The Kerameikos

Another part of my last minute sightseeing involved the Kerameikos, an area of the city that was used for centuries as a burial ground for the Athenian dead. I first went there in October, but on that trip forgot to bring my camera- I knew that before I went I wanted to go back and get some photots. So, in ancient times generally the dead were not buried within the city. In prehistoric times, people were buried in the area that is now the agora, but later most burials occurred in the Kerameikos, which is an area that was technically outside of the ancient city.
The Kerameikos is a very nice site to visit- it's not nearly as popular as the Acropolis or even the Agora, so Emma and I had it pretty much to ourselves. There is a nice museum where they have displayed the finds from the site, and then the site itself is nice.
Replicas of many of the grave markers have been laid out, so you get an idea of what it must have been like back in ancient times.
There's a lovely view of the Acropolis!
Of course, the site was not entirely used for burials. This is the tomb of the Lacedaimonians, but it is on the road that once led to Plato's academy. The Kerameikos got its name because it was the potter's quarter, and it also was the place where there were several important gates into the city- the Dipylon gate and the Sacred Gate, for example. Also in this area, you can see large amounts of Athens' old walls.

Last Minute Athens

Shortly before I left Athens, I started to panic in a vaguely irrational manner. "Oh no!" I remember saying. "I only have two weeks left in Athens! There are still so many things I want to see! Oh dear! I'm leaving so soon!" Shortly afterwards, I told myself quite sternly that people manage to see most of the sites of Athens in considerably less than two weeks, and I would have plenty of time to see everything I wanted. (Then the riots started, and my sight seeing was a bit curtailed.) But there were a few days in there when I wandered around Athens snapping pictures like there was no tomorrow. Here are some of the products of that panic.


This is the Temple of Olympian Zeus- I had been there before, but hadn't taken any pictures from up close or from inside the actual enclosure. That's the Zappeion- it is a building that houses conventions and exhibitions and stuff. I walked by it frequently for several months before figuring out what it was. I... still don't really know what it is. Other than in a vague sense.
Signs on Amalias. Note: The centre is less than a kilometer away. Peiraias is about 7, the Acropolis is very nearby. Thessaloniki is... about 6 hours by car, I think.


One of these things is not like the other...
Hadrian's Arch, Athens traffic. I think I was glad that I left Athens when I did- I was getting way too comfortable crossing Athens streets. And that is a bad thing- to quote Harry Potter, Athens street require constant vigilance.
The Choregic Monument of Lysicrates. Back in the day, wealthy Athenians were required to perform public works (leitourgia) sort of like a tax. Some of these works involved financing the navy, (which, for Athens, was obviously a big deal) but some of them were religious in nature. One of these was to be the person who financed productions of drama for the religious festivals- and if your production won, custom was to set up one of these monuments to display your tripod. This is one of the most complete ones extant (possibly the most complete one- certainly the most that I saw.) and it is in Plaka.
Then I went to the Kerameikos- but since there were a lot of pictures from there, I think that one deserves its own separate post.

Sounion

Finally we made our way to Sounion, a site on the south-east tip of the Attic peninsula where there is a temple to Poseidon. It is a very picturesque spot, though extremely windy- that's due to the location on the coast, I think, since all of my friends who went there also reported high winds. Apparently sunset there is quite lovely- my friend Gina has pictures that prove this- but we were there during the middle of the afternoon.
The temple of Sounion! You may notice that this temple is a different color than the temples on the Acropolis- still in the range of white-ish, but not so red or yellow. This temple was made not with Pentelic marble, like the Parthenon was, but was instead made with locally quarried stone. Since this stone had a very low iron content, it did not produce that same hue as it aged.
The view to the west- this is clearly a picturesque spot!
If this picture was considerably larger than it is, you would be able to see something rather exciting on the square column just above the join in the rocks- specifically, you would be able to see Byron's name, which he carved there while visiting the site. Carving one's name into a site is actually a tradition with ancient roots- many of the great monuments of Egypt have the names of Greek sailors carved into them. Sort of like a guestbook, I suppose. They don't let you do that sort of thing nowadays.
And these are the cliffs where Aegeus, the father of Theseus, stood to watch for his son's ship coming back from Crete. I trust that you are all familiar with the story- Theseus told his father that he would put up white sails if he was alive, Theseus forgot and sailed with black sails, Aegeus saw this and, assuming that his son was dead, threw himself off the cliff. That is, according to legend, how the Aegean sea got its name.

Thorikos

For lunch we stopped at Thorikos, a site in Attica that was in use for a long time and for many purposes. Mostly, it is famous for the theater that is there- it's a very old theater, and interesting for several reasons that I will point out in a sec- and for mining equipment- this is, after all, in the region of the Laurion silver mines that were so important in Athenian history. So, this is the theater. Most of the theaters that you can think of from the ancient world- the theater of Dionysus in Athens, or the theater at Epidauros- are round in shape. However, theaters weren't always round, and this one at Thorikos is proof of that.
Now, it may look a bit round, when you only look at the edges. However...

When you look only at the middle, there's no curvature at all. How is that?
That's how- the middle of the theater actually is straight, and there are essentially corners where the theater curves around the orchestra. Once upon a time, most theaters were probably a lot more square than their classical counterparts. This is sort of a transitional phase.

At Thorikos there is also some ancient mining equipment, which I saw and did not photograph, and some Mycenaean burials, which are up on the acropolis which we didn't see.

Brauron

One Saturday, we went for a field trip with my archaeology professor to see a variety of sites in Attica. This trip was originally supposed to happen in October- on the same weekend as the trip to Marathon and Rhamnous, in fact- but because my archaeology professor was ill, we ended up putting it off until a later weekend. The first site that we went to was the site of Brauron, the location of one of the oldest bridges in existence and an important site for the worship of Artemis. That building you can see isn't a temple. It's actually a stoa, and the area to the left is some sort of complex where people probably slept.
The remains of the temple- not too well preserved, unfortunately- are up on this hill, in front of the small church. At this site, young Athenian girls would act as she-bears, running races and performing sacrifices.
There are the foundations of the temple. At some point, our professor let us wander the site, which meant that Maddie and Kyrie decided that it was time to climb rocks. Or something.
Also present at the site of Brauron was a cult to Iphigenia (you might remember her- the daughter of Agamemnon who may or may not have been sacrificed so he could go to Troy?) If you believe that she didn't die (Artemis saved her at the last minute), there is a story that she ended up in the region of the Black Sea and was involved with bringing a wooden cult statue of Artemis back to Greece. (The source for this, by the way, would be Euripides' play Iphigenia at Aulis.) The picture below shows the area where the heroon might have been- there was clearly a small shrine there.

Adventures at the Pnyx!

One of the most important bodies of the Athenian democracy was the ekklesia, the assembly of citizens who decided on matters of legislation and made many decisions for Athens. All citizen males over the age of 18- from all four Solonic property classes- could participate in the assembly, and it had a quorum of 6,000, so you can imagine that it was a very large body, and that they needed a pretty big place to meet. That place was the Pnyx. Josh, Christine and I were very excited to be there! We went there for my archaeology class and needed proof that we had been in attendance.
The Pnyx is located pretty near the Acropolis, and consists mostly of a big grassy area and the bema. It affords a nice view of the city- here is the view looking out towards the city of today, with Lycavitos to the right of the picture.
Christine is still excited to be there!
The bema, or speaker's platform. One of the cool things about the Athenian democracy was that anyone could speak at the assembly. (Given that they were a male citizen over the age of 18. You need to get used to that when dealing with the Athenian democracy.)

Merry Christmas!

Dear All,

Merry Christmas! As you probably have guessed by now, I have returned home safely and have risen back into consciousness after several days of being in a semi-catatonic state. In honor of the holiday, here are some photos of Christmas decorations in Athens, both those that still exist and those that haven't made it.


This is the first Christmas tree that they put up in Syntagma square. On the weekend that the riots broke out, I was in Athens, going around and seeing the city. This is the situation as it was on Friday- the tree itself had just gone up, and they were decorating it (with cranes.) That's the Parliament building that you can see in the background. Here is the first Christmas tree as it was on Sunday morning! The riots broke out on Saturday night, but because I didn't get to the internet between Saturday morning and Sunday evening, I actually didn't really know that anything was wrong until later. At this point the tree was decorated, and there were a lot of lights all over the streetlights and trees of Athens.

This is a window decoration from Omonia, and I'm reasonably certain that it doesn't exist at the moment, since it was in the center of the riot zone. Athens gets decorated for Christmas a lot these days- since my mother says that this wasn't really the case thirty years ago, I'm going to assume that this is an instance where other countries have influenced Greece. And this is the second Christmas tree in Syntagma Square, which was put up after the first one was burned down. As you can see, the decorations aren't exactly the same as on the old one, but this one was still quite large and festive. It is still around, I think- in the riots they have thrown things at it, but it hasn't been burned down yet.

I hope you are having a lovely Christmas (or other holiday of your choice) and I wish you a happy new year! Expect more posts soon!

E?

Then we went to the Delphi Archaeological Museum, which is another one of those museums where every room is filled with priceless cultural artifacts. This, for example, is the charioteer of Delphi. You may well have seen pictures of this statue before- it's quite famous. The French found it after the earthquake of the late 1890s, because he had been buried before that. It is made of bronze, and you can tell from the style (the facial features, the fact that he is clothed, etc.) that it is from the early classical period.
This inscription is really really cool, my music friends! Can you see how there are lines of text, and the occasional letters between those lines of text? Yes? Those are notations of music of some sort. What they actually mean in turns of tune, I am not entirely sure- I'm not, by any means, an expert on ancient musical notation- but it's pretty cool. It's like ancient sheet music! Only on rocks.
This is the omphalos! I did say that Delphi was the center of the universe, right? This is the stone that marks the center of the center of the universe.

To my science friends- no, you aren't allowed to say anything. If I choose to believe that Delphi is the center of the universe, in spite of a semester of astronomy, nothing you say is going to dissuade me. NOTHING.
This is a part of the pediment sculpture of the treasury of the Athenians. I'm not entirely sure if we were supposed to be in this room- there were ropes blocking off the entryways, but the guard let us in happily enough when we said that we were archaeology students. It depicts one of the labors of Theseus- he's killing an Amazon woman in this part. According to my archaeology professor, he has also just realized that he loves this person. I think that this is indicative of a somewhat dysfunctional relationship. There are lots of those in ancient Greek mythology- see "Atreus, House of".
This one is really cool, guys. That face is part of a statue- want to hazard a guess what materials it is made of?

If you guessed gold for the shiny gold metal, good job! The black part, however, is interesting- that's ivory. You might be thinking that black is an awfully interesting color for ivory to be- that's because it was damaged by fire at some point in time. This statue is "chryselephantine"- literally, gold and ivory, though the term also refers to a specific sort of cult statue. At some point in time, this statue (and some others) was buried, leading to this impressive state of preservation. I think we think that this statue is of Artemis, Apollo's twin sister.

ΕΓΓΥΑ ΠΑΡΑ Δ'ΑΤΗ

Delphi was an important site where the god Apollo was worshipped. That picture below is of the temple of Apollo, which is an exciting place because it is where, I believe, the Pythia (that's the priestess who gave oracles at Delphi) would have sat on her tripod, answering people's questions in hexameter verse. Now, the subject of the Pythia and her temple is a very interesting one- some people believe that the priestess did not write verses so much as make a bunch of funny noises that other people interpreted. Some accounts of the temple record a smell there. The question is, does this mean that the air was full of some sort of fumes? Delphi is located on a fault line, and higher than usual amounts of some chemicals, like ethylene, have been found in nearby springs. Was the Pythia hallucinating? Obviously we can't say, but it's interesting to think about.
Me with an inscriptions. This is a late inscription- you can tell because of the style of some of the letters (like the omegas- note how they are written like curly ws, rather than the Ω that you're probably used to seeing.) No, I'm not going to translate it.
The theatre at Delphi! It's a late addition to the site- 4th century BC, I think- but is quite the theater- from this spot on the mountain, you can get a lovely view of the rest of the site. It must have been really neat back in the day, when all of the treasuries were still intact.
The treasury of the Athenians! Reconstructed, clearly- when they excavated it, the French archaeologists found enough of this treasury that they could put it back together. The friezes from the building are inside the archaeological museum at Delphi, and depict the labors of Theseus, an important Athenian hero. At the treasury, the Athenians would have displayed war trophies- for example, the arms captured from the Persians during the Persian Wars. The road up to the temple of Apollo was lined with treasuries like this from different cities- near the Tholos, there is a treasury from the city which is modern day Marseilles.
Looking back over the nearby mountains!

ΜΗΔΕΝ ΑΓΑΝ

The tholos again! The original building had a bunch of columns, but only three of them have been restored. According to wikipedia, a source that I reference far too often, this is the most photographed building at the site.

Well, add me to the list of photographers, ok? It's cool looking.
After that we went to the modern city of Delphi, which was a very exciting place to spend time. Really. There are about three roads, it was cold, and we had nothing to do. So, we first checked into our hotel, which, as we discovered, had a very nice view.


And then we discovered that Molly and Stefanie were staying in the room right below us, which was very exciting.

ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ

So, after we had finished with Hosios Loukas we made our way to Delphi, which, in case you weren't aware, is the center of the universe. It is also the site of the Delphic Oracle, which was, of course, the most important oracle of the ancient Greek world, and is a pretty nifty place in general.

A warning before you start reading these posts- classics nerdiness will be abounding. Trust me. I think it is physically impossible to go to Delphi and not be a bit nerdy. (Or is it? Perhaps this problem is unique to me.) The site of Delphi is located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, and is in general a very pretty place. Once upon a time, the area of the site was occupied by a village, Kastri. This is a common problem in Greece- many valuable archaeological sites have been built over in later times, and it is difficult to excavate if the current inhabitants refuse to move away. (There are many areas of Athens that haven't been excavated either.) Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Kastri, but fortunately for all of the archaeologists involved (and, I should add, anyone who has visited the site) there was an earthquake in the late 1800s that encouraged the villagers to move away and made the excavations possible.
This may not be Delphi...
But this is! See those columns over to the left side of the picture? That's the temple of Apollo! And that white building in the middle of the picture? That's the treasury of the Athenians! I may have been dancing in a giddy fashion at this point of the trip. Whereby "may have" I mean "definitely was." Some of the less classics-enthused people on my bus may have been alarmed. My professors may have been looking on in amusement. My friends were too busy dancing to much care.
This is Delphi too! That's the tholos, which is a round building at the site of the Temple of Athena Pronaia. Our first day on the site (we spent a whole weekend there) we only visited the lower site, which means that we spent a lot of time looking at the tholos. It is a very recognizable building, in part because it is round. (There aren't a whole lot of round buildings from the ancient world, and generally the ones that exist are called the tholos. I have visited three while here- the tholos in the agora (subject of my exciting presentation, "The tholos and the monument of the eponymous heroes") the tholos at Epidauros and this one here.)