A Walk Through the Centuries at the Athens Archaeological Museum

Away from the Acropolis museum and archaeological sites nearby, sits the magnificent neoclassical building that houses the National Archaeological museum of Athens.

Last Sunday as we approached the museum, we were amazed to see a line all the way down to the sidewalk and around. In the hour we wait, we hear many different languages, confirming that Athens has indeed become a year round tourist city. It’s good to see so many visitors here at this incredible museum, that features 11,000 exhibits from wherever Greek civilization flourished.

A dramatic rainstorm in the morning has cleared and the skies are a deep blue. What a treat to feel the sun and look around at the gardens — olive trees, cypresses, nerantzia and palm trees. As you wait, you can also try to identify the four statues on top. No one seems to be completely sure — it’s a good guess on the left hand side, Apollo and Hera. On the right, this muscular guy? The one all the way on the right is carrying a baby; it might be Demeter and her little son Plutus.

I remember some years ago watching the magnificent “A Passage to India” in the front courtyard when the museum was a venue for the Athens Open Air Film Festival, which every summer highlights different iconic venues around the city. Some lucky viewers got chairs but many of us were sitting (a little uncomfortably!) against the columns.

The Archaeological Museum was the first museum of the independent Greek state. First located on Aegina, it was moved to Athens when it was designated the capital in 1834. Construction on the present museum, its Neoclassical design very popular at the time, began in 1866 and completed in 1889.

From the blue skies, you enter a dark world of the past, starting in the prehistoric room, straight ahead from the ticket window. What’s surely most famous in this room are the gold masks and other objects from Mycenean excavations done by Heinrich Schliemann, who believed he had found the 16th c. BC grave of legendary ancient King Agamemnon that Homer refers to in the Iliad. On the right is what is known as the mask of Agamemnon. Through two holes over the ears, the mask was held over the deceased’s face by twine.

These pieces of gold foil were to cover the body and face of a child for burial. If you look closely, you can see some ring shaped earrings.

What an incredible amount of gold that was used. Of course that was for royalty, not the common people. Goldsmiths were evidently in high demand and worked under the supervision of officials at the palaces of Mycenae and nearby Tiryns.

Schliemann’s diaries of his archaeological excavations are found in the Museum library, among its collection of 20,000 volumes, with many rare books of art, science and philosophy.

These frescoes, found in the palace of Tiryns, resemble very much the Minoan frescoes found at Knossos.

To protect your sword were these bronze sheaths or sword cases with gold representations. The first shows a cat catching a bird and the second a lion hunt.

Besides gold, bronze was another metal often used, as in these bronze mirrors with ivory handles, found in the tomb of Clytaemnestra, wife of Agamemnon

And marble too was used in artworks, like these lovely marble shells.

This beautiful amphora, dated from the 15th c BC was found in one of the Mycenean graves. The rocks, seaweed and octopuses with their tentacles winding around the vase, also shows influences from Minoan paintings.

But the oldest figure in the room is centuries older. This small clay figurine, the “Karditsa thinker,” found in the Karditsa region of Thessaly in an early farming community, is from the late neolithic time, from around 4500 to 3300 BC.

It’s a fertility symbol as you can see, and not so common — female fertility symbols were more prevalent.

It has some similarities with another thinker sitting on a stool, this one with both hands on its head, the smaller and even earlier “Thinker of Homagia” found in Romania near Ukraine, where there were also farming communities.

and of course, this characteristic gesture makes us think of Rodin’s famous “Thinker” in this tradition.

Back to our Greek antiquities. In chronological terms, it made sense to visit the Santorini (or Thira) room up the stairs which has finds from the Bronze Age settlement of Akrotiri on Santorini. Its peak was the 16th c. BC, right before the volcanic explosion that wiped out the Akrotiri settlement and also Minoan Crete. Like Pompeii, much of Akrotiri was covered in volcanic ash and so preserved. Here you can find out more on Akrotiri and generally Santorini.

This is the reason that this “spring fresco,” was so well preserved, and found in situ, the way it was, covering three walls of a room in Akrotiri. Between the red lilies with yellow stems you can make out some swallows flying, a popular decorative motif in Cycladic pottery and here in wall painting.

The Boxing Children fresco from dates back to 1700 BC.

As long as you’re upstairs, you can visit the rooms that are rich and plentiful with vases: amphoras and other shapes. It’s quite a collection — you really could visit the museum only looking at the vases– red figure, white figure, black figure etc.

A typical geometric vase design. The cylindrical box with the lid below, known as a pyxis, was used to contain objects and was often found in family cemeteries.

Vases of the late geometric era started to have figures painted on them.

Gods of course were a popular subject for vase painting and sculpture. One of the dieties most often portrayed was goat footed, pipe playing Pan.

This charming marble composition features Aphrodite, holding up her slipper to threaten Pan, and little Eros on wings, who’s a kind of mediator.

But some everyday mortals do show up sometimes in art, like the jockey of Artemision, one of the museum highlights. This bronze statue of a young jockey on a horse from Hellenistic times (140 BC), was found in the sea at Cape Artemision in northern Evia. The statue shows a boy, who was holding reins in one hand and a whip in the other. It’s a rare example of a racehorse in Greek sculpture and you can see the incredible movement of the horse and also the tension on the boy’s face. And the bronze creates a sheen that makes it almost look like the boy is sweating from the exertion.

Another bronze statue and “museum highlight” is the Artemision Zeus/ Poseidon (Neptune). This one, dated a few centuries earlier in the early classical era, around 460 BC was found in 1928 at the bottom of the sea in Artemision, part of the same shipwreck. You don’t have to be told it’s a god, you know from how impressive it looks. So, is it Zeus or Poseidon and how do we know? The reason for the uncertainty is that he could have been holding either Poseidon’s trident or Zeus’ thunderbolt in his right hand.

As bronze won’t rust if there’s no oxygen, it was preserved under the sea. At the time the statue was made, the beard was inlaid with silver and the eyes with glass, so try to imagine how it really gleamed and shined.

This giant statue on the other hand, found on the island of Milos, is for sure considered to be Poseidon.

From monumental marble sculpture to small figurines from sanctuaries, around Greece: these terracotta figurines are from the city of Argos, 6th c BC, and this figure has the head and torso of a sphinx.

It’s not surprising to find Egyptian influences in the art, as there was a great amount of trade going on between Greece city states and Egypt. From the Egyptian room, this is the priestess Takushit from the 7th c BC. Look closely to see that her garment is decorated with a technique where it’s inlaid with precious metal wire.

We have seen how shipwrecks, like the Artemision referred to earlier (both with the Jockey and earlier the Zeus/Poseidon statue), preserved statues, in a similar way that volcanoes also preserved ancient works that otherwise might have been lost.

A major shipwreck in the 2nd c BC during the Roman era occurred off the coast of Antikythira, a small island near Kythira, found between the Peloponnese and Crete and discovered in 1900 by local sponge divers. The cargo is said to have been traveling to Rome with a great shipload of antiquities. Without question, the most important find was what’s known as the Antikythira mechanism. This has intrigued scholars ever since the discovery. One such scholar, part of the original team to study the mechanism is physicist and professor at the University of Athens and lecturer at our municipal People’s University Dr. Mousas. One Saturday last year he gathered some of us at the museum to explain a little about its functioning.

With at least 30 hand cranked interlocking gears, it’s considered to be the first “analog computer” with the gears used to track solar and lunar cycles and predict eclipses, with more astronomical and other uses.

You can read more on the Antikythera mechanism and other ancient Greek inventions that are on display at the fascinating Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology in Athens.

Our time was getting limited and we had to get downstairs!

There you can see other objects from the Antikythera shipwreck, such as this marble horse that was severely corroded from the salt water.

And this 2nd c AD mosaic found in 1892 on a floor in Zea, Piraeus. Imagine walking on this floor… Medusa is shown with her characteristic wings and snakes in her hair, here with a melancholy look, surrounded by whirling designs. You can see that the tesserae (stones) used for her face are much smaller than the outlying design.

Medusa was one of three gorgons, powerful female monsters, who turned anyone who looked on them into stone. As the only mortal of the three, the story goes she was finally killed by Perseus, who managed to sever her head while looking not at her, but at her reflection.

Here you can see more clearly the swirling background and ivy leaves in the four corners.

If you program your visit to allow yourself time and the weather is pleasant too, be sure to visit the cafe downstairs surrounded by the olive trees and other vegetation.

On International Museum Day on May 18, there’s sometimes a concert or dance performance in the garden.

Before they push us out, we have just enough time to race through the Roman room, which concentrates on the emperor Hadrian, one of the earliest philhellenes.

After the emperor’s young lover Antinoos tragically drowned in the Nile river, Hadrian had marble busts made of him like this one displayed throughout the Empire.

Hadrian here is looking out at intellectuals of the time, known as kosmites, against a background of olive trees. From kosmites, we get kosmitora, meaning the dean of a university.

So ends our very small sample from the museum. In 2027 it will close for renovation of galleries and plans to put in a roof garden, so keep that in mind. The last time it was “upgraded” was right before the 2004 Olympics.

Boxes of antiquities will be stored during the renovation. During World War II and the German occupation, antiquities placed in boxes were sealed in special protective boxes and then buried to avoid destruction or looting.

Note: Greek state museums and archaeological sites are free the first Sundays of the month (and it seems from this year the 3rd Sunday has been added) from November to March, and also March 6 (Melina Mercouri day), April 18, May 18, the last weekend of September and October 28.

Outside, the blue skies had turned to grey and it was starting to rain again as we left a pleasant 4,000 year journey of Greek civilization. This has certainly been a waterlogged winter, with only a few alkyonides meres (“halcyon days” as they’re called for winter days of warm sunshine) But to fight any dreariness… the almond trees are now in glorious bloom!

What’s your favorite era? Your comments are very welcome.

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.