We packed up our junk and left the hotel for the last time before busing over to Knossos. Knossos was exciting for a few reasons, the best of which being that it is not a collection of knee-high piles of rocks. Back in the late 19th century, shortly after Schliemann excavated Troy and Mycenae and announced that he'd found the personal belongings of most of the figures of Greek mythology, a rich Englishman named Arthur Evans bought some land just outside of Heralkeion and started investigating local rumors about an archaelogical site there. This turned out to be a pretty smart idea. Schliemann found both Troy and Mycenae, which contempory scholarship said didn't exist, by going to rough area where Homer said they were and asking the locals. "Oh, that old place? It's buried under that hill over there." Anyway, like Schliemann, Evens found a huge and incredibly important site, the biggest and best palace of the people Evans later named the Minoans, after the Cretan king who also had a thing for bulls. Unfortunately, Evans wasn't an archaeologist and he had a lot of money, so when he got tired of looking at the actual ruins he paid some people to reconstruct a lot of them. On the one hand this irks a lot of archaeologists, since the reconstruction messed up some genuine ruins and is almost certainly wrong. On the other hand, it's a lot more interesting to look at and the Greek Archaeological Service actually makes money off of it. And it's also a lot more photogenic.
A building that actually looks intact. Most of it is fake.
Two stories.
Reconstructed floor next to uneven ancient floor. This alos gives you an idea of how big the site is.
Reconstructed frescos. These are copies of the reconstructions in Athens and the Herakleion museum. The nice thing about these is that you can't tell how little of those is actually preserved Minoan plaster.
Horns of Consecration. This is a textbook example of the I-don't-know-what-it-is-so-let's-just-say-it-had-cult-significance rule of archaeology. There are a few theories about what exactly they were for, but these things are used for decoration all over Knossos. That they represent bull horns is pretty certain, since the Minoans in general and the people of Knossos in particular seem to have really liked bulls. This is part of the reason why they're named after King Minos, who also gave his name to the minotaur.
Wood and paint, which are two things you normally don't see in 3500-year-old buildings.
Storage rooms. These are the other reason these guys are named after Minos. Minoan palaces were primarily warehouses and distribution centers, and they all had lots and lots of room for storage. When you look at the floorplan of these, they're organized in a very space-efficient but horribly confusing way, like a giant maze. Knossos was the biggest palace and had the most storage and the most convoluted maze. The theory is that the later Greeks who set up their own city at this site saw the ruins and some of the artwork and came up with the myth of the Cretan King Minos and the giant bull monster that he kept locked in a maze to explain where this stuff came from. When the Athenians were coming up with their own origin stories, they talked about how Theseus, unwilling to let his fellow Athenians be fed to this nasty foreign bull thing, went over to Crete and killed the minotaur, seduced Minos' daughter and freed Athens from paying tribute to Knossos or wherever.
Arther Evans' idea of what the Minoans' idea of what a griffin looks like.
The throne room. Both Minoan palaces and the Mycenaean palaces based on them liked to put the throne (whether it was for a king or a high priest is uncertain) right against the wall, facing a big hearth.
A bunch of unmarked doors. The minotaur is behind one of them.
Three stories! At real archaeological sites the best we ever get are stairs and collapsed bits of ceiling.
Minoan architecture might have been really pretty. This was based off of frescos, so it's not completely arbitrary. It also doesn't pass modern archaeologists' rigorous standards for reconstruction, though.
A big staircase. Evans' idea of Knossos was also vertically complex. They didn't just built up, but also down.
When we were being briefed on the site, Dr. Farney mentioned that Evans had a bunch of peacocks imported to help improve the English garden feel of the place. The Greeks either take care of them or just import more when the old ones die, but in any event we could hear them crowing (or squawking, or braying... I'm not sure what the appropriate term is for peafowl) off and on. At one point they seemed to just leap up from a roped-off area and charge into the courtyard in front of us to show off.
They darted off into a group of tourist to make sure that everybody stopped touring to admire their plumage.
Then they withdrew before Doug could take one home as a sourvenir.
A colorful, peacock-free room.
The famous "bull jumping" fresco. It depicts a guy doing a backflip over a bull, with a woman on either side of it. People have spent the last century arguing about what this actually represents, with the two big contenters being sports and religious ritual.
And one last photo of 100-year-old 3500-year-old ruins.
That's it for Knossos, and now it's just museum pictures and then we're done with Crete.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Crete II: Gournia and Lato
Photos are taking excruciatingly long to upload, so I'm definately not going to get all of the Knossos and museum pictures up before this place closes. So I'll just give you a teaser: peacocks.
Anyway, we did four things on our second day in Crete. The two I don't have any photos of are lunch in the small town of Kritsa and a quick stop at Panaghia Kera. I think it was at Kritsa that I first realized the nature of the Greek economy. Essentially you get two or three different kinds of establishments (tavernas, gift shops and, in the big cities, gyro places) and they make up your area's economy. All members of a given group sell mostly the same things for roughly the same prices. They are also, invariably, crammed into the tightest possible space. It is a typical experience in small tourist towns to walk a few blocks down a street and see ten tavernas serving the same food and ten gift shops on the other side of the street selling the same stuff. Anyway, Panaghia Kera is a Greek Orthodox church (Panaghia being the all-holy Virgin) with well-preserved frescos, but the weird thing about it is that it was built by the Venetians during their occupation of Crete. So everyone in the frescos is wearing Italian Renaissance clothing and half the church is honoring St. Francis, who is not only not an Orthodox saint, but was also de facto excommunicated (at the time) by virtue of being Roman Catholic clergy.
And now I'm getting the boot. Tomorrow I'll try one of the places in Syntagma, which is a little bit of a hike, but still within walking distance and open 24/7. The photos are up at http://www.panoramio.com/user/1967629 for the impatient, and I'll say what exactly is in them tomorrow. Right now I'll just point out that Gournia is a Minoan town and Lato is actually a later Greek site, complete with a small temple, a small theather, and small public buildings that were all abandoned because 500 years is a long time to have to schlepp your fresh water up and down a mountain every day.
EDIT: Ok, I've got Pete's computer for a few hours so let's get to it. First Gournia:
A great action shot. Dr. Farney is lecturing frantically about a rock. Because this rock is sticking out of the middle of a paved courtyard, it seems to have some sort of useful purpose. Archaeologists have assumed that this rock, like everything else they can't find a useful purpose for, had some sort of religious significance. This is very unusual in that neither the Minaons nor the Mycenaeans nor the later Greeks worshipped rocks or gods who resembled rocks. Of course, that theory isn't necessarily as stupid and flimsy as it sounds. After all, Islam's holiest shrine also revolves around a rock sticking out of a big courtyard, and they don't worship rocks or deities that look like rocks, either.
A paved street. You can't get carts down these, but it's still a pretty good indicator of civilization.
Quite a view. Like most of Crete, Gournia has a good view of the Mediterranean and is pleasantly breezy. Especially so, actually, since Gournia is at the narrowest point of the island.
More substantial ruins would only have blocked the view.
The was some guy's house at least 600 years before the Iliad was written.
Ruins. We hadn't quite gotten bored of them yet.
A prettier shot of a Minoan street.
Lato was built way up in the mountains. This is a great idea if you're worried about the guys from Knossos beating you up and taking your stuff.
And judging by the walls, the people at Lato were.
Stairs up to some civic buildings. This is the easy way up to the settlement.
The hard way up apparently fell off the side of the mountain with some of the ruins somewhere in the past 2500 years.
Another landscape shot, this time featuring trees that don't grow olives.
The view from A bit farther back.
Our first good ol' fashioned Greek temple. That platform in the back once supported a cult statue of Apollo, probably made out of either bronze or marble. He and his mother, Leto, were both big at this site, so much so that it's actually named Leto, but with a local pronounciation. I should probably repeat that this site is a good thousand years younger than almost anything else we'd seen so far. After the vaguely-Greek Mycenaean civilization collapsed in the 1200s BC, the Greeks lack writing and big stone buildings until they get their act back together in the 700s. It was in that period, from about 700 to about 500 BC, that Lato was built.
Backing up a bit. That pile of rocks in the foreground used to be the alter. Sacrifices were always offered outside, and temples were actually optional structures built because the Greeks thought they looked really cool and assumed that the gods did, too.
That thing in the foreground is a press for making olive oil or wine.
We went to the beach at Nea Malia for the last stop. The beach was nice, but by Greek standard it wasn't that breathtaking and the coolest thing that can be said about it is that there were WWII-era bunkers nearby. Pete lost his glasses, Dr. Farney lost his sunglasses and Kat lost her bellybutton ring. Disgruntled, we went back to Herakleion and scrapped our plans to go back the next day.
Anyway, we did four things on our second day in Crete. The two I don't have any photos of are lunch in the small town of Kritsa and a quick stop at Panaghia Kera. I think it was at Kritsa that I first realized the nature of the Greek economy. Essentially you get two or three different kinds of establishments (tavernas, gift shops and, in the big cities, gyro places) and they make up your area's economy. All members of a given group sell mostly the same things for roughly the same prices. They are also, invariably, crammed into the tightest possible space. It is a typical experience in small tourist towns to walk a few blocks down a street and see ten tavernas serving the same food and ten gift shops on the other side of the street selling the same stuff. Anyway, Panaghia Kera is a Greek Orthodox church (Panaghia being the all-holy Virgin) with well-preserved frescos, but the weird thing about it is that it was built by the Venetians during their occupation of Crete. So everyone in the frescos is wearing Italian Renaissance clothing and half the church is honoring St. Francis, who is not only not an Orthodox saint, but was also de facto excommunicated (at the time) by virtue of being Roman Catholic clergy.
And now I'm getting the boot. Tomorrow I'll try one of the places in Syntagma, which is a little bit of a hike, but still within walking distance and open 24/7. The photos are up at http://www.panoramio.com/user/1967629 for the impatient, and I'll say what exactly is in them tomorrow. Right now I'll just point out that Gournia is a Minoan town and Lato is actually a later Greek site, complete with a small temple, a small theather, and small public buildings that were all abandoned because 500 years is a long time to have to schlepp your fresh water up and down a mountain every day.
EDIT: Ok, I've got Pete's computer for a few hours so let's get to it. First Gournia:
A great action shot. Dr. Farney is lecturing frantically about a rock. Because this rock is sticking out of the middle of a paved courtyard, it seems to have some sort of useful purpose. Archaeologists have assumed that this rock, like everything else they can't find a useful purpose for, had some sort of religious significance. This is very unusual in that neither the Minaons nor the Mycenaeans nor the later Greeks worshipped rocks or gods who resembled rocks. Of course, that theory isn't necessarily as stupid and flimsy as it sounds. After all, Islam's holiest shrine also revolves around a rock sticking out of a big courtyard, and they don't worship rocks or deities that look like rocks, either.
A paved street. You can't get carts down these, but it's still a pretty good indicator of civilization.
Quite a view. Like most of Crete, Gournia has a good view of the Mediterranean and is pleasantly breezy. Especially so, actually, since Gournia is at the narrowest point of the island.
More substantial ruins would only have blocked the view.
The was some guy's house at least 600 years before the Iliad was written.
Ruins. We hadn't quite gotten bored of them yet.
A prettier shot of a Minoan street.
Lato was built way up in the mountains. This is a great idea if you're worried about the guys from Knossos beating you up and taking your stuff.
And judging by the walls, the people at Lato were.
Stairs up to some civic buildings. This is the easy way up to the settlement.
The hard way up apparently fell off the side of the mountain with some of the ruins somewhere in the past 2500 years.
Another landscape shot, this time featuring trees that don't grow olives.
The view from A bit farther back.
Our first good ol' fashioned Greek temple. That platform in the back once supported a cult statue of Apollo, probably made out of either bronze or marble. He and his mother, Leto, were both big at this site, so much so that it's actually named Leto, but with a local pronounciation. I should probably repeat that this site is a good thousand years younger than almost anything else we'd seen so far. After the vaguely-Greek Mycenaean civilization collapsed in the 1200s BC, the Greeks lack writing and big stone buildings until they get their act back together in the 700s. It was in that period, from about 700 to about 500 BC, that Lato was built.
Backing up a bit. That pile of rocks in the foreground used to be the alter. Sacrifices were always offered outside, and temples were actually optional structures built because the Greeks thought they looked really cool and assumed that the gods did, too.
That thing in the foreground is a press for making olive oil or wine.
We went to the beach at Nea Malia for the last stop. The beach was nice, but by Greek standard it wasn't that breathtaking and the coolest thing that can be said about it is that there were WWII-era bunkers nearby. Pete lost his glasses, Dr. Farney lost his sunglasses and Kat lost her bellybutton ring. Disgruntled, we went back to Herakleion and scrapped our plans to go back the next day.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Crete: Gortyn, Phaistos, Aghia Triada, Matala and Herakleion
We got an early start, meeting off the ferry at 7:00 and then taking a bus to the hotel to drop off our bags. After that we started driving southeast, making a pitstop just outside Herakleion to get lunch.
I don't remember taking this, but it's pretty. Crete was a welcome change from Athens, with better views and, since we were usually on hills near the coast, not nearly so hot.
While we went to Crete primarily for the prehistoric Minoan ruins, the first stop was at Gortyn, a settlement not founded until the classical period. Most of the ruins dated to the later Roman period. When the Romans got around to invading Crete, Gortyn wisely sided with them and was made the provincial capital. It was later wiped out by the Saracens in the middle ages, presumably the same ones who founded the modern capital of Herakleion.
Gortyn
The odeon. This is the big highlight of the settlement, and the building where the town council met.
The odeon here is particularly famous because they inscribed their law code along an outside wall to keep it handy. It's apparently pretty boring, but gives a good idea of day-to-day life and government.
A church dedicated to St. Titus, the oldest surviving church on the island, was originally the Roman basilica at Gortyn.
Now it's home to a few doves.
They still have to share, though.
Marcus Aurelius, I think.
After Gortyn we kept going to the Minoan palace at Phaistos.
The entryway was pretty neat. The admissions area is under some scaffolding with grape vines growing on it.
Looking out over the countryside.
Minoan palaces centered around an open square with stairs functioning as seating for spectators.
Ruins.
The Greek government typically does small amounts of reconstruction on these sites to give visitors a better idea of what they looked like. Here's a guy doing some of that work, and most of these columns are an example of the end result.
This room was designed to be partitioned off by curtains or screens placed between the supports. You can see the bases of those supports.
Apparently you could see them in 1936, too.
A great view.
There were a few cacti alongside the path in and out of the settlement, and people have carved little messages into them.
From there it was a short drive to Aghia Triada, a smaller Minoan site known for mining gypsum, a mineral the Minoans and Mycenaeans liked to use for decorations.
Ruins
Part of a network of little storage rooms.
A squad of less dedicated photographers.
A room with partially reconstructed columns and the basis of seating around the floor.
A later church next to the ruins.
Another view. I want to say this was St. George or something. The Holy Trinity church the site is named for was farther away and we didn't see it.
We got to the town of Matala around 1:00 or so and spent the rest of the afternoon on or near the beach. Matala's situated on a little bay between two rock walls. Looking out to sea, the wall on the right is a limestone cliff with a bunch of Roman-era tombs carved into it. The cliffs were covered with tourists and very climber-friendly. I made it a little bit above the highest tombs before getting hungry and turning around to go get food with a bunch of the girls. Dan, AJ, Deanna, Doug and Avni made it all the way up, but climbing down took a while so they almost ran out of time to eat. The rest of the group enjoyed the beach. The beach was mostly small, smooth pebbles but a couple of feet out into the water it turned to solid limestone with sea moss or something growing on it. It was pretty slippery and it was fun watching people try to wade back onto the beach without slipping. Most of the town that we saw was a long stretch of restaurants, all serving basically the same thing. The one we ate at had a live band, and the girls got them to do a few Bob Marley songs.
"Today is life, tomorrow never comes."
We had to leave around four or so and spent the night in Herakleion. We were all still pretty energetic, so we had dinner at a taverna near a big Venetian fountain and then wandered around for a bit afterward.
Here's a shot of the group by a statue of someone I'd never heard of. The guy in the yellow was a Finnish tourist making his way through Greece by himself, and whose name I can't remember.
Left to right: Deanna, AJ, Alex, Sheila, NaDea, mystery Finn, Doug, Avni, Rachel, Dan. Kat and Ana had already gone back to the hotel, and Pete spent most of the evening trying to catch up for being unable to sleep much during the first few days of the trip.
I don't remember taking this, but it's pretty. Crete was a welcome change from Athens, with better views and, since we were usually on hills near the coast, not nearly so hot.
While we went to Crete primarily for the prehistoric Minoan ruins, the first stop was at Gortyn, a settlement not founded until the classical period. Most of the ruins dated to the later Roman period. When the Romans got around to invading Crete, Gortyn wisely sided with them and was made the provincial capital. It was later wiped out by the Saracens in the middle ages, presumably the same ones who founded the modern capital of Herakleion.
Gortyn
The odeon. This is the big highlight of the settlement, and the building where the town council met.
The odeon here is particularly famous because they inscribed their law code along an outside wall to keep it handy. It's apparently pretty boring, but gives a good idea of day-to-day life and government.
A church dedicated to St. Titus, the oldest surviving church on the island, was originally the Roman basilica at Gortyn.
Now it's home to a few doves.
They still have to share, though.
Marcus Aurelius, I think.
After Gortyn we kept going to the Minoan palace at Phaistos.
The entryway was pretty neat. The admissions area is under some scaffolding with grape vines growing on it.
Looking out over the countryside.
Minoan palaces centered around an open square with stairs functioning as seating for spectators.
Ruins.
The Greek government typically does small amounts of reconstruction on these sites to give visitors a better idea of what they looked like. Here's a guy doing some of that work, and most of these columns are an example of the end result.
This room was designed to be partitioned off by curtains or screens placed between the supports. You can see the bases of those supports.
Apparently you could see them in 1936, too.
A great view.
There were a few cacti alongside the path in and out of the settlement, and people have carved little messages into them.
From there it was a short drive to Aghia Triada, a smaller Minoan site known for mining gypsum, a mineral the Minoans and Mycenaeans liked to use for decorations.
Ruins
Part of a network of little storage rooms.
A squad of less dedicated photographers.
A room with partially reconstructed columns and the basis of seating around the floor.
A later church next to the ruins.
Another view. I want to say this was St. George or something. The Holy Trinity church the site is named for was farther away and we didn't see it.
We got to the town of Matala around 1:00 or so and spent the rest of the afternoon on or near the beach. Matala's situated on a little bay between two rock walls. Looking out to sea, the wall on the right is a limestone cliff with a bunch of Roman-era tombs carved into it. The cliffs were covered with tourists and very climber-friendly. I made it a little bit above the highest tombs before getting hungry and turning around to go get food with a bunch of the girls. Dan, AJ, Deanna, Doug and Avni made it all the way up, but climbing down took a while so they almost ran out of time to eat. The rest of the group enjoyed the beach. The beach was mostly small, smooth pebbles but a couple of feet out into the water it turned to solid limestone with sea moss or something growing on it. It was pretty slippery and it was fun watching people try to wade back onto the beach without slipping. Most of the town that we saw was a long stretch of restaurants, all serving basically the same thing. The one we ate at had a live band, and the girls got them to do a few Bob Marley songs.
"Today is life, tomorrow never comes."
We had to leave around four or so and spent the night in Herakleion. We were all still pretty energetic, so we had dinner at a taverna near a big Venetian fountain and then wandered around for a bit afterward.
Here's a shot of the group by a statue of someone I'd never heard of. The guy in the yellow was a Finnish tourist making his way through Greece by himself, and whose name I can't remember.
Left to right: Deanna, AJ, Alex, Sheila, NaDea, mystery Finn, Doug, Avni, Rachel, Dan. Kat and Ana had already gone back to the hotel, and Pete spent most of the evening trying to catch up for being unable to sleep much during the first few days of the trip.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tiryns, Nafplio and Mycenae
After leaving the museum in Argos we hit our first real archaeological sites outside of Athens. Conveniently for us the well-preserved sites at Tiryns and Mycenae, the Argos museum and the town of Nafplio are all within about half an hour of each other.
The first stop after the museum was at Tiryns, a Mycenean palace known for its big walls.
Here we are entering the walls. The path runs clockwise so that the people inside the settlement, to the left in this picture, can sit on the wall and attack the enemies' unprotected right sides without worring about their shields on the left. Notice that some of these stones in the wall are as big as we are, and significantly heavier. Later Greeks coined the term Cyclopean to describe ruins like these because they didn't beleive that humans could build something out of such giant chunks of rock, and figured that cyclopes must have done it.
Tiryns isn't built on a big hill like most Mycenean settlements, but you can still sea a bay of the Mediterranean and the mountains across the way.
I think these are fruit trees.
This valley is pretty fertile, at least by Greek standards.
NaDea and Ana leaving through the main gate. Again, notice the size of those stones.
After the tour of Tiryns we drove to the coastal town of Nafplio to eat and wander around for a little bit. It was the original capital of modern Greece before the king insisted that they move it to the tiny village that was Athens, but that day it looked pretty quiet. The guys and Deanna split off and we ate in the shade at this little taverna.
The city doesn't have any ancient ruins, but it does have some fortification.
This castle is medieval and I think it was built by Venetians.
There was a fort out in the harbor that has apparently been used as a prison, a restaurant and a nightclub, at least.
There were also lots of fish.
Afterward we hit the more impressive site at Mycenae. At Tiryns only the remains of the palace itself were visible, but Mycenae also has remnants of houses and such, as well as grave circles and big tombs.
The site from the road. Like most ancient strongholds, Mycenae was built on top of a hill next to a larger mountain. The hill makes the site easily defensible and gives a great view, and through some geological process or another water makes its way down from the mountain and bubbles up in springs and wells on top of the nearby hill.
Here we are approaching the Lion's Gate.
Named after the relief of two lions overlooking the path into the city.
The stones involved are huge.
A nice view, including some of the remains of houses.
Grave circle A, where some of the neat stuff in the National Museum was found.
A sally port. These were back doors that troops could use to leave and harass a beseiging army. Because they're only big enough for one or two men at a time, there was no chance of the enemy army getting troops in.
One of the nearby mountains.
Later in their history the Mycenaeans started building beehive-shaped tholos tombs for their aristocracy. They've been empty for millennia, since anyone walking by could tell that they had neat stuff, but they're still pretty impressive.
Here's the long path into one.
And here's a shot of the inside.
After leaving Mycenae we drove straight to Piraeus, the port just south of Athens, to board the ferry for Crete. There were four of us in the cabin that night, so that was pretty cramped, but all of us spent most of the evening sitting out on deck enjoying the breeze. Mom called me that night, but between the reception and the wind I couldn't hear her very well.
The first stop after the museum was at Tiryns, a Mycenean palace known for its big walls.
Here we are entering the walls. The path runs clockwise so that the people inside the settlement, to the left in this picture, can sit on the wall and attack the enemies' unprotected right sides without worring about their shields on the left. Notice that some of these stones in the wall are as big as we are, and significantly heavier. Later Greeks coined the term Cyclopean to describe ruins like these because they didn't beleive that humans could build something out of such giant chunks of rock, and figured that cyclopes must have done it.
Tiryns isn't built on a big hill like most Mycenean settlements, but you can still sea a bay of the Mediterranean and the mountains across the way.
I think these are fruit trees.
This valley is pretty fertile, at least by Greek standards.
NaDea and Ana leaving through the main gate. Again, notice the size of those stones.
After the tour of Tiryns we drove to the coastal town of Nafplio to eat and wander around for a little bit. It was the original capital of modern Greece before the king insisted that they move it to the tiny village that was Athens, but that day it looked pretty quiet. The guys and Deanna split off and we ate in the shade at this little taverna.
The city doesn't have any ancient ruins, but it does have some fortification.
This castle is medieval and I think it was built by Venetians.
There was a fort out in the harbor that has apparently been used as a prison, a restaurant and a nightclub, at least.
There were also lots of fish.
Afterward we hit the more impressive site at Mycenae. At Tiryns only the remains of the palace itself were visible, but Mycenae also has remnants of houses and such, as well as grave circles and big tombs.
The site from the road. Like most ancient strongholds, Mycenae was built on top of a hill next to a larger mountain. The hill makes the site easily defensible and gives a great view, and through some geological process or another water makes its way down from the mountain and bubbles up in springs and wells on top of the nearby hill.
Here we are approaching the Lion's Gate.
Named after the relief of two lions overlooking the path into the city.
The stones involved are huge.
A nice view, including some of the remains of houses.
Grave circle A, where some of the neat stuff in the National Museum was found.
A sally port. These were back doors that troops could use to leave and harass a beseiging army. Because they're only big enough for one or two men at a time, there was no chance of the enemy army getting troops in.
One of the nearby mountains.
Later in their history the Mycenaeans started building beehive-shaped tholos tombs for their aristocracy. They've been empty for millennia, since anyone walking by could tell that they had neat stuff, but they're still pretty impressive.
Here's the long path into one.
And here's a shot of the inside.
After leaving Mycenae we drove straight to Piraeus, the port just south of Athens, to board the ferry for Crete. There were four of us in the cabin that night, so that was pretty cramped, but all of us spent most of the evening sitting out on deck enjoying the breeze. Mom called me that night, but between the reception and the wind I couldn't hear her very well.
Argos Museum
We drove out of Athens for a day trip to see two of the best Mycenean sites, but first we stopped to check out the museum nearby in Argos. Argos was the classical Greek city that controlled the region, but today the town is pretty small.
The acropolis from Argos' days as a city state is still up there. During war or raids the Argives could retreat to this fortress. It also gave sentries a good view of the entire area.
A (relative) close-up of the acropolis.
A pot from the geometric period. The museum has a decent collection of pots from this period, a part of the dark age between the fall of the Mycenaeans and the rise of the later Greeks.
Another pot.
A big pot decorated with fish.
Odysseus' men blinding the cyclops Polyphemos. The Odyssey hadn't been written down when this pot was made, but many of the myths predate Homer.
Dark age armor. This is pretty similar to what later Greek hoplites would fight in, but no weapons or shields (the hopla in hoplite) were found.
A tortoise-shell lyre. Only the lighter parts in the bottom are original. The lyre was a very popular musical instruments among the Greeks and other ancient cultures, and the Greeks gave Hermes credit for inventing it from a tortoise and some string.
A Roman-era mosaic. They had several of these outside.
The acropolis from Argos' days as a city state is still up there. During war or raids the Argives could retreat to this fortress. It also gave sentries a good view of the entire area.
A (relative) close-up of the acropolis.
A pot from the geometric period. The museum has a decent collection of pots from this period, a part of the dark age between the fall of the Mycenaeans and the rise of the later Greeks.
Another pot.
A big pot decorated with fish.
Odysseus' men blinding the cyclops Polyphemos. The Odyssey hadn't been written down when this pot was made, but many of the myths predate Homer.
Dark age armor. This is pretty similar to what later Greek hoplites would fight in, but no weapons or shields (the hopla in hoplite) were found.
A tortoise-shell lyre. Only the lighter parts in the bottom are original. The lyre was a very popular musical instruments among the Greeks and other ancient cultures, and the Greeks gave Hermes credit for inventing it from a tortoise and some string.
A Roman-era mosaic. They had several of these outside.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
National Archaeology Museum 1/4
I'm back in Athens after the trips to the Argolid and Crete, so I've got a pretty big backlog of stuff to post. I'm going to date these posts on the days that I was there just to keep things straight.
We had another light day, with nothing to do but a lecture on prehistoric Greece and our first trip (of four) to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
There were three prehistoric civilizations which existed in the bronze age in and around Greece, but only two of these get very much attention. The older of the two are the Minoans, on Crete and a few of the islands, and the Myceneans on the mainland. The Minoans controlled the entire island of Crete for over a millenium from 2700 BC through until 1450 BC, though whether or not they were united under one authority is uncertain. Architecturally they're known for "palaces" which seem to have been both town centers and supply depots. They had a great navy and did a fair amount of trade around the eastern Mediterranean. Unlike the Myceneans, the Minoans weren't actually Greek, but did seem to contribute to the culture that would later become Greek.
The Myceneans were the first people in the area to speak a form of the Greek language, and are the Acheans described by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. They were warlike and known for building massive fortifications, and amassed most of their wealth from trading and pillaging. They conquered the Minoans around 1450 BC. The civilization collapsed at the end of the bronze age due to unknown events that devastated the entire eastern Mediterranean.
Now for some neat Mycenean stuff:
A stone relief of a charioteer. The Myceneans did have chariots, which is a bit odd since Greece is generally too mountanous to use them.
The "Mask of Agamemnon". Heinrich Schliemann, who was the first to excavate both Troy and Mycenae, had a habit of naming his finds after characters in the Iliad and myth. It's a solid gold funeral mask.
Swords and trinkets. The greenish greyish bit is 3000 year old bronze, and the yellow is gold. All of this stuff was pulled out of a pair of graveyards at Mycenae. The later and more impressive tombs probably had even more, but unlike the grave circles they were plainly visible and were robbed thousands of years ago.
Gold.
More gold.
A scabbard for a dagger. There's a gold inlay of lionesses.
Jewelry.
Minoan stuff:
A fresco of two boys boxing. The rougher looking bits are genuine, while the rest is a modern reconstruction. It's not as obvious in this room as it is at some other places.
Goats.
A landscape. The Minoans would have loved Dr. Seuss.
A pithos. The Minoan palaces dedicated a significant amount of space to storing these things, and had a written language for keeping track of what goods were in what pithoi.
A 4000 year old bed frame.
We had another light day, with nothing to do but a lecture on prehistoric Greece and our first trip (of four) to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
There were three prehistoric civilizations which existed in the bronze age in and around Greece, but only two of these get very much attention. The older of the two are the Minoans, on Crete and a few of the islands, and the Myceneans on the mainland. The Minoans controlled the entire island of Crete for over a millenium from 2700 BC through until 1450 BC, though whether or not they were united under one authority is uncertain. Architecturally they're known for "palaces" which seem to have been both town centers and supply depots. They had a great navy and did a fair amount of trade around the eastern Mediterranean. Unlike the Myceneans, the Minoans weren't actually Greek, but did seem to contribute to the culture that would later become Greek.
The Myceneans were the first people in the area to speak a form of the Greek language, and are the Acheans described by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. They were warlike and known for building massive fortifications, and amassed most of their wealth from trading and pillaging. They conquered the Minoans around 1450 BC. The civilization collapsed at the end of the bronze age due to unknown events that devastated the entire eastern Mediterranean.
Now for some neat Mycenean stuff:
A stone relief of a charioteer. The Myceneans did have chariots, which is a bit odd since Greece is generally too mountanous to use them.
The "Mask of Agamemnon". Heinrich Schliemann, who was the first to excavate both Troy and Mycenae, had a habit of naming his finds after characters in the Iliad and myth. It's a solid gold funeral mask.
Swords and trinkets. The greenish greyish bit is 3000 year old bronze, and the yellow is gold. All of this stuff was pulled out of a pair of graveyards at Mycenae. The later and more impressive tombs probably had even more, but unlike the grave circles they were plainly visible and were robbed thousands of years ago.
Gold.
More gold.
A scabbard for a dagger. There's a gold inlay of lionesses.
Jewelry.
Minoan stuff:
A fresco of two boys boxing. The rougher looking bits are genuine, while the rest is a modern reconstruction. It's not as obvious in this room as it is at some other places.
Goats.
A landscape. The Minoans would have loved Dr. Seuss.
A pithos. The Minoan palaces dedicated a significant amount of space to storing these things, and had a written language for keeping track of what goods were in what pithoi.
A 4000 year old bed frame.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Starting off - Athens
Being stuck in a plane for ten hours was pretty tough, but aside from the length the flight wasnt bad. I didn't get much sleep, but Greece is very much a napping culture during the summer so it works out. I met up with Rachel in line to board that last flight, and we ran into Pete and Sheila at the cafe by the airport's "meeting point". It was pretty convenient since we're the four who aren't from Rutgers' New Brunswick campus. We hung out for about a hour (the plane got in around 10:00 and we were due to be picked up at noon) in the cafe before realizing that the rest of the students, all but one of whom were on our flight, had been camping out at the other end of the cafe. A little while later the professors showed up and we took our bus into downtown Athens to CYA. Literally next door to the building is the stadium they rebuilt from ruins for the 1896 Olympics, and the Acropolis is visible from the upper floors of the CYA building. For reference, I took all three of these from the same spot (which is why the stadium photo is so lousy):
CYA: College Year in Athens building
90 degrees to the right
90 degress to the left
After lunch we moved into our apartments. Pete, Dan and I are living at 9 Fedrou street a few blocks away from CYA; half of the girls live directly above us, the other guys live down the street and the rest of the girls live a few blocks closer to CYA. They're meant to house five students, so we all get our own rooms, though the AC unit in Pete's room isn't working properly so he's sleeping in the other bed in my room. In the photo you can see the brown wooden shades. They help keep the heat out during the daytime and also keep the rooms nice and dark for napping.
After settling in we got a tour of the neighborhood. It looks a bit run-down from the outside (just like the rest of Athens) but it's middle-class. Walking just a few blocks from out apartment will take you to a long street with shops and restaurants and nightclubs on both sides. Dan, AJ and I explored it a bit last night. Anyway, after the tour we were treated to dinner, which was a sort of sampler deal. Every few minutes the waiter would bring another dish. It was a great meal, we were out on the rooftop and even when we left at 8:30 we had the place to ourselves. During the summer, at least, Greeks tend to work until or two every afternoon until the heat starts getting really nasty, and then they eat lunch and take a siesta until six or seven. It's pretty common for businesses to open back up closer to dusk for a few hours, and the usual Greek dinnertime is something like ten o'clock.
Today we got a basic overview of the city, with a brief lecture on the Aeropagus, which is essentially a big chunk of limestone a little to the west of the Acropolis. It's not the highest point in the city, but it gives a great view of most of the archaeological sites as well as the urban sprawl out to and past the mountains nearby.
Obligatory Acropolis picture
Pictures from the Aeropagus:
Likavitos hill, the highest point the in the city.
The Acropolis
The Pnyx, where the Athenian assembly met in the ancient city.
The Agora. Most of the bits in the middle are gone, but the temple of Hephaistos to the left is very well preserved. To the right you can see where they reconstructed on of the old buildings.
After this we got a nice tour of the Plaka, which is mostly shops and restaurants. After eating I came back here through the National Gardens. Tonight we've got a crash-course in Greek and then we're making our first trip to the National Archaeological Museum tomorrow for another pretty easy day. On Thursday we take our first trip out of Athens to hit up the Mycenean stuff, and then take the ferry to Crete overnight.
CYA: College Year in Athens building
90 degrees to the right
90 degress to the left
After lunch we moved into our apartments. Pete, Dan and I are living at 9 Fedrou street a few blocks away from CYA; half of the girls live directly above us, the other guys live down the street and the rest of the girls live a few blocks closer to CYA. They're meant to house five students, so we all get our own rooms, though the AC unit in Pete's room isn't working properly so he's sleeping in the other bed in my room. In the photo you can see the brown wooden shades. They help keep the heat out during the daytime and also keep the rooms nice and dark for napping.
After settling in we got a tour of the neighborhood. It looks a bit run-down from the outside (just like the rest of Athens) but it's middle-class. Walking just a few blocks from out apartment will take you to a long street with shops and restaurants and nightclubs on both sides. Dan, AJ and I explored it a bit last night. Anyway, after the tour we were treated to dinner, which was a sort of sampler deal. Every few minutes the waiter would bring another dish. It was a great meal, we were out on the rooftop and even when we left at 8:30 we had the place to ourselves. During the summer, at least, Greeks tend to work until or two every afternoon until the heat starts getting really nasty, and then they eat lunch and take a siesta until six or seven. It's pretty common for businesses to open back up closer to dusk for a few hours, and the usual Greek dinnertime is something like ten o'clock.
Today we got a basic overview of the city, with a brief lecture on the Aeropagus, which is essentially a big chunk of limestone a little to the west of the Acropolis. It's not the highest point in the city, but it gives a great view of most of the archaeological sites as well as the urban sprawl out to and past the mountains nearby.
Obligatory Acropolis picture
Pictures from the Aeropagus:
Likavitos hill, the highest point the in the city.
The Acropolis
The Pnyx, where the Athenian assembly met in the ancient city.
The Agora. Most of the bits in the middle are gone, but the temple of Hephaistos to the left is very well preserved. To the right you can see where they reconstructed on of the old buildings.
After this we got a nice tour of the Plaka, which is mostly shops and restaurants. After eating I came back here through the National Gardens. Tonight we've got a crash-course in Greek and then we're making our first trip to the National Archaeological Museum tomorrow for another pretty easy day. On Thursday we take our first trip out of Athens to hit up the Mycenean stuff, and then take the ferry to Crete overnight.
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