of the Greek populace), spirited them from the Acropolis in Athens. The pamphlet stresses that the British Museum is free and attracts millions of visitors every year from around the world, making the sculptures available to, and putting them in the context of, a wide swath of human civilization.

For their part the Greeks, before their economy collapsed, finally opened the long-delayed New Acropolis Museum last year to much fanfare: it’s an up-to-date facility, forbidding and frankly ugly outside, but airy and light-filled inside, a home-in-waiting for the marbles, whose absence is clearly advertised by bone-white plaster casts of what Elgin took, alongside yellowed originals that he left behind. The view through a broad picture window, eloquent but baleful under the circumstances, looks onto the ruined Parthenon, playing on visitors’ heartstrings. Greeks deem the museum a slam-dunk argument for the marbles’ return.

It’s definitely compelling.

But the British still make the better case.

Siding with the imperialists drives good people bonkers, I know. It’s akin to Yankees worship, with the Greeks playing the underdog role of the old Red Sox. That said, patrimony claims too often serve merely nationalist ends these days, no less often than they do decent ones, never mind that the archaeological and legal arguments by the Greeks, while elaborately reasoned and passionately felt, don’t finally trump the British ones.

Mostly, though, the issue comes down to the fact that culture, while it can have deeply rooted, special meanings to specific people, doesn’t belong to anyone in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t stand still. When Walter Benjamin wrote in the last century about the original or authentic work of art losing its aura, he was in part suggesting that the past is not something we can just return to whenever we like — it’s not something fixed and always available. It’s something forever beyond our grasp, which we must reinvent to make present.

Today’s Acropolis is itself a kind of fiction. Over the centuries and through succeeding empires and regimes, it became Christian and Turkish, and briefly Venetian, after it had been Roman. The Parthenon was a pagan temple, a church, a mosque, an arms depot (disastrously, under the Turks) and even a place from which the Nazis hung a big swastika flag whose removal by Greek patriots helped spur a resistance movement. Modernity has mostly stripped the site of all those layers of history to recover a Periclean-era past that represents, because it has come to mean the most to us, its supposed true self — a process of archeological excavation, based on another modern kind of fiction about historical and scientific objectivity that inevitably adds its own layer of history.

One of the paradoxes of the marbles debate is that it was precisely their removal to London, and all the anguish and furor and archaeological interest and study this provoked, starting with Hellenophiles like Lord Byron heaping scorn on Elgin and fellow Britons, that helped galvanize the Greeks’ own sense of national identity and their pride in the Parthenon sculptures. Now the Greek government has even chosen to name its consolidation plan to combat the economic collapse after an architect of the Parthenon, Kallikrates.

But the general question, looting and tourist dollars aside, is why should any objects necessarily reside in the modern nation-state controlling the plot of land where, at one time, perhaps thousands of years earlier, they came from? The question goes to the heart of how culture operates in a global age.

The Greek proposal that Britain fork over Elgin’s treasures has never involved actually putting the sculptures back onto the Parthenon, which started crumbling long before he showed up. The marbles would go from one museum into another, albeit one much closer. The Greeks argue for proximity, not authenticity. Their case has always been more abstract, not strictly about restoration but about historical reparations, pride and justice. It is more nationalistic and symbolic.

Over the centuries, meanwhile, bits and pieces of the Parthenon have ended up in six different countries, in the way that countless altars and other works of art have been split up and dispersed among private collectors and museums here and there. To the Greeks the Parthenon marbles may be a singular cause, but they’re like plenty of other works that have been broken up and disseminated. The effect of this vandalism on the education and enlightenment of people in all the various places where the dismembered works have landed has been in many ways democratizing.

That’s not an excuse for looting. It’s simply to recognize that art, differently presented, abridged, whatever, can speak in myriad contexts. It’s resilient and spreads knowledge and sympathy across borders. Ripped from its origins, it loses one set of meanings, to gain others.

Laws today fortunately prevent pillaging sites like the Acropolis. But they stop short of demanding that every chopped-up altar by Rubens, Fra Angelico or whomever now be pieced together and returned to the churches and families and institutions for which they were first intended. For better and worse, history moves on.

The Elgin marbles, from the cultural crossroads of imperial London, reshaped cultural history over the course of the last 200 years by giving rise to neo-Classicism around the globe. Or perhaps it is more precise to say that the Parthenon marbles, by virtue of their presence both in Athens and London, helped spread that movement along with sympathy for the Greeks’ cause.

Americans, excepting Indians, may find this whole issue hard to grasp. We don’t tend to think in terms of American cultural patrimony, save perhaps for the Liberty Bell or the Brooklyn Bridge, because we’re an immigrant nation worshipful of the free market. Demanding the return of American art and artifacts to America sounds, well, un-American, not to mention bad for the bottom line. We are too diverse in our roots, too focused on the present, too historically amnesiac and individualistic (not to mention rich) to worry overly about a collective culture or who might own it.

And in the end patrimony is about ownership, often of objects that as in the marbles’ case, come from bygone civilizations. What, in this context, does it really mean to own culture?

Italy recently celebrated the return of a national treasure after the Metropolitan Museum gave back a sixth-century B.C. Greek krater by the painter Euphronius that tomb robbers dug up outside Rome during the 1970s. Stolen property is stolen property. But how curious that an ancient Greek vase, which centuries after it was made came into the possession of an Etruscan collector (a kind of ancient Elgin) living on what is now the outskirts of Rome, and then ended up buried for thousands of years below what became modern Italy, is today Italian cultural patrimony. By that definition, Elgin’s loot is arguably British patrimony.

It’s not coincidental that conflicts over patrimony have accelerated in recent decades thanks to globalizing trends: the increasing circulation of information along with objects and money — consequences of the Web, jet travel and mass tourism — and the evolution of institutions like the British Museum from sleepy, scholarly repositories of artifacts into entertainment palaces and virtual town squares. Authorities in countries like Greece, having seen the escalating economic and symbolic value of works like the marbles, have naturally sought to take advantage.

It isn’t to belittle a deep-seated connection to such works to point out that claimants to far-flung patrimony may have various motives. When Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, who made the recent fuss about the Rosetta Stone, also demanded that Germany hand over Nerfertiti, the 3,500-year-old bust of Akhenaten’s wife, he chose the moment when the Neues Museum in Berlin opened with the bust as its main attraction.

This was just after Farouk Hosny, Egypt’s candidate to run Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency, was defeated in a vote that Egyptian leaders considered a diplomatic slap. Mr. Hawass used Egypt’s only real weapon on the international stage, its cultural patrimony, to lash out by proxy at the perceived enemies of Mr. Hosny’s candidacy and pander to the wounded egos of Egypt’s ruling elite.

It was a public relations gambit. Practically speaking, Egypt had to know there was no immediate shot at getting Nerfertiti back. The sculpture served in a passing form of political theater common these days, with Egypt playing plucky David to the West’s Goliath.

Patrimony debates often end up in this moral fog of shifting geopolitics. The world was outraged when the National Museum in Iraq was looted after the war there started. But almost nobody (outside Germany, anyway) cares today whether Russia returns storerooms of treasures it stole at the end of World War II. Nigeria holds the moral high ground in demanding the return of sculptures burgled from that country’s beleaguered museums, even though insiders were often complicit in the crimes.

And after the Taliban destroyed a Buddhist temple and burned centuries-old illuminated manuscripts, hardly anybody outside the country blinked when Unesco refused to authorize shipments of artifacts from Afghanistan to Switzerland because the move violated international rules against the removal of “national patrimony” — and also because nobody was really paying much attention to that region yet.

Then Taliban inspectors pulverized priceless treasures before the eyes of helpless Afghan curators and blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in obedience to Mullah Omar’s edict against the existence of pre-Islamic art. Only then did people in the West wake up and Unesco reconsider its position. Too late.

In the Parthenon’s case the Greek actress Melina Mercouri kicked off the modern repatriation push during the 1980s as part of the nationalist program of a Greek leader, Andreas Papandreou, whose slogan was “Greece for the Greeks.” What started in conjunction with a political campaign then evolved into a genuine street movement. Dimitris Pandermalis, the New Acropolis Museum’s director, told me before the museum opened last year that the Elgin marbles’ return “unifies us,” meaning the Greek people, although surveys show that few of them actually bother to visit the Acropolis after grade school, while antique sites rivaling the Parthenon in archaeological significance often go neglected across Greece. As I said, it’s ultimately about nationalism and symbolism.

So be it. That’s why Greek authorities always decline diplomatic solutions like sharing the marbles or asking for their loan. They assume any loan request would legitimize Britain’s ownership. The principle is high minded. What results is, in effect, nothing, which doesn’t diminish the Greeks’ connection with the missing marbles.

But as the Princeton philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has cautioned about the whole patrimony question: “We should remind ourselves of other connections. One connection — the one neglected in talk of cultural patrimony — is the connection not through identity but despite difference.”

What he means is that people make connections across cultures through objects like the marbles. These objects can become handmaidens for ideologues, instruments for social division and tools of the economy, or cicerones through history and oracles to a more perfect union of nations. Art is something made in a particular place by particular people, and may serve a particular function at one time but obtain different meanings at other times. It summons distinct feelings to those for whom it’s local, but ultimately belongs to everyone and to no one.

We’re all custodians of global culture for posterity.

Neither today’s Greeks nor Britons own the Parthenon marbles, really.

The New York Times, 09.05.2010

...................................................................................................................

COMMENT:
Once again it is the well-known and well worn argument: If you are for the return of antiquities, you are a nationalist...Thus the only correct posision to have is to let the big museums keep their collections, despite the fact that if they remove antiquities today they would be considered thieves and be condemned as such (see the Marion True case, for example).

It would however have been better if the writer had at least had the decency to keep irrelevancies as well as down right lies out of his text:

1. "...the Greeks, before their economy collapsed...": The state of the Greek economy has what to do with cultural heritage?
2. "...[The New Museum is] up-to-date facility, forbidding and frankly ugly outside...": And your personal views have what to do with the case?
3. "...alongside yellowed originals...": Are you implying that the originals that remain in Greece are poorly looked after? If this is the case, it would be better said outright. But, again, if it is the case, you might also want to mention the case of the Parthenon marbles being scrubbed with wire-brushes in the British Museum. I would also add that the last time I visited the BM a group of [American] tourists were having fun placing their hat on an Egyptian statue, and hugging it to take amusing photographs, while an apathetic guard looked on. My wife was so annoyed that she had words with the guard, who replied "we can't chase them all off..!". I visited the [Old] Acropolis Museum the same year and a [German] tourist stepped over the protective rope to have his picture taken and was immediately pounced upon by three [3] guards...
4. "One of the paradoxes of the marbles debate is that it was precisely their removal to London, and all the anguish and furor and archaeological interest and study this provoked, starting with Hellenophiles like Lord Byron heaping scorn on Elgin and fellow Britons, that helped galvanize the Greeks’ own sense of national identity and their pride in the Parthenon sculptures.": Rubbish. The Hellenophile movement had started long before Lord E. removed the sculptures, and was in fact the reason he was interested in the marbles in the first place: Because of all the interest in Greek civilisation he knew he would get a good price for them in the West, which is why he removed them. Not vice-versa...
5. "Now the Greek government has even chosen to name its consolidation plan to combat the economic collapse after an architect of the Parthenon, Kallikrates.": The Kallikrates plane is in fact the second of that name (the first dating more than a decade ago)...And for the record it concerns the unification of municipalities and was initiated before the current crisis. Still, this is but a detail in the storm of inexactitudes that mr Kimmelman so eloquently presents.
6. "Over the centuries, meanwhile, bits and pieces of the Parthenon have ended up in six different countries...": And many have actually been returned (by Sweden and the Vatican)...
7. "The Elgin marbles, from the cultural crossroads of imperial London, reshaped cultural history over the course of the last 200 years by giving rise to neo-Classicism around the globe.": Ooops! Another bubu mr Kimmelman: From Wikipedia: "Neoclassicism is the name given to quite distinct movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture (usually that of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome). These movements were dominant during the mid 18th to the end of the 19th century. This article addresses what these "neoclassicisms" have in common.". How could the removal of the Parthenon Marbles (1801-1812) have inspired a movement that dates to half a century earlier? Again you are confusing cause and causuality: The Parthenon Marbles were removed because the Neoclassist movement was in full swing and Lord E. figured he would get a bundle from the antique-crazed westerners. Their removal was not THE cause for the Neoclassisist movement, nor the Philhellenic movement.
8. "Demanding the return of American art and artifacts to America sounds, well, un-American, not to mention bad for the bottom line.": Exactly which artefact or work of art has been forcefully removed or stolen from the USA, so that you could reclaim it?
9. "And in the end patrimony is about ownership, often of objects that as in the marbles’ case, come from bygone civilizations.": At last the truth summed up: WE are the big boys, and we do what we like. You (Greeks, Egyptians, Irakies, Afghans, Nigerians...) are poor buggers with no rights.
10. "Stolen property is stolen property.": Again a moment of truth. And yet somehow "stolen property" of the 1970ies MUST be returned, while "stolen property" removed previously, must not. Surely there is a leap of logic here...
11. "But how curious that an ancient Greek vase, which centuries after it was made came into the possession of an Etruscan collector (a kind of ancient Elgin) living on what is now the outskirts of Rome, and then ended up buried for thousands of years below what became modern Italy, is today Italian cultural patrimony.": How many inexactitudes in a small phrase! The Greek vase was made in Athens specifically to be exported and bought by Etruscan customers. The buyer was certainly not a "collector", Etruscan or other, but a dude who wanted a nice vase for his house. And he certainly was not "a kind of ancient Elgin" as he did not rip the vase from the facade of a temple mutilating the ensemble in the precess. It should also be mentioned that Lord Elgin actually resold the stuff...He was in it for the cash, not for the artistic value, while the Etruscan dude bought a piece of modern art - or rather a nice piece of contemporary furniture for his house. Its like comparing someone who stole from a church with a shopper in IKEA...
12. "It’s not coincidental that conflicts over patrimony have accelerated in recent decades thanks to globalizing trends: the increasing circulation of information along with objects and money — consequences of the Web, jet travel and mass tourism": As you tell us later in the text "In the Parthenon’s case the Greek actress Melina Mercouri kicked off the modern repatriation push during the 1980s"... Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the Web had not mad a great impact in the 1980s...
13. "When Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, who made the recent fuss about the Rosetta Stone, also demanded that Germany hand over Nerfertiti, the 3,500-year-old bust of Akhenaten’s wife, he chose the moment when the Neues Museum in Berlin opened with the bust as its main attraction.": The dude has been a champion for the return of aniquities for years, if not decades. He also started planning the International conference on Looted Antiquities years ago...Poof goes that conspiracy theory.
14. "Egypt’s only real weapon on the international stage". Two words: "Suez Canal". A number of wars have been fought over its control...If that is not a "weapon on the international stage", then Nefretity, or even pyramids ain't gonna help!
15. "But almost nobody (outside Germany, anyway) cares today whether Russia returns storerooms of treasures it stole at the end of World War II. ": Noone, except, surprisingly, France, Poland, Austria, and a few other insignificant countries that Germany originally looted the treasures from originally...
16. "even though insiders were often complicit in the crimes.": Shock! Horror! Nigerians helped loot the country's museums? Well that changes everything! We have every right to keep the looted treasures then! That'll show'em!
17. "And after the Taliban destroyed a Buddhist temple and burned centuries-old illuminated manuscripts, hardly anybody outside the country blinked when Unesco refused to authorize shipments of artifacts from Afghanistan to Switzerland because the move violated international rules against the removal of “national patrimony” — and also because nobody was really paying much attention to that region yet. ": Where to start on this one? Of course UNESCO refused to authorise the export of artifacts...As to no-one paying attention...How many wars have been fought over Afghanistan in the last, say, 50 years? You may have been napping, but every one else sure was paying attention...
18. "Then Taliban inspectors pulverized priceless treasures before the eyes of helpless Afghan curators and blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in obedience to Mullah Omar’s edict against the existence of pre-Islamic art. Only then did people in the West wake up and Unesco reconsider its position. Too late.": Did you purpusefully omit to mention that the Bamiyan Buddhas had not been considered for export? Or did it escape your notice that they were the size of small mountains making transport a tad difficult?
19. "That’s why Greek authorities always decline diplomatic solutions like sharing the marbles or asking for their loan. They assume any loan request would legitimize Britain’s ownership.": Duh! If you ask someone for a loan, it is obvious you recognise their ownership of the object to be loaned...

To sum up let us just say that this article is one of the most popularist and demagogic articles I have read trying to make a case for the "right of might" in cultural affairs.

As far as the "art is universal" argument is concerned, it should be noted that it can be used in many ways: If art is universal, why does not the British Museum (for example) give all its collections to, let me think, say China, where the artifacts would get exposere to a much larger (and I mean MUCH larger) audience, thus better serving the cause of artistic universality? Somehow I think objections will be raised to this proposal.

As far as the millions of tourists that the BM gets, and thus should be allowed to keep all the treasures...The tourists come to the BM because it holds these treasures, not because it is the BM...Once again the writer puts the horse before the cart, twisting logic in fritening ways...

There is only one valid argument that can be put forward in the case of stolen antiquities remaining in the Great Museums: The extensive collections of Greek (or Egyptian, or Chinese or whatever) artifacts in the British Museum (or the Louvre, or the Berlin museums or the Metropolitan...) serves as a permanent tourist advertisment for the country of origin. But as far as ownership is concerned there is no doubt (at least as long as the current state of affairs exists in the world): They belong to the country of origin, and this should be universally recognised and accepted. It is then up to the country of origin to decide whether and which artifacts it wants to loan to foreign museums (on a more or less permanent basis), following an examination of its own interests.

(T) Impressive mosaic in Athens (Thiseio)

A treasure was hiddedn under no 24 Akamas street in Thiseio, Athens. During the archaeological control of the construction of the foundations of a new building, to one side of the plot, Katerina Stamatoudi of the 3rd Ephorate of Antiquities found an amazing mosaic in an ancient room.

It is entirely preserved, bearing diverse geometrical shapes around a central medallion bearing the scene of the Rape of Ganymedes, who is shown being carried away by Zeus in the form of an Eagle.

This important mosaic, especially given its state of preservation, is partially buried under another building that has been proclaimed a protected building. Various similar ancient buildings have been found in the Theseion region, dated to the late classical period (4th-3rd Centuries), most of which continue to be used into the Roman period.

The room that was also decorated with wall paintings, but unfortunately the walls are preserved to a small height. It is dated probably to the 2nd Century B.C. The luxurious room gives the impression that it was probably used as a welcoming are: in the classical period a banquet hall with seven or nine beds, while in the roman period it was used as a triclinium, with beds on the three sides and a table in the center. "Such mosaics where laid out to show off. Elsewhere they would have used a layer of stones or simple mortar".

The proposal of the head of the 3rd Ephorate, Nikoletta Valakou, to the Central Archaeological Council, is to move the mosaic to be exhibited in the planned Museum of the City of Athens in the Plato's Academy Area.

Source: Eleutherotypia, 16.04.2010
See also:
Archaiologia
Ta Nea, 16.04.2010
Kathimerini, 16.04.2010

The Face of Young Myrtis (T)

Myrtis is almost 2500 years old. But her life was short. She died aged just 11, in the plague that hit ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War.

Her God-Mother was Afi Baziotopoulou-Valavani, head of the excavations. But this little girls helped us understand which was the microbe that caused so much death in ancient Athens.

Manolis Papagrigorakis carried out a research on her teeth and on the teeth of the other skeletons that were discovered ouside Kerameikos, in the "plague grave". The grave is dated to 430-426 B.C. and held the remains of 150 people.

"My emotion was great when I looked on the face of Myrtis", said mr. Papagrigorakis, who carried out the facial re-creation, speaking tin the New Acropolis Museum. "I did not know anything about her exept that she was a little girl of the age of the Peloponnesian War, that lived through the siege and the plague and probably died of typhoid fever".

With these words the associate Professor announced to the world the completion of a unique achievement: in the shadow of the Parthenon the face of Athens of the time of Pericles appeared, in the form of a young Athenian who died in the Great Plague of 430 B.C. The re-creation of the face was the result of a great effort based on the skull that was discovered intact, amongst the archaeological finds of the Kerameikos dig.

"One of the skulls that attracted my attention, was that of a child. It preserved the lower jaw and, even more rare, the permanent teeth co-existed with milk teeth. The age was defined with a panoramic x-ray, by observing the root-ending of the teeth, and the sex was also defined.

It was a girl of about 11 years old, which the research team named Myrtis.

"Myrtis had all the anatomical skeletal elements of the cranio-facial complex; in other words an intact skull, important for the final result".


The technique of re-creation is based on the use of markers or little nails that show the thickness of the tissue, by considering the origin, the sex, the living conditions and the age. To recreate the muscles and the tissue of the face are sculpted, while the markers are used as a basic guide as to the how thick the sculpting clay should be. The shape and size of eyes and nose can be calculated from the size of the ocular and nasal cavities.

The conditions surrounding her death did not allow the usual care show to the dead, and she was thrown in a mass grave. Although they knew this, the researchers did not want to re-create the expression of pain that she must have lived before dying, the undying thirst that led the ill to crowd around sources and wells; they did not want to show the horror of what she saw and the agony of coming death. Rather they preferred a "light smile that gives the impression of peace and calm".

Aggeliki Kotti

source:
Ta Nea, 10.04.2010 and
Ta Nea, 10.04.2010

Adaptation/Translation: ArchaeologyMatters

(T) Economic Crisis and Archaeology in Greece

Delphoi, one of the most important archaeological sites in the world, is closed. Officially the reason is rock-slides that make the area of the stadium dangerous. The famous Castalia source has also been kept closed for the past 15 years for the same reasons.

The problem has always existed on the site and re-appears after every heavy rainfall. However, apart for some interventions that have been made on three points, there is no money even for mapping the situation and even less for a complete study that will finally solve the problem that in the past has even damaged the seats of the stadium. Apart for the official excuse, however, there is also an "unofficial" reason for keeping the site closed: "Lack of personnel" as the guardians admit...

The Archaeological museum of Herakleion on Crete, one of the most important museums, has also been closed for the past 3 years, leaving its approximately 246,000 annual visitors...out in the cold! There is no funding to complete its restoration, as 2,5 million Euros are already owed to the contractor. There is not even a budget calculated for the reopening of the exhibition, so that is could be incorporated in the EU support framework; at the same time an antagonism amongst the archaeologists chosen to set up the exhibition and the local Ephorate of Antiquities, does not help matters...

The result is that "the first European Civilisation" - the Minoan Civilisation - will be represented by just 400 exhibits - in a "temporary" exhibition in a structure that was originally destined to be a garage!

Sounio, the third most visited archaeological site of Attica (153.300 visitors in 2008) is also one of the most abandoned because of lack of funding.

If one of the thousands of visitors trips, he will easily fall from the cliff, as the barriers are inadequate. There are no toilets, and visitors daily form long queues to use those of the restaurant that functions on the site.

"The image that the site gives is disappointing", declared recently the Head of the 2nd Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classic Antiquities, Ioanna Drakotou, speaking to the Central Archaeological Council.

As its sea access remains unguarded during the night, it is not impossible that during some nights it is home to Black Magic rituals, as indicated by "Strange remains" that turn up. The fortifications, which in antiquity had made Sounio one of the most important strongholds in Attica, are collapsing and are held up by metal posts, as the 100.000 Euros necessary for their restoration have yet to be found...And of course few are those who understand what the site looked like or what its importance was in antiquity. Not because of lack of excavations. And neither because the temple of Poseidon steal the show. But because the totallity of the site has not been beautified and organised so that visitors will comprehend that Sounio was a fortified settlement and not just an isolated sanctuary at the edge of Attica.

Not only sites that have no funding, but also some that have received funding face problems: An example is the Lyceum of Aristotle, a site that remains closed for the past 13 years, although it is one of the most important of Athens.

The study has been made, but the 4,5 million Euros granded by the Organism of Prediction of Football Games (OPAP) last April, seem too much to the Ministry for a roofing project - in the midst of an economic crisis (there are those who claim that the cost should be readjusted to 6 million).

So, in order to economise, instead of covering the remains of the Philosophical School created by Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great, in 355 B.C. with a modern arched roof - a project that one the relative tender - "a different solution will be sought for the roofing, which will cost 1,8 million Euros", according to the General Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Lina Mendoni. And what about the Roofing Project that was never finished? In a large part it has already been paid for! Wasted money, as the special roofing was adjusted to the needs of this specific site and cannot be used elsewhere!

Source: Ta NEA, 31.03.2010
Translation/Adaptation: ArchaeologyMatters
See also: Greek heritage crumbles

(T) Eretria exhibition in Athens National Archaeological Museum

Image: Head Medusa (gorgoneion), from the House of Mosaics in Eretria (4th c. B.C.)

The history of ancient Eretria from its founding to late antiquity shall be presented through excavation finds, drawings, models and videos in the exhibition that opened 26 April at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. "Eretria: Looks at an ancient city" is the title of the exhibition and its aim is to give a lively and original image of the lives of the people living in it.

Seven Greek Museums and the Muzei Capitolini of Italy participate in the exhibition, which includes 437 objects.

It is organised in four sections. The first presents the early inhabitants of the city, the prime during the Geometric Period, commerce and external relations (Mende, Methone, Dikaia, Pithecuses, Kyme, Zancle),

and also the development of
alphabetic writing. The second section centres on matters of daily life, presenting public buildings but also luxurious private houses, the functions of the Agora, the stoas and the Gymnasia, but also private life.

A special section is comprised of worship in the sanctuaries of Eretria - the city god was Appolo Daphniforos (Laurelbearer)-, while the last section concerns matters of death and the afterlife, presenting necropolises, burials and offerings to the dead. Among them, golden crowns and other jewellery used to adorn the deceast before burial, weapons, exquisitely painted lekythoi and bronze mirrors.

The exhibition is co-organised by the Swiss Archaeological School which is excavating and studying the remains of ancient Eretria in Euboia. After its end, on the 25th August, the exhibition will be presented in the Ludwid Collection in Basel (from September 2010 to January 2011.

Source: To Vima
Translation: ArchaeologyMatters

See also:

• Kathimerini.gr, 31.03.2010.
• TA NEA, 30.03.2010.

Further Reading:

• Keith G. Walker, Archaic Eretria: A political and Social History from the Earliest times to 490 B.C., London 2004. Online Here.

All aboard on a lap with the gods

Remains of the day ... fortifications of ancient Athens are showcased in the central Syntagma station. Photo: AFP

Only in Athens could the subway take you from the 21st to the second century, writes David Whitley.

WHAT The Metro mini-museums.

WHERE Athens, Greece.

HOW MUCH €3 ($4.50) for a one-day metro ticket.

WHY GO? As clashes between ancient and modern go, it's hard to top the Akropoli Metro Station in Athens. In most respects, it is a shrine to contemporary architecture. It has the gleaming polished floors, the high-tech ticket machines, the piped music tinkling through and the air-conditioning providing a welcome respite from the searing heat outside. It's a rare example of a subway station that manages to look light and breezy, and most commuters plough through without noticing that it's something more than just a place to get on and off trains.

Those who are prepared to look around and peer into the station's nooks and crannies will find themselves peering into ancient Athens. The Akropoli station has cabinets full of oil lamps from the sixth century BC, 1500-year-old mosaic floors and 3500-year-old clay cups.

On one side of Akropoli is a series of plaster casts - they're of the figures from the east pediment of the Parthenon. They feature some of the classics of Greek mythology; the four horses of Helios's chariot rising from the ocean, a panther skin-clad Dionysos lying on a rock and two seated goddesses.

The Akropoli metro station is essentially a mini-museum. This is partly due to its unique construction process. When the new Athens metro system was due to be built in the 1990s, there was a massive problem - the construction work would be disrupting a whole heap of history.

The solution was to combine the new metro with one of the biggest archaeological digs of all time. Ancient settlements, long buried underground, were discovered and it was decided to display the best of the finds in the stations.

Many of Athens's metro stations have similar collections and displays - Syntagma and Egaleo are among the best in this respect - but Monastiraki is arguably the most impressive. After all, how many other metro stations have a river trickling through them?

The Eridanos is a small stream that has long since been buried as Athens has built upwards over old settlements. It was largely forgotten about until work started on the Monastiraki station, where it was found to be still flowing under a stone vault from the era of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Instead of ripping everything up and blocking the river, the new construction was built around it.

The result is that you walk from the train and across a glass platform which enables the second and 21st centuries to merge with an almost sci-fi effect.

During the construction of the Athens Metro, more than 79,000 square metres were dug up including about 50,000 titbits from the past. What the city has done with them is unique - and it's well worth going underground for.

FREE STUFF A lot of the good stuff is on the exit side of the ticket barriers. For the bits on the train side, chances are no one's going to pull you up on it if you wander through and have a look.

Realistically, though, spending €3 on an all-day metro ticket and taking in a few stations is probably a lot easier.

ADDED BONUS The stations aren't just displaying old treasures - they also act as galleries for contemporary Greek artists. Each station displays at least one artwork from internationally renowned local creative types.

DETAILS www.ametro.gr.

Source: The Sun-Herald

Greece: 6. Central Greece: e. Attica: Athens: Athens Metro: Monastiraki Station

The Athens Metro apart from being spacious, clean and on time (no really, it is!) also is host to many interesting sights. Not just the sights it can transport you to above ground, but sights IN the stations themselves. Some stations have modern art exhibits, while others, as is the case with the downtown Monastiraki station, are Museums, hosting original antiquities found in situ during the excavations that preceded the construction of the Underground.

The following Photographs were taken on the 10.06.2008. If you find them interesting, feel free to use them, but please reference them back to this site!

Finds include the ancient bed of the Eridanos river. The vault is dated to the time of Hadria (2nd century A.D.), while the finds in this picture cover an impressive 10 centuries, from the 5th century B.C. to the 5th A.D.!

Stromatography of the site presented in full...

A walk over antiquities to get to the train...

explanations, in Greek and English even offer ceramic typology charts...

Greece: Athens: Acropolis Museum

Photo: Ethnos

• Collection of articles from Ethnos

Photo: Ethnos

Greece: Athens: Herodes Atticus Odeon

• Ministry Site: http://www.tdpeae.gr/index.php?ID=YUfBuoHpmwxsEEjb
  

South Slope of the Acropolis

South Slope of the Acropolis

• Ministry Site: http://www.tdpeae.gr/index.php?ID=Q9NlPGgK71MtUqBw
  

The Ancient Stone carrying road from Pentelikon to the Acropolis comes to light

A part of the road followed in the time of Pericles by Athenians transporting the marble used to construct the Parthenon has come to light after excavations were carried out of private property.

Τμήμα της διαδρομής που ακολουθούσαν κατά τον Χρυσό Αιώνα του Περικλή οι Αθηναίοι για να μεταφέρουν τα μάρμαρα του Παρθενώνα,αποκαλύφθηκε ύστερα από ανασκαφή σε ιδιωτική περιουσία «E» 12/3

The Famous road of Lithagogia (Stone Transporting), the road that during the Golden Age of Pericles carried marble of mt Penteli to the city of Athens, is revealed in Halandri [a northern suburb of Athens]. The archaeological digs bring a second portion of an important part of the ancient world to light: the road which was used to transport the marble uses to construct the Parthenon.

Until a year ago the Lithagogia road was shrouded in mystery, as its route was not proven but only supposed.

In January 2009 at no 133 of Pentelis Avenue, between Parnitha, Messinia and Laconia streets, and about 80 meters from the Halandri stream - following an excavation on private property the road dated to the classical period was unearthed.

Photo: Β. Zisopoulos, Ethnos.

The archaeologists believed it to be the ancient Lithagogia road, while a second excavation, which is underway covering a surface of about 200 meters, show that the scientists are on the track of the road that played an important role for transport in the ancient world.

It should be noted that the use of the road is believed to have been dense during the summer, and, based on the quantity of the marbles uses to build the Parthenon and the short time it was actually built in, it is probable that at least 15 cart loads covered the distance from Pentelikon to Athens per day and an equal amount of empty carts made the reverse journey.

As the archaeologists in charge stated to to the Ethnos newspaper "it is still early, but everything shows that it is part of the same road, a continuation of the previous finds. Until today we imagined that the road was to be found on this spot. Finally the theories are confirmed".

They explain that the road was unearthed by private citizens digging the foundations of a new building; the construction company which is going to build here has already expressed a wish to keep the finds exposed, covered by a protective glass cover.

The professor of Architecture at the National Metsoveio Polytechic School, mr. Manolis Korres, had tried based on geomorphologic and archaeological observations to define the course of the Lithagogia road. As is evident today, the maps that he had composed and are published in his book "From Pentelikon to the Parthenon" were exact!

As is shown there, the Lithagogia road followed the Halandri stream, following the Ethnikis Antistasis road and coming close to the course of Kifisias Avenue, passed through what is now the National Gardens and, crossing the northern slope of the Acropolis ended at the sanctuary of the Nymphs at an altitude of 96 m.

According to mr. Korres, the Lithagogia road was downhill for almost all its course, something that facilitated the transport of the marble, while its total length of 17.4 km, just 1 km. longer than a straight line between the points of start and arrival.

According to him, at the frontier between the municipalities of Vrilissia and Melissia there was a bridge of five arches over which ran the Lithagogia road, while according to his observation "the original narrow country roads that once ran through the empty spaces of the little villages, like Halandri, Koukouvaones or Arakli (today Palaio Herakleio), are as a rule incorporated or in various ways transformed through the indescribably irregular, but not hazardous plan of this roard".

During the previous excavation at the no 133 of Pentelis Avenue, the ancient road had been uncovered to a length of 19.70 m. and a width of 3.30 m. To its two sides supporting walls were found, which held up the road, while close by barriers against flooding wre uncovered. Amongst the finds were a lead weight, a cover of a nail and a stamped amphora handle, bearing the image of an oinochoe.

Source: Katerina Rovva, Ethnos, 12.03.2010

Athens: Buried in a haste...

Ancient texts, combined with cutting-edge and innovative technology explain and date the find.
An image of panic, expressed with an unheard-of treatment of the dead, the stacking of the dead in a pit.

Vase with an original scene showing two children playing: they are holding straps at the end of which a ball-like object is tied.

These dead, the anonymous, simple inhabitants of Athens, who did not enjoy the care of their dearest and nearest, the polis collected them and buried them. They are the ones who, abandoned, lie dead on the streets and in the sanctuaries. The city decides to make a public funeral, quickly and in a cursory manner, at the edge of the main cemetery, at Kerameikos. A burial which, maybe for the first time, did not aim at honouring the dead, but at the protection of public health".

An archaeological presentation does not usually provoke emotions, as it speaks of things belonging to the distant past. However, the presentation by Efi Baziotopoulou-Valavani at the Archaeological Society of Athens contained many touching descriptions of the so-called "Plague Grave" which was uncovered at the Kerameikos.

The ancient texts, combined with modern archaeological techniques and ground breaking interdisciplinary methods, gave the dating and the explanation for the grave that was found on the edge of the ancient cemetery by mrs Baziotopoulou-Valavani and mrs Drakotou-Tsirigoti. It is a grave for the dead of the plague that struck Athens during the early years of the Peloponnesian War. A scientific team including Manolis Papagrigorakis, Philippos Synodinos and Christos Giapitzakis, examined the teeth of the deceased and discovered that typhoid fever was a cause of the plague of Athens, either exclusively or combined with another, still unknown, epidemic element.

"The first burials appeared on the eastern arc of the pit at a depth of 4.30 meters. Immediately below these, with no interposed earth, a second layer of dead was found, with no certain orientation. The discovery of stacked layers of dead continued, with the bodies buried randomly, with a tendency to be placed in the centre of the pit towards the edges. It is interesting that 8 burials in vases with no offerings of infants were placed among the dead of the uppermost layer? These small children were buried as in vases, covered with large bits of unpainted amphoras, a burial practice that differentiated them from the rest of the dead".

"The last speletons followed the outline of the pit, and covered every empty space, so that some were placed in a slanting position, almost standing or bent over" said mrs. Baziotopoulou-Valavani. "It is probable that in the centre the dead were stacked one on top of the other, creating a human hill, which was, of course covered by a mound of earth. The burial of an estimated 130-150 men, women and children was completed with cursory funeral honours".

The grave goods of this mass grave are few compared with the number of the dead, appraximately 30. Among them part of a chous , a usual offering for infant burials, with a representation of a child sitting in a little cart. The face of the little driver has deep eyes, a pronounced nose and a strong chin. A second chous bears the original scene of two children playing, holding straps, at the end of which a ball-like object is tied. The children probably swirled the strap to launch the ball to a distance. Two small matleser dogs at the bottom of the scene, participate in the game.

15 white lekythoi were found in the mass grave.

Source: Angeliki Kotti, Ethnos, 02.03.2010.
akotti@pegasus.gr

Athens: Plato's Academy threatened!

Photo: Eleutherotypia, 24.03.2010

A building monstrosity in the middle of the Archaeological Park of the Academy of Plato

Giorgos Lialios

An archaeological park that includes an office building of 20.000 sq. m. is being pushed forward by the ministries of Environment and Culture in the region of Plato’s Academy in Athens. The services of the ministry of Environment have given a positive opinion concerning the creation of a building monstrosity in this area which is in the process of being reformed. And the political leadership of the ministry proves itself with no spine, although originally it had considered the possibility of a temporary freeze of all construction in the region. All this shall be decided in the next few days.

As it seems, each of the (very few) city planning interventions of the state in Athens must be accompanied by the advancement of a large entrepreneurial investment ! This is proven to be the case for the Academia Platonos (Plato’s Academy) area, where the ministries of Culture and Environment are planning the reforming of the archaeological site and the creation of a museum. This move to upgrade the area is accompanied by the approval (in a whole series of legal and planning intervention dating from 2000 to 2008) of the construction of a five-story building complex of offices of a total surface of 20000 sq. m.

View of the archaeological site of Plato's Academy (from: Wikipedia)

The building permit for the building monstrosity was granted in 2008, without having an approved study of its environmental consequences. This was handled by the Special Service of Environment of the Ministry of the same name, which, as is its custom, gave a positive report. The final decision is now in the hands of the Minister, mrs. Tina Birbili, who, according to information had originally considered the possibility of freezing of construction over an area of 56 city blocks in the region (a move which would give the ministry the time to move on the matter). The minister, however, does not look like being ready to go against these particular business interests. The stance of the new Minister of Culture, mr. Pavlos Geroulanos, remains a mystery, as do the plans of the ministry about incorporating this building monstrosity into the archaeological project…

........................................................................................................................................

Press Release of the Ministry of Environment and Energy

The Ministry of Environment and Energy decided the freezing of the Construction permits in the region to the North of Elaionas of the municipality of Athens and more specifically in the region of the archaeological forest of the Academy of Plato. This region, covering approximately 55 building blocks, was put under a regime of frozen building permits for one year, after relative proposals of the year 2009 of the Municipal Council of the City of Athens, aiming at the reform of the relative City Plan for the reforming and orthological use of this area of great importance for the City of Athens.

Source: http://akadimia-platonos.blogspot.com/2010/03/blog-post_23.html

....................................................................................................................................................

Sources : Kathimerini, 16.03.2010

See also: Eleutherotypia, 24.03.2010

Plato's Academy Regional Association

Greece: 6. Central Greece: e. Attica: Athens: Monuments

An asterisk (*) marks original posts. A (T) marks a translation. A (C) marks a text from a different text with and ArchaeologyMatters Comment

1. Acropolis. Monuments on the Rock!

• Acropolis Museum
  
• The Parthenon.
• South Slope.
• Herodes Atticus Odeon.
  

2. Plato's Academy (Academia Platonos) Area.
...........03.2010 (T)

3. Athens Metro

• All ABoard for a Lap with the Gods
  
• Monastiraki Station*

4. Kerameikos

• The Face of Young Myrtis (T)

5. Thiseio Area

• (T) Impressive mosaic in Athens (Thiseio)

6. Laurion (Lavrion)
a. Thorikon.

• Restoration of the Thorikon Theatre, Laurion, Attica
  

Greece: Athens: Acropolis: Parthenon

An asterisk (*) marks original posts. A (T) marks a translation. A (C) marks a text from a different text with and ArchaeologyMatters Comment

No original photos yet. But some great sites relative to this unique architectural masterpiece!

Reunification of Sculptures:

• Bring Them Back... (For)
  
• Who draws the Borders of culture Text by Michel Kimmelman in the New York Times 09.05.2010(C). (Against)
  

OVERVIEWS:

• Reed College Parthenon Page.
• Perseus Parthenon Page.
• T.R. Martin's Chapter on the Periclean Building Program
• T.R. Martin's Sub-section on the Parthenon
• Plan, showing the layout of walls and columns, from Perseus
• Reconstruction of the doors of the Parthenon, from Perseus
• Perseus' Main Entry for the Ur-Parthenon
• Minott Kerr's Lecture on the Parthenon
• http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Arts/Parthenon.htm
  

The Parthenon Frieze: http://www.parthenonfrieze.gr Great educational site with all the frieze of the Parthenon in interactive photographic reproduction and tones of games and activities for the younger archaeologist!
East Pediment: Check Perseus, Parthenon East Pediment Page
West Pediment: Check Perseus, Parthenon West Pediment Page