This day was a little rough. First we had the first test, then a lecture covering all of Classical Greek history (Persian wars, Peloponnesian War, Thebes vs. Sparta, Phillip II), which took something like an hour and a half, and then we went over to the Pnyx, a small hill where the Athenian assembly met, and had another lecture on Athenian democracy. After breaking for lunch, I did my site report on the temple (combined with the test, roughly half of my grade for the course was determined this day), then we did the agora and, finally, the agora museum. This was probably the most strenuous day of the trip, mentally if not physically.
Ok, while my photos upload, here are some fun facts about Athenian democracy.
- Athenians were divided into four social classes based on property. They had really cool names. The first class were the pentakosiomedemnoi (literally "five-hundred-bushel-ers"), the second the hippeis ("knights" or maybe just "horse owners"), the third zeugetai (which just sounds cool), and the fourth were the dirt poor thetes, who only ever got political power because they provided all the labor for Athens' navy.
- Under Pericles' 'radical democracy', most officials (including the president-equivalents, but not the generals) were elected by lottery. There was an interview process to screen out the nutters and complete morons, but for the most part anyone from the appropriate class could find themselves in government.
- Juries consisted of between 200-500 men, usually old retirees who took advantage of the pay given to jurors as a form of welfare. The Athenians operated on the principle that you can bribe some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, so they grabbed as many people as possible for juries at the last possible second.
- There was no state prosecution, so the only way anyone was ever tried for something was if another private citizen took them to court over it. Think about that the next time you get a traffic violation.
- If there was a conviction, both parties came up with punishments and the jury voted on one of them. Socrates basically committed state-assisted suicide this way; his opponent suggested that they execute him, while Socrates said his punishment should be public honors and free meals for life in the building they used for entertaining foreign dignitaries.
Ok, here we go. First, a pair of photos that should have gone with the 16th update.
The acropolis from the temple of Hephaistos. Areopagus on the right and the agora on the left.
The stoa of Attalos. The agora is hidden by the trees. The stoa was reconstructed and now houses the agora museum.
The acropolis from the Pnyx.
Athenian sprawl. Can you find the 5th century temple is this photo?
What's left of the older (I think) of the two speaker's podiums.
And the newer (I think) podium.
A room with a mosaic. I'm not sure what this is, but it looks like a dining room. Probably a part of the bouleterion, where the elected legislature (the boule) met.
My temple from the other side of the tracks, right before breaking for lunch.
Pete, Hadrian and Dr. Farney in the agora. The agora is the Greek equivalent of a Roman forum, and during the classical period was both a marketplace and a religious and political center. Later the Hellenistic kings and Romans clutter it up so much that Augustus felt the need to build another, more Romanized, agora for businesses. As for Hadrian, you'll be hearing about him a lot a few weeks down the road. There aren't more pictures of the agora because it's utter chaos. You can't get a sense for what anything looked like because there's no reconstruction, and they can't reconstruct anything without destroying something else.
A necklace in the agora museum. This is from a dark age burial, and is actually mentioned in our archaeology textbook. It's an import from the Near East and was a few hundred years old before it was buried with a Greek woman.
A model of a grainery from the same burial. Five storage containers, so maybe an early nod to what would become the pentakosiomedemnoi class. Those little hatches at the top are required to keep the real containers ventilated, or the gas given off by the grain will make them explode.
The Greeks used broken bits of pottery (potsherds or, in Greek, ostraka) as scratch paper pretty frequently, but the more famous use was political. Every year the Athenians voted to decided if they should have an ostracism or not. If they did, basically the two biggest political heavyweights would duke it out in an election and the loser would be exiled for ten years. It was supposed to keep the state in relative harmony, and is probably why Athens didn't have the developed political parties of Rome or some other Greek cities. These ostraka, made from the bottoms of kylixes (there's on in the top middle) all have "Themistokles, son of whoever, the traitor" written on them in the same handwriting. They were probably prepared in advance by his rival's supporters and distributed to voters, then dumped in the agora somewhere afterwards.
More ostracism votes. Pretty much every significant Athenian politician had at least a few.
"Themistokles the traitor"
A blurry picture of something that's basically blurry in real life: a Spartan shield. A bunch of Spartans got captured by the Athenians after doing something stupid during the Peloponnesian war, and the Athenians mounted a bunch of their shields on the Parthenon. None of them are up there now, but you'll see the holes in the next update.
Kylixes, used for drinking wine. You'd see a red, murky picture in them that got clearer as you drank the wine. Ancient wine also had a lot of dregs in it, and the Greeks would try to hit targets with them as a game at parties. One of these is actually a picture of a guy doing just that.
A closeup.
Next up: a ton of Acropolis pictures.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Dark and Archaic Athens
Whoops, nevermind. I got mixed up again. It turns out the birthday stuff was on the 15th, and our day off was on the 16th. But I don't feel like uploading those pictures, so here's what I did on the day off. Well, actually, mostly I slept, ate lunch, read and slept some more. But eventually, around six, I got my act together and went to check out the temple of Hephaestus that I had to present the next day. I decided to take my camera along to document important things.
Important thing #1: Kiwis in Greece are gigantic. Μεγαλη. Big. The ones I got were also unripe and resembled fuzzy rocks in their mass and shape.
I dropped by the school and decided that I should attempt to take good pictures of the stadium, since my one from the first few days was kinda lame because I tried getting it, the acropolis and the CYA building all by rotating in place. Unfortunately, in order to get far enough back to fit the whole thing in frame I'd have to be standing in a very busy street. So consider this a panorama.
Left. Center, which is actually a fairly not-lame picture. Right.
From there I walked by a few big impressive Roman things and another major street to get to the heart of touristy Athens. I wasn't quite sure where the temple was in relation to the other stuff in the agora, so I hiked up the Aeropagus to get my bearings. I spotted my prey. At this point I just started walking straight towards it, because I didn't realize that the agora was completely fenced in so they could control access. So it took me another fifteen minutes from when I got to the agora to figure out how to get into the bloody thing. Fortunately, I had my CYA ID so they didn't charge me. Anyway, after another several minutes of stepping over ruins too convoluted for anyone without a graduate degree in classical archaeology to care about, I ended up at my destination.
Looking through from the west side.
This temple was built to honor both Hephaestus and Athena, and was designed by the same architect as the one at Sounion, and built around the same time. Sometime in the middle ages the Christians converted it into a church, which is almost certainly the only reason its still standing. That required a few architectural changes, such as knocking a big hole in the west side because churches of the period usually faced west, as opposed to older Hellenic temples which usually faced east. This done, the replaced what used to be the antechamber with an apse to hold the alter and pulpit and then carved in some side entrances. Sometime in the 20th century the Greek government restored the original front and plugged up some of the side doors. I don't know when, exactly, but the church's last use was in the 1930s for a mass welcoming the new King Otto.
There's also this shot, which I intended to be artsy but which is instead just badly composed. I got back just in time for the study session before the first test, and now I'm going to post this and then take a nap before the study session for the second test.
Important thing #1: Kiwis in Greece are gigantic. Μεγαλη. Big. The ones I got were also unripe and resembled fuzzy rocks in their mass and shape.
I dropped by the school and decided that I should attempt to take good pictures of the stadium, since my one from the first few days was kinda lame because I tried getting it, the acropolis and the CYA building all by rotating in place. Unfortunately, in order to get far enough back to fit the whole thing in frame I'd have to be standing in a very busy street. So consider this a panorama.
Left. Center, which is actually a fairly not-lame picture. Right.
From there I walked by a few big impressive Roman things and another major street to get to the heart of touristy Athens. I wasn't quite sure where the temple was in relation to the other stuff in the agora, so I hiked up the Aeropagus to get my bearings. I spotted my prey. At this point I just started walking straight towards it, because I didn't realize that the agora was completely fenced in so they could control access. So it took me another fifteen minutes from when I got to the agora to figure out how to get into the bloody thing. Fortunately, I had my CYA ID so they didn't charge me. Anyway, after another several minutes of stepping over ruins too convoluted for anyone without a graduate degree in classical archaeology to care about, I ended up at my destination.
Looking through from the west side.
This temple was built to honor both Hephaestus and Athena, and was designed by the same architect as the one at Sounion, and built around the same time. Sometime in the middle ages the Christians converted it into a church, which is almost certainly the only reason its still standing. That required a few architectural changes, such as knocking a big hole in the west side because churches of the period usually faced west, as opposed to older Hellenic temples which usually faced east. This done, the replaced what used to be the antechamber with an apse to hold the alter and pulpit and then carved in some side entrances. Sometime in the 20th century the Greek government restored the original front and plugged up some of the side doors. I don't know when, exactly, but the church's last use was in the 1930s for a mass welcoming the new King Otto.
There's also this shot, which I intended to be artsy but which is instead just badly composed. I got back just in time for the study session before the first test, and now I'm going to post this and then take a nap before the study session for the second test.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Keramikos and National Archaeological Museum 2/4
After a morning lecture we set out for a fairly easy day. Our only real site was the Keramikos, which was the primary cemetery for ancient Athens, just outside the town walls. It was also near all of the pottery workshops, which explains the name (Latinized as ceramicus).
See those plants? In mainland Greece that qualifies as a river. In all fairness, there's probably actual water in it during the colder months.
"City wall". The Keramikos was right outside the main gate into the city.
I don't remember what this was for, but it looks like a civic building. It probably had something to do with the Panathenaic festival.
"Kerameikos street". That's Dr. Bloy in the background, with his awesomely nerdy guide to ancient Greek pottery t-shirt.
"Tomb of the Lacedamonians". After winning the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans installed a friendly tyranny in Athens to keep them in line. But a year later the Athenians overthrew them, bizarrely enough with help from the Spartans. A few of those helpers died in the fighting and the Athenians built a tomb for them, most of the remains of which are the wall to a church's basement.
Funeral markers.
Afterwards we went over to the National Museum to look at some Dark/Geometric age pottery and Archaic age sculpture.
Really big Geometric vase. Dark age pottery gets this name from their decoration, which is almost exclusively lines, circles and various shapes and patterns. If you look closely you can see a rare example of a picture on one of these. It's some stick figures at the funeral of another stick figure.
A statue of a dead girl. She's intended to resemble Persephone, because she died unmarried and was thus another "bride of death". I think thats a lotus blossom she's holding there. Anyway, if you can make out the red coloration on her skirt, that's all that's left of the painting on her.
A goat. This is Corinthian pottery, which was the really big thing in the Greek world during the Archaic period. In the 5th century it loses its position to all of that red and black pottery from Athens that most people are more familiar with.
A piece of a box or something. This is painted wood, which is really cool because generally wood doesn't survive and paint usually fades off of things in museum lighting.
It was so hot outside that day that even the pigeons were smart enough to take a siesta.
See those plants? In mainland Greece that qualifies as a river. In all fairness, there's probably actual water in it during the colder months.
"City wall". The Keramikos was right outside the main gate into the city.
I don't remember what this was for, but it looks like a civic building. It probably had something to do with the Panathenaic festival.
"Kerameikos street". That's Dr. Bloy in the background, with his awesomely nerdy guide to ancient Greek pottery t-shirt.
"Tomb of the Lacedamonians". After winning the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans installed a friendly tyranny in Athens to keep them in line. But a year later the Athenians overthrew them, bizarrely enough with help from the Spartans. A few of those helpers died in the fighting and the Athenians built a tomb for them, most of the remains of which are the wall to a church's basement.
Funeral markers.
Afterwards we went over to the National Museum to look at some Dark/Geometric age pottery and Archaic age sculpture.
Really big Geometric vase. Dark age pottery gets this name from their decoration, which is almost exclusively lines, circles and various shapes and patterns. If you look closely you can see a rare example of a picture on one of these. It's some stick figures at the funeral of another stick figure.
A statue of a dead girl. She's intended to resemble Persephone, because she died unmarried and was thus another "bride of death". I think thats a lotus blossom she's holding there. Anyway, if you can make out the red coloration on her skirt, that's all that's left of the painting on her.
A goat. This is Corinthian pottery, which was the really big thing in the Greek world during the Archaic period. In the 5th century it loses its position to all of that red and black pottery from Athens that most people are more familiar with.
A piece of a box or something. This is painted wood, which is really cool because generally wood doesn't survive and paint usually fades off of things in museum lighting.
It was so hot outside that day that even the pigeons were smart enough to take a siesta.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Attica: Thorikos and Sounion
We got off of the ferry and the bus driver picked us up and dropped up off at a Starbucks a few minutes down the road. This was the third Starbucks I'd seen on the trip, and the third Starbucks I'd seen completely empty on the trip, because the Greeks wouldn't go into one if you paid them. This is also true of Kat, the Greek-American in our group, and by this point we'd all started trying to go local and shared her indignation. So something like nine of us out of the thirteen marched down the street to the nearest periptero. The normal translation for that is kiosk, and it's basically some Greek guy on a stool who's built a shack around himself out of cigarettes, chewing gum, public transportation tickets, potatoe chips and Greek junk food. They also all have a cooler with water, soda, juice and the two brands of foreign beer they sell in Greece (Heineken and Amstel, who must share a rivalry as intense as Coke v. Pepsi). Most of them even have a freezer with cheap ice cream, too. Anyway, while this makes us all feel appropriately Greek, the food is probably more expensive and less good than if we'd all stayed at Starbucks and I ended up finishing Dr. Farney's muffin.
Leaving Starbucks, we drove about an hour and a half east to the end of the Attic penninsula to hit two more sites before our day off and the test. The first of these was Thorikos, which I don't have any pictures of because I left my camera on the bus. Thorikos has two big claims to fame and they're both pretty well-preserved and reconstructed. The first is that it was a mine, and the source of silver that bought Athens its navy and, in the long run, is probably the reason we're not all Zoroastrians. They've got some of the equipment used for filtering the silver, lead and copper from each other and the useless rock, and it gave us a pretty good idea of how little anybody would enjoy ancient mining. The other noteworthy point is that we got to sit in the oldest stone theater in Greece. They'd been making theaters for some time, but the audience just sat on the hillside, like lawn seating at an outdoor concert. Actually, most of the stone seating in theaters and stadiums was later done under the Romans. Anyway, it was kind of cool, and because it was an early attempt they messed up and the theater is more oval than a perfect semi-circle.
The next stop was Sounion at the very tip of the Attic penninsula. Once a wealthy town under Athenian control, all that was left by the end of antiquity is the fortified hilltop with the temple of Poseidon on it. The area was important to sailors heading east to Euboeia, northern Greece and points further east. The temple also made it into the 19th century, unlike most Greek buildings, mostly intact, above ground, and without being converted into something else. You also can't beat the view. Because of this it became one of the main inspirations for neoclassical architecture and a popular tourist destination for the European Romantics coming to Greece in droves to fight in the war of independence. One of the more famous of these, Lord Byron, joined in the tradition of carving your name into the building. We didn't see any British poets, but there was a grouse, which I, for whatever reason, found important enough to take a picture of. Probably because of the Tom Stoppard play "Arcadia", which is named after a part of Greece and features both Byron and grouse.
Another good shot of the temple. Again, this is both better preserved and more impressive than the other stuff we've seen because it's later. After crushing a few Spartans at Thermopylae, Xerxes and the Persian army marched mostly unopposed down to Athens, where they burned the city and the surrounding countryside. Fortunately, everyone who wasn't retreating with the Athenian army to Corinth was loaded onto the ships of the Athenian navy and carried to safety. After Xerxes withdrew with some of his army to put down a rebellion, the Athenians beat the remaining Persian navy at Salamis and their allies finished off the remaining army at Plateia. After this there was a big oath to not rebuild any of their temples until they'd beaten the Persians, but that only lasted until they made a real peace treaty with them in the 440s. At this point, the Athenians had access to a huge treasury they'd been collecting from their allies in case of another Persian invasion, and decided to spend it all on contruction projects. This temple is one of them, as is the temple of Hephaestus in Athens and all of the stuff on the Acropolis.
Looking down.
Another horrible candid of my professors.
A lonely olive tree.
Unlike the Americans, the Greeks aren't exactly obsessed with safety precautions. For example, I saw a construction worker in Pylos using a jackhammer while wearing sandals. So it's always fun to see where they think of putting warning signs. As a side note, Dr. Farney's favorite warning sign is in Italy and reads "Attenti! Viperi!" or "Attention! Vipers!". Helpfully enough the sign was actually sitting right next to a sleeping viper.
The girls, so small that I can't really identify them individually.
A hole in the wall.
The view from the taverna we passed through on the way back to the bus.
After this we were driven back to Athens and given a day off. The next day was Ana's birthday, so we went to this club at the shore to celebrate. It was a nice, open air place with free couches and pleasant but boring European techno. The evening was pretty fun and we got to sleep in the next morning.
Leaving Starbucks, we drove about an hour and a half east to the end of the Attic penninsula to hit two more sites before our day off and the test. The first of these was Thorikos, which I don't have any pictures of because I left my camera on the bus. Thorikos has two big claims to fame and they're both pretty well-preserved and reconstructed. The first is that it was a mine, and the source of silver that bought Athens its navy and, in the long run, is probably the reason we're not all Zoroastrians. They've got some of the equipment used for filtering the silver, lead and copper from each other and the useless rock, and it gave us a pretty good idea of how little anybody would enjoy ancient mining. The other noteworthy point is that we got to sit in the oldest stone theater in Greece. They'd been making theaters for some time, but the audience just sat on the hillside, like lawn seating at an outdoor concert. Actually, most of the stone seating in theaters and stadiums was later done under the Romans. Anyway, it was kind of cool, and because it was an early attempt they messed up and the theater is more oval than a perfect semi-circle.
The next stop was Sounion at the very tip of the Attic penninsula. Once a wealthy town under Athenian control, all that was left by the end of antiquity is the fortified hilltop with the temple of Poseidon on it. The area was important to sailors heading east to Euboeia, northern Greece and points further east. The temple also made it into the 19th century, unlike most Greek buildings, mostly intact, above ground, and without being converted into something else. You also can't beat the view. Because of this it became one of the main inspirations for neoclassical architecture and a popular tourist destination for the European Romantics coming to Greece in droves to fight in the war of independence. One of the more famous of these, Lord Byron, joined in the tradition of carving your name into the building. We didn't see any British poets, but there was a grouse, which I, for whatever reason, found important enough to take a picture of. Probably because of the Tom Stoppard play "Arcadia", which is named after a part of Greece and features both Byron and grouse.
Another good shot of the temple. Again, this is both better preserved and more impressive than the other stuff we've seen because it's later. After crushing a few Spartans at Thermopylae, Xerxes and the Persian army marched mostly unopposed down to Athens, where they burned the city and the surrounding countryside. Fortunately, everyone who wasn't retreating with the Athenian army to Corinth was loaded onto the ships of the Athenian navy and carried to safety. After Xerxes withdrew with some of his army to put down a rebellion, the Athenians beat the remaining Persian navy at Salamis and their allies finished off the remaining army at Plateia. After this there was a big oath to not rebuild any of their temples until they'd beaten the Persians, but that only lasted until they made a real peace treaty with them in the 440s. At this point, the Athenians had access to a huge treasury they'd been collecting from their allies in case of another Persian invasion, and decided to spend it all on contruction projects. This temple is one of them, as is the temple of Hephaestus in Athens and all of the stuff on the Acropolis.
Looking down.
Another horrible candid of my professors.
A lonely olive tree.
Unlike the Americans, the Greeks aren't exactly obsessed with safety precautions. For example, I saw a construction worker in Pylos using a jackhammer while wearing sandals. So it's always fun to see where they think of putting warning signs. As a side note, Dr. Farney's favorite warning sign is in Italy and reads "Attenti! Viperi!" or "Attention! Vipers!". Helpfully enough the sign was actually sitting right next to a sleeping viper.
The girls, so small that I can't really identify them individually.
A hole in the wall.
The view from the taverna we passed through on the way back to the bus.
After this we were driven back to Athens and given a day off. The next day was Ana's birthday, so we went to this club at the shore to celebrate. It was a nice, open air place with free couches and pleasant but boring European techno. The evening was pretty fun and we got to sleep in the next morning.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Crete IIIB: Herakleion Museum
After that we went to the Herakleion museum, which was under renovation. This meant two things for us. One, we had to go into the back door, off of some alley, like we were breaking in or something. Two, the museum was keeping one room open, but instead of doing one regular room they just did a 'greatest hits' gallery with all of their coolest stuff in it. So for once we got to go to a museum without having to pretend to care about all 40 examples of 6th century funerary amphorai displayed inbetween the cool one with the gorgons and the cool one the size of a volkswagon, or whatever the appropriate example for their full collection is.
Here's a neat display. The picture in the back is a copy of a wall painting from Egypt, showing a bunch of Minoans bringing trade or tribute to the king. The actual remains in the case are all examples of the same kind of stuff the Minoans in the picture are carrying.
Minoan pottery. After the end of the bronze age it takes a good five hundred years for pottery to look this good again.
A giant decorative axe. Traditionally the Minoans have this reputation as gentle, happy, carefree flower children who got beaten up by the big, nasty Mycenaeans. What this view neglects to mention is that they liked putting big double-axe heads on everything for decoration.
Probably the nicest rhyton you'll ever see. A rhyton is a vessel used for pouring libations, which are liquid sacrifices of wine or oil or some other fluid. Basically you pour a bunch into the back end and it dripples pleasantly out of the front somewhere. For some reason, probably that you don't have to actually drink out of them, the Greeks and other libating cultures got really creative with them, and they tend to be some of the coolest artifacts.
Here's another one. This one is a lioness' head, and the eyes and nose most likely had insets of polished stone.
A big vase. If you look closely you can see the decoration: a Minoan palace, complete with horns of consecration. Evans based a lot of his reconstruction on the assumption that Minoan architecture actually looked like this and other pottery.
The original bull-jumping fresco. The darker, rougher looking patches are the original fresco, collected off of the walls and floor of a room in Knossos. The rest is an artist's reconstruction of what the fresco actually looked like.
The Phaistos Disk This is famous, mostly because nobody has any idea what it is and the usual assumption (religion) isn't convincing. It's a disk found in a storage room in Phaistos (though it may have been from a floor above it that long-since collapse) and carries symbols that look frustratingly like pictograms (like in Chinese or, more relevantly, ancient Egyptian) but don't match any known system of writing or art. The professors didn't mention this, but I'm willing to bet that there are a bunch of wacky UFO conspiracy theories about it.
Prehistoric bling. One of the unsung virtues of this museum is that it was easy to get photos of the exhibits without the glass in the display cases getting in the way.
A Mycenaean boar tusk helmet. Theseare mentioned in Homer, but people were a bit fuzzy about what they actually looked like until archaeologists started pulling them out of the ground.
Here we've got a coffin depicting funerary rites. This is particularly impressive since the Minoans didn't use coffins. It's very well decorated on the back and on both sides.
Generally people stop talking about the Minoans as if they all suddenly dropped dead as soon as the Mycenaeans landed on Crete. While that's not that far from the truth, later Greek sources mention a non-Greek-speaking people called Etiocretans ("true Cretans"). There's also a handful of examples of Dark Age Cretan art that seems to depict the Minoan snake goddess/priestess character from Minoan art. The museum also has a dark age Athena, ready to aid some mythological heros in their monster-slaughtering adventures.
The museum also had some later pieces out. Here's one of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who spread throughout the Greco-Roman world after Alexander conquered Egypt, eventually becoming the most popular goddess until the Roman Empire converted to Christianity and she was replaced in art by Mary. And here's one of her Greco-Roman era husband, Serapis, famous for being the only popular god created by committee. You'll notice that those statues, like most of the ones I'll post pictures of, are marble. The Greeks did a lot with marble when they were starting to get into sculpture, but after a few centuries of that they discovered the big problem with marble, namely that any bits sticking out of the torso are going to fall off. So they switched to bronze and their statues got much more interesting. Here's a Roman-era bronze, which is why I brought that up. Anyway, fast forward a few hundred years to the time when the Romans rule Greek and rich Italians just can't get enough Roman sculpture. For whatever reason, the Romans really like marble and so they have a lot of copies of Greek bronze statues done in marble, which usually requires the sculpter to add staves or trees or something to keep the statue's arms from falling off. During the dark ages, a lot of ancient marble gets burned to make lime, but a fair amount of it, particularly in rural areas, survived long enough for people to find it and put it in museums. Meanwhile, almost all of the bronze statues that aren't underground or underwater get melted down, because bronze is really useful and nobody's going to go without tools just so they can have an ancient statue in their yard, especially since the local clergy hates the pagans so much.
After the museum we left town for the rest of the afternoon. First we went to the site at Malia, which looks something like this. Archaeologists thing it used to look something like this, but because they are justifiably paranoid about getting it wrong they've kept actual reconstruction of the site to a minimum. While this is intellectually honest, we'd spent the morning looking at really cool stuff and suddenly being thrust back into the world of knee-high rocks baking in the Mediterranean sun didn't put us in the best of moods. This is an unusual Minoan site in that it has walls. Or rather, it only has one wall, the one on the seaside of the settlement. You can't see it in these pictures, but Malia is much closer to the coast than most Minoan settlements. The theory about the wall is that Minoans didn't usually built them because they were exclusively a naval people with no idea how to fight on land. Even if they weren't a unified people, they can't attack each others' settlements from the water and nobody else can get past their navies, so they live happily undefended until the Mycenaeans show up and completely dismantle their civilization in about 20 minutes. Since Malia is close enough to the shore to be open to raids from the sea, they built a wall between them, but apparently didn't comprehend the enemy's ability to walk around it.
This is a kernos. It's used for grinding stuff, usually olives or grapes, in order to make other stuff, usually oil or wine.
The alter. I think but am too lazy to confirm that I mentioned earlier that the Minoans have "old palace" and "new palace" periods because all of their stuff was wiped out by earthquakes around 1400. This alter is actually old palace, and rather than built a new one the Minoans just left it there and built the new courtyard around it.
Crete is so pretty that it makes most of mainland Greece look like some guy's front lawn that hasn't been watered in five years.
Mud brick remains. These are pretty rare, since even when they do survive they melt in rain if left exposed to the sky. Fortunately it doesn't rain much in Greece, and they got a protective covering over this spot.
It wouldn't be Minoan if there weren't stairs leading to a courtyard.
I found this sitting on a ruined wall while walking back. It might be ancient! Or it might be a bunch of rocks some kid was playing with because he was bored out of his mind.
Er war frisch. Er war als sehr teuer. I had to ask the guy for orange juice in German because his English sucked, but it turned out to be prohibitively expensive.
This is Agios Nikolias, where we ate lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon. It's name is basically Santa Claus in Greek, so this must be where he takes the Mrs. and the elves for summer vacation. The beach was a significant improvement over the one we went to the day before. And the water was clear as crystal.
Around seven we got back on the ferry for the trip back to Athens. Unlike the trip over, the weather was a little chilly and very, very windy, and we were all exhausted and a few people were getting seasick. All in all I think we were all in bed between nine and ten, which left us rested enough to get through another two sites before our day off.
Here's a neat display. The picture in the back is a copy of a wall painting from Egypt, showing a bunch of Minoans bringing trade or tribute to the king. The actual remains in the case are all examples of the same kind of stuff the Minoans in the picture are carrying.
Minoan pottery. After the end of the bronze age it takes a good five hundred years for pottery to look this good again.
A giant decorative axe. Traditionally the Minoans have this reputation as gentle, happy, carefree flower children who got beaten up by the big, nasty Mycenaeans. What this view neglects to mention is that they liked putting big double-axe heads on everything for decoration.
Probably the nicest rhyton you'll ever see. A rhyton is a vessel used for pouring libations, which are liquid sacrifices of wine or oil or some other fluid. Basically you pour a bunch into the back end and it dripples pleasantly out of the front somewhere. For some reason, probably that you don't have to actually drink out of them, the Greeks and other libating cultures got really creative with them, and they tend to be some of the coolest artifacts.
Here's another one. This one is a lioness' head, and the eyes and nose most likely had insets of polished stone.
A big vase. If you look closely you can see the decoration: a Minoan palace, complete with horns of consecration. Evans based a lot of his reconstruction on the assumption that Minoan architecture actually looked like this and other pottery.
The original bull-jumping fresco. The darker, rougher looking patches are the original fresco, collected off of the walls and floor of a room in Knossos. The rest is an artist's reconstruction of what the fresco actually looked like.
The Phaistos Disk This is famous, mostly because nobody has any idea what it is and the usual assumption (religion) isn't convincing. It's a disk found in a storage room in Phaistos (though it may have been from a floor above it that long-since collapse) and carries symbols that look frustratingly like pictograms (like in Chinese or, more relevantly, ancient Egyptian) but don't match any known system of writing or art. The professors didn't mention this, but I'm willing to bet that there are a bunch of wacky UFO conspiracy theories about it.
Prehistoric bling. One of the unsung virtues of this museum is that it was easy to get photos of the exhibits without the glass in the display cases getting in the way.
A Mycenaean boar tusk helmet. Theseare mentioned in Homer, but people were a bit fuzzy about what they actually looked like until archaeologists started pulling them out of the ground.
Here we've got a coffin depicting funerary rites. This is particularly impressive since the Minoans didn't use coffins. It's very well decorated on the back and on both sides.
Generally people stop talking about the Minoans as if they all suddenly dropped dead as soon as the Mycenaeans landed on Crete. While that's not that far from the truth, later Greek sources mention a non-Greek-speaking people called Etiocretans ("true Cretans"). There's also a handful of examples of Dark Age Cretan art that seems to depict the Minoan snake goddess/priestess character from Minoan art. The museum also has a dark age Athena, ready to aid some mythological heros in their monster-slaughtering adventures.
The museum also had some later pieces out. Here's one of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who spread throughout the Greco-Roman world after Alexander conquered Egypt, eventually becoming the most popular goddess until the Roman Empire converted to Christianity and she was replaced in art by Mary. And here's one of her Greco-Roman era husband, Serapis, famous for being the only popular god created by committee. You'll notice that those statues, like most of the ones I'll post pictures of, are marble. The Greeks did a lot with marble when they were starting to get into sculpture, but after a few centuries of that they discovered the big problem with marble, namely that any bits sticking out of the torso are going to fall off. So they switched to bronze and their statues got much more interesting. Here's a Roman-era bronze, which is why I brought that up. Anyway, fast forward a few hundred years to the time when the Romans rule Greek and rich Italians just can't get enough Roman sculpture. For whatever reason, the Romans really like marble and so they have a lot of copies of Greek bronze statues done in marble, which usually requires the sculpter to add staves or trees or something to keep the statue's arms from falling off. During the dark ages, a lot of ancient marble gets burned to make lime, but a fair amount of it, particularly in rural areas, survived long enough for people to find it and put it in museums. Meanwhile, almost all of the bronze statues that aren't underground or underwater get melted down, because bronze is really useful and nobody's going to go without tools just so they can have an ancient statue in their yard, especially since the local clergy hates the pagans so much.
After the museum we left town for the rest of the afternoon. First we went to the site at Malia, which looks something like this. Archaeologists thing it used to look something like this, but because they are justifiably paranoid about getting it wrong they've kept actual reconstruction of the site to a minimum. While this is intellectually honest, we'd spent the morning looking at really cool stuff and suddenly being thrust back into the world of knee-high rocks baking in the Mediterranean sun didn't put us in the best of moods. This is an unusual Minoan site in that it has walls. Or rather, it only has one wall, the one on the seaside of the settlement. You can't see it in these pictures, but Malia is much closer to the coast than most Minoan settlements. The theory about the wall is that Minoans didn't usually built them because they were exclusively a naval people with no idea how to fight on land. Even if they weren't a unified people, they can't attack each others' settlements from the water and nobody else can get past their navies, so they live happily undefended until the Mycenaeans show up and completely dismantle their civilization in about 20 minutes. Since Malia is close enough to the shore to be open to raids from the sea, they built a wall between them, but apparently didn't comprehend the enemy's ability to walk around it.
This is a kernos. It's used for grinding stuff, usually olives or grapes, in order to make other stuff, usually oil or wine.
The alter. I think but am too lazy to confirm that I mentioned earlier that the Minoans have "old palace" and "new palace" periods because all of their stuff was wiped out by earthquakes around 1400. This alter is actually old palace, and rather than built a new one the Minoans just left it there and built the new courtyard around it.
Crete is so pretty that it makes most of mainland Greece look like some guy's front lawn that hasn't been watered in five years.
Mud brick remains. These are pretty rare, since even when they do survive they melt in rain if left exposed to the sky. Fortunately it doesn't rain much in Greece, and they got a protective covering over this spot.
It wouldn't be Minoan if there weren't stairs leading to a courtyard.
I found this sitting on a ruined wall while walking back. It might be ancient! Or it might be a bunch of rocks some kid was playing with because he was bored out of his mind.
Er war frisch. Er war als sehr teuer. I had to ask the guy for orange juice in German because his English sucked, but it turned out to be prohibitively expensive.
This is Agios Nikolias, where we ate lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon. It's name is basically Santa Claus in Greek, so this must be where he takes the Mrs. and the elves for summer vacation. The beach was a significant improvement over the one we went to the day before. And the water was clear as crystal.
Around seven we got back on the ferry for the trip back to Athens. Unlike the trip over, the weather was a little chilly and very, very windy, and we were all exhausted and a few people were getting seasick. All in all I think we were all in bed between nine and ten, which left us rested enough to get through another two sites before our day off.
Crete III: Knossos
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.
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.
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.
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