Today got away from me. Will check with IT Wednesday (day trip tomorrow) re: computer.
We left earlier than usual this morning, setting off at 0730 for an early 0815 appointment at the Agora. Dr. Laura Gawlinski, our lecturer on the North Slope of the Acropolis, greeted us there. After some preliminary discussion of what was outside on the ground floor of the museum, we tried to go inside as we had arranged permission to do so. And we were denied. Apparently, the museum is cleaned every Monday morning so it isn’t open even to the scholar who wrote the guidebook for the museum until 10, two hours after its normally scheduled time.
Circumstances: 1
Summer Session: 0
Then we went upstairs to try to talk about some of the items up there. After briefly talking in the corner, a woman with headphones on asked us if we could go downstairs so she could complete an interview with Dr. John Camp, the Director of Excavation. And so that wound up happening too.
Circumstances: 2
Summer Session: 0
Fortunately, we were able to look at some odds and ends on the terrace, including a really cool bilingual inscription. It seems like it was first set up in Latin, which is odd enough, but then includes two Greek lines that were obviously added later. It’s a puzzling addition, and I’d like to revisit the object at some point.
The inscription in question.
Even though we had been delayed, we managed to waylay Dr. Andy Stewart on his way into the building to give his talk to us early. We went back up into the stoa and into the research area where he is currently piecing together two sculpture groups. The first is from the Temple of Ares, which was relocated from outside the city to the Agora by the Romans. The temple is a very pre-Roman temple sitting on Roman concrete foundations, and we’ve found the original foundations. The Romans were quite prone to doing this stuff. It’s an immense amount of effort, but better than building a brand new temple, I guess. Andy has a load of fragments of the pedimental sculpture, which, by incredible deductions and a fair bit of educated guessing, he has managed to put for reasonable hypotheses for what the sculptures show. We’re talking literal bits and pieces here. The same on the Hephaesteion. Andy really demonstrated his skill at finding the subtle signs that let scholars make deductions like this about sculpture. Super cool talk.
Andy's workbench with pedimental fragments.
When Andy was done, the museum was open and we met back up with Dr. Gawlinski for the walkthrough. The gallery itself is not massive like the ones in the National Archaeological Museum, but the items therein are very rare and sometimes unique. For instance, there is an ivory statuette of Apollo that was reassembled from over 1,000 pieces. It’s like Lego on hard mode. The dedication required to reassemble this beautiful statuette is mind boggling.
If it looks like a repaired crack, it's probably a crack. Truly a fantastic restoration.
Then we headed to the basement and spoke to Drs. Sheila Dillon and Kathleen Lynch, along with Kathleen’s graduate student Maura Brennan. Sheila explained the process of working on sculptures in the basement of the Agora. We also got to handle a bunch of different sculpture fragments and work to identify them. Incidentally, colossal statue fragments are awesome. With Kathleen and Maura, we took passes at identifying pottery fragments by their type. The trick, which sounds like something from the Matrix, is to see past the patterns and ignore them. Jason, Sophie, and I had a challenge with the tray of pottery, but with some friendly advice from Kathleen, we managed.
A literal rack of gutters that I found in the storerooms while poking around after the talks. There were
more too, but I'll spare you the rest of the pictures of pipes.
We zipped back to the school for lunch, where we chowed down on delicious pasticcio and artichokes. Our next lecture was only a few minutes away at the British School. The British School has a collection of ~3,500 artifacts, four of which were the subject of the lecture presented by Dr. Chryssanthi Papodopoulou. We looked at four depictions in statuette form of the female body. The depictions were from varied sources, one Cycladic, two Mycenaean, and one Hellenistic. Dr. Papodopoulou talked about how each statuette shows a different view of the acceptability of the female body’s nudity across cultures. It was a very interesting lecture that also got into the side topic of what art is important. The Cycladic figurines used to be viewed as not interesting enough to display or study. That view has been corrected, fortunately.
Leaving no time for the wicked to rest, we met Dr. Georgia Tzouvala and walked over to the Panathenaic Stadium. The stadium was built by the colorful character Herodes Atticus, who in many ways acted like a Roman Emperor, if just in Athens. He was a murderer and domestic abuser, but also managed to skate by with his IMMENSE wealth. Anyways, he built the stadium, which was later restored to host events of the 1896 and 2004 Olympics. Of course, we had a race, although only Luke and I participated. I took a close 400m dash in the baking heat.
The stadium from the curve in the horseshoe shape.
Finally, we went to the First Cemetery on the east side of the city. Drs. Nigel and Stephanie Kennell guided us through the labyrinthine cemetery, where we saw the tombs of some of the most famous people buried in Greece. Names like Melina Mercouri and Andreas Papandreou will ring bells for those who remember some more contemporary Greek names, while classics people and blog followers will remember Schliemann, the excavator of Troy and many other sites. Schliemann’s tomb in particular is quite spectacular and still towers over the mausoleums around it.
Schliemann's tomb on its high pediment. He really did not do things halfway.
After some deeper exploration into the cemetery, we returned home for delicious lamb chop dinner. After the meal, I went and did research for my upcoming report at Thermopylae. Tomorrow is another early day with a trip to Marathon, so that's really exciting.
Thanks for reading.
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