These are octupi figures from grave circle A at Mycenae. Specifically, they're from the third grave, which is known as the "Grave of the Women." There have been a lot of assumptions made about whether the graves were those of males or females. Usually the distinction is drawn by the grave goods- graves with weapons are male graves, graves with ornaments are female. Of course, it doesn't always work so well. They're from the 16th century B.C., and are really really detailed. 
Ok, I'm going to say right off that I think this pot is absolutely amazing. First, it was from Dimini, and is from the late Neolithic period. It was made some time between 5800 and 4800 B.C. That's right. It's between nearly 8,000 and nearly 7,000 years old. Second, this was made by hand. It wasn't made on a wheel- someone made this amazing, symmetrical pot with their own hands. And it has survived for thousands and thousands of years. And it's also just really pretty. 
This is from a grave stele- basically a grave monument. It's only fragmentary, but I think that the expressions on the faces are really beautiful. It was found in Anavyssos in Attica and was probably made some time between 530 and 520 BC. 
Another thing that thought was really beautiful. This is a fragment of a disc from Melos. It was probably made in about 460 BC with local marble, and it depicts a goddess, possibly Aphrodite. The level or realism is amazing to me- many early classical sculptures are much more stylized, which is also cool but in a different way. 
And this is another grave stele. This is not from Attica- it's from Boeotia, I think probably Thebes. It's from the late fifth century, and I thought that the arrangement of figures on it was interesting. The solemn expressions and the way it is arranged is an indication of the glorification of the dead. It's pretty. 
This is part of a wall painting from Thera (modern day Santorini). This one is of two antelopes, and is part of the Acrotiri room, where all the items from Thera are displayed. It's from the 16th century BC, and it's so well preserved because Arotiri is essentially the Pompeii of the Bronze Age- there was an enormous volcanic eruption, and the resulting fall of ash blanketed much of the Cyclades and may have been responsible for the collapse of several bronze age civilizations. It also caused modern Santorini to be the shape it is- the funny bowl shaped depression is in fact the caldera.
Acrotiri was excavated after Pompeii, and the archaeologists learned their lessons well- when they found hollow spaces in the volcanic ash, they filled them with plaster so they could get impressions. Oddly enough, there have been no bodies and very few metal items of value found at the site- there must have been warning signs, because it appears that the island was successfully evacuated. This is one of the casts, and it is not a person but a bed- you can still see where ropes would have been tied to the frame to hold up whatever they were sleeping on. This is how we know as much as we know about bronze age furniture in the Aegean.
This is not from Acrotiri, but is from another Bronze Age culture. It is a figurine from the Cyclades and it was created by the same people who made the FAFs, but there are a few key differences. This figure is male, not female, and instead of a standing figure with crossed arms, he is a seated musician, playing some sort of lute or harp. It's the same age as the FAF in the last post, give or take- from between 2800 and 2300 BC.
These mysterious objects are known as "frying pan vessels", mostly because they look like frying pans. A bit. They're also from EC II, and they are found in graves. We have no idea what they were for. Mirrors has been a suggestion. Drums. Possibly idols. Or vessels for libation. You decide. They're really cool- they are covered with incised lines, and some are quite elaborate.
And this is another wall painting from Acrotiri. I included it mostly because it's really pretty.
This is, of course, the mask of Agamemnon. It is one of the gold masks found in the shaft graves of Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann, and it is very famous. It also is erroneously named- it's probably not the mask of Agamemnon, who we think probably lived about 300 years after this mask was made.
This is a FAF, or folded arm figure, and I'm sure you've seen pictures of them somewhere before. This one was found at Amorgos and is from the Early Cycladic II period (abbreviated ECII), which was from about 2800-2300 BC. It's made from Parian marble, and it's unique in that it's 1.5 meters tall. 
This is the Artemision Bronze. It was found off of the coast of Cape Artemision, and it's a statue of either Zeus or Poseidon. Why don't we know? The statue is incomplete- he would have been throwing something, and if we knew what that was, we would know who this statue was supposed to be. If it was a thunderbolt, Zeus. A trident, Poseidon.
This very large piece of pottery is a grave amphora that was found in the Kerameikos. It is very large and very well preserved, and is a good example of late Geometric period pottery. (760-750 BC). The figures near the handles are mourning the dead man- the rest of the designs are geometric.
And this is a very famous bronze statue of a jockey on a horse. I'm sure it has a lovely history, but I neglected to take notes on it, and so I'll have to look it up before I can tell you any more.
Of course, we went off with a map of Athens, my guidebook, which said when it was open, and a vague desire to see the grave of the great Mr. Schleimann. The first thing that we realized was that the cemetery is beautiful. The next thing that we realized was that it was huge. Many, many impressive monuments. No map of where everything was. It was going to be a challenge to find the tomb before we had to get back to Greek class.
The great problem was that many of the grave monuments are beautiful and impressive. It's not like you can look around, find the big monument, and go, "oh. That must be the grave of someone famous." The cemetery is very different from the ones that I am used to in Massachusetts. It is a green place, but not in a rolling-grassy-hills sort of way. There are a lot of cypress and olive trees. The monuments are mostly made of white marble.
It's actually very hard to tell how old some of the graves are. It isn't like in Boston, where you can tell by the condition of the headstone and the decorations on it the age it must be. The problem is further compounded by the fact that many of the monuments are not individual tombs, but family plots.
There also are three churches in the cemetery- two are Greek Orthodox, one is Catholic. They are beautiful, as most churches here seem to be.
And finally we found it! Ironically, the tomb of Heinrich Schleimann is one of the buildings that you can see as you enter- it's the little building shaped like a Doric temple in the first picture. It actually has very cool friezes- they depict Schleimann excavating archaeological sites as well as the usual images of gods and heroes fighting. If ever you find yourself in Athens, I would suggest a trip to the cemetery- it was very quiet, free from most of the tourists you see everywhere else, and since it is free, it is definitely good value.
And yes, we did get back in time for Greek class.
This cat reminds me of my cat Al, in that he likes to sit in random places. Also in that he looks a bit like Al. If he looks familiar, it's because he is- he's box cat from several days ago. (It does not feel like that picture was taken several days ago. It feels like it was at least a month.) He likes to sit on cars and in boxes, but I also have seen him trying to fit himself into other enclosed spaces, like the corner formed by the wall, the edge of the stairs, and the stair railing outside.
This cat is often in this tree, which is a good thing, because this is bitey cat, who does that thing cats do where they act like they want to be petted and then grab your hand and bite it. Not seriously, thank goodness. Bitey also likes to lurk next to the doorway and attack your ankles as you rummage through your purse for your keys. One has to be quite careful. And get the keys out before reaching Bitey's lair.
And this is the baby of the bunch, who is either three or four months old, depending on who you talk to. She is very shy and usually doesn't have demonic glowing eyes. She looks a wee bit like Cleo, who is about the same size and coloring, though this cat eats a lot more than Cleo does and will most likely still get bigger.
are nearly as terrifying as Athenian drivers. Wet marble is really slippery. Uneven wet marble spiral staircases are life threatening.
This is the promised picture of the temple of Olympian Zeus, which I walked past on the way to Plaka yesterday. This is only part of it- there are a few more columns which are a bit farther away, and a fallen column that collapsed during a storm in the 1800s. The temple is particularly noted for its Corinthian columns- the really ornate bits at the top are a prime example of that sort of column. Ionic and Doric columns are generally much simpler. This is the sort of thing that I am going to learn to talk about in an intelligent and informed manner in my Archaeology of Athens. (I'm so excited! Our first field trip to the Acropolis is on Thursday!)
The Greeks have a mysterious obsession with Byron. You notice it particularly on the walk over to Plaka- you go past a statue of him, and the "Byron Hotel," and this street, Vyronos. (Athenian streets are often named after writers, usually Greeks. In Kolonaki, there is a Loukianou, an Irodotou, and an Isiodou. Street names are also always in the genitive- it's the street of someone. "Odos Vyronos" is "the street of Byron".) (In modern Greek, beta is pronounced as a v- one of the many differences in pronunciation between modern and ancient Greek. My modern Greek class, which is composed entirely of classics majors who know ancient Greek, is hysterical- we spend most of the time correcting our pronunciantions. There's a lot of "ay-m-eye e-toy-may- I mean, no! not that! ee-may e-tee-mee- is that how you say it? Really?" whenever we have to read out loud.) (Actually, the obsession isn't really that mysterious- Byron was one of the many philhellenes who supported the Greeks during the War of Independence, and he was instrumental in organizing supplies and funding. His death in Greece also attracted a lot of European attention, as did his poetry.)
Plaka is the land of tourists. It's the area right below the Acropolis, and most of the streets, which are charmingly narrow and winding, are filled with souvenir shops and overpriced restaurants. It's a lot of fun to go to, though- I have no idea why you would want to buy half the things they're selling, but it's cool to look. If you leave the main streets and wander a bit, you see a lot of roads like this- very quiet and narrow, and full of stairs. You couldn't have a car here.
And this is one of the very nice churches that I saw while wandering around. According to the plaque, it's a chapel of St. Catherine, and was built in the 11th century. My guess is that the 11th century is probably the date when the foundations were made- the rest of the building is in very good condition and looks considerably newer.
Today, Maddie and I decided to climb Lycavitos. Since the weather report was predicting temperatures in the mid-90s, we decided to head off early in the morning. Here is Maddie in from of some lovely trees that we thought looked like something out of Doctor Seuss. Actually, the vegetation was pretty strange all the way up- a lot of these trees, a lot of the spiky plants in the foreground of the picture, and a lot of cacti. (More on that later.)
This is the chapel at the top of the hill. It's to St. George, and from the inside it was absolutely beatiful- the walls and the ceilings are all painted with images, mostly from the life of Christ, and there are lots of icons. Really, it looked like something out of a book about Greek Orthodox churches. I used my rudimentary modern Greek with the man who takes care of it- said good morning, that the church was beautiful, and that yes, I was American, no, I was not a tourist. I would have taken pictures of the inside, but I wasn't sure if I was supposed to, and it was dark and I'm not sure they would have come out.
The nice thing about Lycavitos is the beautiful view from the top! This picture has the acropolis, and behind it you can see out to Piraeus. Basically, you can see the entire city- Lycavitos gives you a 360 degree view, and with my map and my guidebook, we could pick out all the major landmarks. Did you know that Athens, like Rome, has 7 hills? Lycavitos is, of course, the biggest- you can see how high above the Acropolis we were here.
Here are the stairs that we climbed- pretty much the only unfortunate part about the experience was the stairs, which are uneven and so hard to walk up comfortably. You really have to watch your step.
And, of course, you have to watch out for the cacti. I read this in my guidebook, and was a bit confused, since I wasn't aware that there were a lot of cacti growing in Athens. Shortly into the trip, we realized that the guide was right to warn us. There are a lot of them, and they are very sharp. They also encroach on the path- and on the benches, in this case. Watch out. So, other than the cacti and the stairs, it was a really nice trip, and I would advise anyone coming to Athens to do it.
After my first full day of classes (which were fabulous, by the way) a bunch of girls from my Ancient Greek class headed out to Varnava Square in Pangrati to get gyros. They were tasty- we all got chicken (or kotopoulo, if you want the Greek word) and the place that we went to also made very good tzatziki. A question, for people who have had Greek gyros before- do they always have French fries in them? We were curious.
Afterwards, we headed back to the academic center, where three of us met up to walk over to the Herodion, where we had tickets to a flamenco show. The walk to the Herodion is very nice, and you get to walk by several monuments of interest- this is Hadrian's arch. Also on the way was the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which I actually did not get a picture of. Don't worry, I'll get one at some point. We walked past some partially excavated Roman baths on the way back as well. 
This is a picture of Athens taken from the outside of the Herodion Theater (or the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, if you prefer), which is located at the southern side of the Acropolis. It was actually not this dark when I took the picture- I think it was around 8 pm, and at that time of night it's still pretty light out) and the view of Athens was very nice.
Here is a picture of the theatre from the inside- as you can see, it's an open air theater. The front is, I believe, original- it was built some time in the second century A.D., though at moment I can't be bothered to look up an exact date. 160-ish, I think. The seats inside are not original- they were restored somewhat recently. The show was very good, but I think the really cool part was the atmosphere. I mean, where else can you sit in an outdoor theater watching a show and be within sight of the Parthenon?
(Which is, by the way, the blurry triangular thing that is above the lights in this picture. I'm sorry, it was dark.)
1. Lots of animals running around. We have five cats that live around my apartment. They don't seem to belong to anyone, but they live in the garden and everyone who lives there feeds them and pets them on the way out the door. In my case, it's actually been really cool- a lot of the people in my building congregate outside in the early evening to feed the cats, and I've met a bunch of my neighbors that way. In the rest of the city, you see a lot of half-tame dogs and cats. This buddy I met while I was walking in Pangrati, and I'm pretty sure he was very used to people, since he definitely wanted a belly rub. It is pretty strange to see them, and a bit scary- a dog darted into a busy street, and I thought he was a goner. (He wasn't. The cars all swerved.) Thankfully, Athens does not have a rabies problem, and they do seem mostly pretty well fed and cared for.
2. The traffic. People say that Boston drivers are scary and that Boston pedestrians are really pushy. You do not know what scary or pushy is until you have seen Athenians. Seriously. They drive really fast, they pay no attention to traffic lights, they turn in places that are probably illegal, they park on sidewalks. My walk to school should probably be a twenty minute walk or so, but it has been taking me half an hour, since I don't have a death wish and actually wait for walk lights. Especially scary- the millions of people on motorbikes. We are forbidden to ride, rent, drive, or think particularly hard about the motorbikes, on pain of expulsion from CYA. This is probably a good thing.
3. The mixture of really old and really new. From what I've seen so far, buildings in Athens are one of four ages. They're really old- you know, from Antiquity- churches from the Byzantine period, museums and government buildings from the late 19th or early 20th century, or modern. There is very little to indicate that Athens was populated for centuries between the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the late 1800s. It's very different from Massachusetts, where nothing is very old but there are buildings from the last four hundred years, or other European cities, where there are a lot of buildings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. As the president of the program pointed out, in Greece, there was no Renaissance. That was during the period of Ottoman occupation.
4. Social Unrest and a Visible Armed Police Force: There are a ton of demonstrations here. When we went a few streets to far one time and ended up near the Parliament building, we almost ended up as part of one. They protest many things all the time, from pension problems and low pay to the war in Iraq. Most protests start over by Parliament and end up in front of the American Embassy, regardless of what the protest is actually about. Going along with this is the armed police force. There are a lot more police officers here than in the US- walking to school today I think I counted about 20, if your discount all the people in ceremonial uniform- and unlike in the US, they are clearly armed. Some of them have smallish guns in holsters, but there are just as many who are standing around, holding larger gun items. It's a bit unnerving, though I know I am doing nothing wrong.
5. The fact that this is a very religious country. You see a lot of beautiful Orthodox Churches here- at some point, there will probably be a post consisting entirely of pictures of Orthodox churches. I pass by at least three on the way back to my apartment- one of my friends, who lives a five minute walk away, walks past another two. Greek people cross themselves when they walk by churches, which I find interesting. There also are more nuns and monks around than you would see in the US. (This picture, by the way, is of Lykavittos, the hill behind my apartment. Contrary to popular belief, Lykavittos, not Athens, is the highest point in the city, and apparently affords a beautiful view. If it isn't too hot this weekend, some friends and I are going to climb it.)
I'm so glad that I'm here, and I'm pretty sure that this trip is definitely going to go under the category of "life-changing experiences." I hope that everyone is doing well.
This is what happens when you type in gmail.com on the computers in the lab.
Yeah. Clearly, we are no longer in the United States.
And one of these things is that cats like to sit in boxes. We have a bunch of cats that live in the garden at my apartment building- they're not really pets, but people feed them and on the whole they're pretty tame. I met one of the girls who feeds them last night. We had a pretty entertaining conversation- she didn't speak great English, and my Greek is even worse- but we both bonded over how cute one of the kittens is. I hope everyone is well.
I trust that everyone recongizes this picture- it is, in fact, a picture of the Acropolis. This is lovely. You have probably seen it about a million times. You have probably seen better pictures of it a million times. What is the exciting bit is that I took this picture ten minutes ago, from the balcony of DIKEMES. That's right, everyone. I'm finally here.
This is the view from my apartment, which is in the area of Athens known as Kolonaki. (I'll try to produce a map at some point.) It is a very cute apartment. I am sharing it with one other girl, but we each get our own rooms. My room has a balcony. We also have a charming and quaint (read: small and filled with bizarre machinery) kitchen, an equally tiny bathroom, and a hallway. My door has multiple locks and something which looks vaguely like an ornate ash tray on it. I only got in after half an hour of wiggling various metal items around.
This is the same view, only with the camera angled downwards instead of up. Note the tree item. I am going to assume it is some exotic species native to the region, although in fact I have no clue what it is. I'm still quite charmed. (But then, I was charmed by the Greek graffiti this morning. It was vandalism. In Greek.)
And this is the marble stadium, which is, as its name would suggest, a large marble stadium. (It was the site of the 1896 Athens Olympics. It's pretty.) It also is right next door to the academic building, and I have never been so happy to see a marble stadium in my life as when I finally got here after wandering alone and vaguely lost in Athens trying to get here to check in. It was an adventure. I used the approximately 7 phrases of Greek that I know, and my rusty French, and my map reading skills, which are usually good but decrease greatly when I haven't slept for 30+ hours. Essentially, I am having a fabulous time.
