“The countless aspects of Beauty” at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

The beauty of Greek art, especially from the Classical and Hellenistic periods is, in my eyes, unsurpassed.

In order to celebrate its 150^th birthday, the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, put together a special exhibition to illustrate the beauty of Greek art from the Neolithic period to the late antiquity. To this purpose 340 works from the museum’s collection have been selected and are now exhibited under the common title “The countless aspects of Beauty” – a unique way to appreciate this facet of Greek art.

This special exhibition is set up in four separate sections.

“Eternal aesthetics” is the first section presenting objects of everyday life in prehistoric times, followed by “The Beautiful and the Desirable” referring to the aesthetic preferences in clothing, hairstyles and beautification. The third section “Focusing on the Body” treats the human body as represented from the Neolithic period to historic times. The exhibition concludes with a final section titled “The endless Quest” which concentrates on the significance of the beautiful and its value for humans.

Among the masterpieces, please note the Bronze head from Delos (early 1^st century BC),  the Birth of Aphrodite from Baiae (2^nd century AD), the Boy from Marathon (4^th century BC), the Diadoumenos from Delos (100 BC copy of an original from 450-425 BC) and many, many others.

This exhibition was started last month and will remain open to the public till the end of 2019 - time enough to plan your visit to Athens allowing you to include this highlight in your trip.

[Pictures from the NAM]

What about sundials in antiquity?

Until recently, I associated sundials with castles and palaces for the rich in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and it never occurred to me that they already existed in antiquity. Meanwhile, I learned that they were known in Egypt around 1500 BC, and after that in Babylon!

My first encounter with an antique sundial happened when I visited the site of Cnidos in southwestern Turkey. Here, I found such a sundial from Hellenistic times still in place. This was a most thrilling experience. Imagine standing in front of a time-telling mechanism that is more than 2,500 years old! It was missing the gnomon, the metal needle that is supposed to project its shadow onto the concave dial surface but some creative visitor had inserted a thin twig instead to reproduce the very principle. This type of dial is known as spherical or hemicyclium.

My next encounter with a sundial happened at the exhibition about Carthage that was organized in Leiden (Netherlands) in 2015. This sundial was made especially for the city of Carthage after 8 AD, when the month of Sextilis was renamed August in honor of Emperor Augustus. This example is, however, of an entirely different kind called a scaphe or bowl sundial. The bowl is resting on its side, and the sun is shining through a hole in the bowl’s top side, highlighting one of the eleven timelines drawn on the inner side of the opposite part of the bowl. The fan of eleven lines marks the twelve hours of the Roman day, which were longer in summer than in winter.

After all, it seems that sundials are not entirely uncommon to the Greeks, who saw them as objects of prestige mainly for public use. They were remarkably precise and very accurate, particularly those found on the island of Delos. The Romans seem to have merely copied the Greek models and used them in private life. They cared more for the philosophical attributes rather than for reading the time and they used the dial’s inscriptions and iconography as symbols.

These days, an intact and inscribed sundial has been discovered at the edge of the theater in Interamna Lirenas, near Monte Cassino, in Italy. This was not its original place as researchers believe that it was left behind by people who looted the area in search of building materials.

[Picture from Archaeology News Network, Credit: Alessandro Launaro]

The lettering and the style of the inscription indicate that the sundial dates from the mid-first century BC or later, in any case, at a time when the city of Interamna had acquired Roman citizenship.

The Latin text tells us that the piece was commissioned by a certain M(arcus) NOVIUS M(arci) F(ilius) TUBULA [Marcus Novius Tubula, son of Marcus], who held the office of TR(ibunus) PL(ebis) [Plebeian Tribune] and paid for the sundial D(e) S(ua) PEC(unia) (with his own money). The otherwise unknown Marcus Novius Tubula may have used the sundial to celebrate his election as a Plebeian Tribune of Rome.

The Interamna sundial very closely resembles the Hellenistic one from Cnidos, which confirms that the Romans did not add much, if anything, to the existing Greek examples.

What if … Alexander had lived a few more years to conquer western Mediterranean?

That is another ball game altogether. Alexander definitely had drawn his plans as contained in his notebooks (hypomnemata). He had already started exploring the coastline of the Arabian peninsula, an expedition cut short because the peninsula turned out to be far larger than expected. His ships went as far as the Strait of Hormuz without knowing they had reached the headland that Nearchus had seen when sailing up from India into the Persian Gulf in 324 BC.

The projects were grand, far beyond the visions of any of Alexander’s successors, and are best documented by Diodorus and Curtius. Instructions had been given to build a thousand warships, triremes up to septiremes in Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, and Cyprus to be eventually sailed into Babylon’s harbor. They would serve in a campaign along the coast of North Africa to conquer the strong Carthaginian realm. Interestingly he planned to build a road along the coast of Libya, as North Africa was named in his days, running all the way to the Pillars of Hercules, i.e., modern Gibraltar. Knowing that the first coastal road through today’s Libya was built by Mussolini in 1937 clearly, shows how daring a project this was. The conquest of the coastal regions, which would also include Iberia (Spain) and Sicily, evidently implied establishing a series of ports and dockyards where the ships could forage on provisions and get repairs done. Curtius even goes so far as to mention that Alexander’s plan was to reach the Alps and return to Epirus via the seacoast of Italy.

Alexander’s visions were not limited to warfare only; they included the arts as well. Six expensive temples were to be built, each costing 1,500 talents, located at Delos, Delphi, and Dodona; one at Dion in his homeland and dedicated to Zeus; one at Amphipolis for Artemis Tauropolus; and finally, a temple in honor of Athena at Cyrnus (modern Corsica). Second to none, a particular temple dedicated to Athena should be constructed at Ilium (Troy) also. To remember his father, Philip II, he intended to erect a tomb as great as the largest pyramid in Egypt. Dinocrates of Rhodes, who had already worked for Alexander in planning the city of Alexandria in Egypt, reconstructing the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, and assembling the massive funeral pyre for Hephaistion, had also drawn plans to carve an immense image of Alexander in the flank of Mount Athos in Greece’s Chalcidice – a plan that may or may not have been taken into account by the king.

These plans prove Alexander’s determination and do not leave room for failure. He would conquer the entire Mediterranean, something the Romans achieved only several centuries later. Still, their empire was not the making of one man and did not take shape in one lifetime. The Greek language, for centuries the lingua franca all over the Middle East, including today’s Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and helping to spread Christianity, would also be spoken and used in our western countries; Latin may not have had a chance beyond a local nucleus. Our world definitely would have looked very different, considering that the knowledge of Greek philosophers, mathematicians, artists, and sailors would have flowed straight through our veins!

Unfortunately, when Perdiccas found these orders after Alexander’s death, he decided that the expenses were far too high. Diodorus mentions that even the Macedonians, when these plans were read out aloud, realized that the projects were excessive and impractical. Well, I would say this is only one way to present the case since there certainly was no shortage of money to sponsor the Successors’ wars for forty years! But, on the other hand, if things had evolved differently with Hephaistion or Craterus at the helm in Babylon instead of Perdiccas, who knows what could have happened to Alexander’s dreams.

Wonderful Patara! - Lycian Coast 12

The minibus drops us at the foot of the aqueduct further inland. My vision of an aqueduct is the typical Roman concept of arched vaults spanning the entire valley, connecting one side to the other, but this one surprisingly looks more like a dam. Our path runs alongside a sophisticated water channel, cutting like a stone trough in the hillside, and a little further on, we see the petrified silt still sticking to the inner walls. We then reach the level where the aqueduct crosses the valley atop a solid stone wall, which, from a distance, resembles a barrage. At the top of the wall, the square mass-produced stone blocks line up like soldiers in a close row. In the center of these blocks measuring 90 x 90 cm runs a round pipe with, on one end, a male connection and a female on the other, so the blocks simply click together. Every five blocks or so, there is a plug for maintenance access, and at regular intervals, the male connector has a higher ridge, so the entire block can be wiggled out of the row in case of severe clogging. All in all, it is a surprising construction, and I have never seen anything like it! It was built under Emperor Nero around 50 AD, and according to the inscription on this wall, it was repaired under Vespasian, some 12 years later.

As we walk around to the foot of this dam, I can now see two small gateways held in place by enormous lintels above them that served as passages for cattle or people. Proceeding further in the direction of Patara, we keep crossing the winding aqueduct time and again. Part of our path actually runs right through the water channel, which over the years has lost its top slabs as they made good reusable building material. We don’t walk the entire length of 21 kilometers – thank God! – but we can trace the course of this marvelous construction through the landscape. Very interesting, I must say.

After a couple of hours of treading over these old paths and passages, the grand city of Patara lies at our feet. The unmistakable theater fills the middle of the picture. What a view! In the foreground stands a rather narrow arch, 10 meters high and 19 meters long, built in such a way that it aligns with the aqueduct, leading its water further to the fountains and Nymphaeums in town. It was actually constructed around 100 AD to honor the first governor-general of Lycia and Pamphylia, administrator of Patara, C. Trebonius Proculus Mettius Modestus. The niches and pedestals that once held statues are empty now, but clearly give a certain grandeur to this imposing three-arched construction that, surprisingly enough, shows the same design on both sides.

On the higher elevation to the west, beyond the swamps at our feet, recent excavations have revealed a large, round, tower-like building. This is what is left of an almost 2,000-year-old lighthouse. It is believed to be sixty years older than the one found in Spain, which was known as being the oldest in the world and was built around 60 A.D. Originally, the Patara lighthouse must have stood approximately 16-20 meters high.

At the foot of the mountain, we just came down an ancient road that leads out of Patara, flanked by sarcophagi for the Patarans – like the Via Appia in Rome, no less. The sun is setting quickly now, putting Mettius Modestus’ Arch on fire and wrapping the lonely Lycian sarcophagus uphill in a golden shred.

To make the most of the dwindling light, our bus drops us at the southern end of Patara, which was, and in some parts still is, buried under the sand. The theater, for one, has been only recently unearthed, much to Peter’s surprise and disappointment. He always felt it was very rewarding when climbing the sand dunes to suddenly find himself in the middle of the theater. That enchantment is gone now, but instead of sand, we see shiny white stones as if the theater were built just yesterday. It is of Hellenistic origin, with most of the two-floored skene and the five doors opening to the proscenium still in place. Around the orchestra, the seats have been removed to make place for a stone wall, meaning that the theater was converted into an arena where wild animal fights could be held. The VIP seats have obviously been removed and found a new place in the ambulatorium.

It is nearly dark by now, and we can just decipher the inscription on the sidewall beside the parados, reading that the theater was built with the contributions of the people of Patara. Other inscriptions mention that the theater was rebuilt at the beginning of the 1st century AD after needing repair following the earthquake of 141 AD. An extended annotation indicates that the proscenium was constructed by a certain Velio Titionus and that his daughter, Velia Prouila, provided funds for the statues and the decorations "in honor of the gods of Augustus and in honor of the gods of Patara city and in honor of Emperor Antoninus Pius in the year 147 AD". It makes me wonder how emancipated Roman women actually were.

Across from this theater stands a most impressive building, also very recently resuscitated from the sands. This is the Lycian Council – of all places! The access is barred with iron gates, but one can easily recognize the Odeon-shaped seating inside, flanked by two sturdy entrances under high vaulted ceilings. The floor is probably covered with mosaics, but I cannot see them from the outside. I am very much excited to see this important Council, for this is where delegates from all over Lycia come together to vote on important matters. Since the League itself is so much older than the clearly Roman entrance indicates, I wonder if maybe the central part, i.e., the Odeon-shaped construction, dates from Lycian times (2nd century BC). I may have been framed in a Roman concept later on – unless it is standing on old Lycian foundations? I am curious what future excavations will reveal.

Peter mentions that the famous Temple of Apollo has not been located yet. Its oracle, it is said, would rival only that of Delphi, and the Temple itself equaled the reputation of the famous temple of Delos. It was believed that Apollo lived at Delos during the summer but spent his winters at Patara.

Turkish archaeologists are actively digging here right now, so who knows what they’ll come up with? Our visit is only superficial, just enough to put Patara on the map, but I am determined to come back one day and investigate this important site in detail. By now, darkness has set in with a crescent moon looking down on all these centuries past. For us, it is time to drive back to our gulet.

Our poet has once again written a poem about this unique city:

P A T A R A  -  a sonnet

The city gate still stands. The aqueduct,

A seam of rubble stitched across the hill.

Goats browse inside the tumbled bathhouse walls.

No splash of water now. No voices heard

Along the marbled street. The theater plays

A scene of drifting sand. The harbor walls

Confront a silted bay. No sailors’ shouts,

No clank of anchor chains, no travelers’ tales.

Above the buried stones a woman calls

Her cows for milking. Low across the marsh

Two herons fly. A mellow sunset breeze

Rustles the reeds. Listen. Perhaps you hear,

Among the scattered, vaulted, empty tombs,

The dry whisper of Lycian ghosts.

John Onley - May 2005

 

Tonight the crew has the evening off, and we are dining out for a change. Peter made reservations at Restaurant Belgin, in uptown Kalkan. We are seated in elegant Ottoman style outside on the roof among richly decorated cushions and colorful canopies, and flowers. I find it difficult to fit my legs under the low table, and the only way to do so is by taking my shoes off. It is a most lovely spot, but, unfortunately, we are getting colder by the minute, and after the mezes, we move downstairs around a square table under high wooden ceilings. The food is delicious, but we all agree that Fatuşa’s cooking still wins the prize! We are all enjoying ourselves very much, and time flies; it is midnight when we return to our bunks.

Click on the Label Lycian Coast to read the full story