7/2 - Keramaikos, Acropolis Museum

I woke up before my very early alarm somehow and headed out to the porch. Asia and I did some calisthenic workouts before I headed back to shower before breakfast. Breakfast was the standard affair of yogurt with granola and honey, water, juice, and bread with butter. We set off walking at 7:45 for the Keramaikos, which is just north of the Agora. Along the way, the group found ourselves escorted by a stray dog with the tendency to bark at cars. Fascinatingly, as we approached the north side of the Agora, the excavation dogs came out and actually ran off our stray. One of them, Ulysses, is a big German Shepard looking dog with surprisingly blond fur. I'd estimate him at 70 lbs easy. He followed us around the site too. I guess he's just used to archaeological visits, but he also didn't escort the other tour groups that I saw.

Rex, our constant companion around the Agora and Keramaikos. He appeared many times on the trip.

We were joined by bioarchaeologist Dr. Maria Liston, who also lectured to us at Thorikos during the first week of the program. The Keramaikos is a an area with various uses. It sits astride what would have been the old city walls. There are many tombs in the area and according to Amy, the name does not come from the Greek word that gives us "ceramic" but from someone's actual name.

The highlight and simultaneously maddening part of the site is the Spartan tomb. Filled with 13 skeletons of Spartans killed during the years of the 30 Tyrants, we actually have the names of the men in the tomb from an account from Xenophon. Two were prominent leaders and the surviving inscription on the tomb corresponds with the names given in the written sources. This is the only marked grave for Spartans known. The maddening part of the tombs is that the skeletons have never been properly studied. Dr. Liston explained to us that there is a German archaeologist  who hasn't written anything in 40 years who still technically has a the "right" to the bones. Dr. Liston was hopeful that she would be able to examine in the next couple years however.

The Tomb of the Lacedaemonians.

Then we found a shady spot and talked about the plague that struck Athens between 430 and 426 BCE. We have an extensive description of the symptoms from Thucydides. A plague pit was found far from the walls on the site of the Keramaikos filled with bodies as well. While modern medical science has never fully pinpointed what caused the plague, the most recent analysis points towards small pox in conjunction with typhus.

After a quick tour of the museum on site, we returned to the school, stopping for a quick gelato on the way. The ice cream here is fantastic and anyone traveling to Greece should certainly indulge themselves a little bit.

Once back at Loring Hall, we ate lunch with Dr. Andy Stewart, our next lecturer. He's pretty much a titan in the field of classical sculpture. Then we walked over to the Acropolis museum, taking a scenic cut through the National Garden's winding paths. He took us on a tour of all of the lower floors of the museum. Some cool things I saw but was unable to photograph were the thesauros, or treasury box, of Aphrodite and the friezes from buildings that once stood on the Acropolis.

After he talked, we were set free into the city to find food as Loring Hall is not open on the weekends for Saturday dinner or any meal on Sunday. Talia, Abi, and I, all very hungry, walked back towards the school and stopped at Stick Diner, which specializes in meat on sticks. I had 3 and we split fava, a Greek salad, fries, and tztiki (sp?). That was a good decision. I was very full.

Back at the school, I grabbed my stuff and headed to the Blegen Library to start my research on Olympian treasuries for my presentation on the Peloponnese trip. The library is non-circulating, so no books leave the premises. The catalog system is also used nowhere else in the world. When you take a book off the shelf, you fill out a card stock card, put it in place of the book, then move the books to your assigned table where you can do research. If someone needs that book, they find your card, get your table number, then go down to your table and replace the book with another card. It's an antiquated process, but the clientele of the Blegen like dealing with antiquities.

Finally, after some good research that turned up a lot of German (who are the primary excavators at Olympia) but also some excellent material in English, I went back to the residence hall to get ready for bed and write this post. Tomorrow is another day of lecture and we're starting at the National Museum.

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to contact me by email at mcartier@uchicago.edu to discuss the blog or classics things.