April 24, 2025 - Greece
National Archeological Museum

Per Rick Steves, another three-star (must see) Athens attraction is the National Archaeological Museum containing "far and away the top ancient Greek art collection anywhere".

Per Wikipedia "It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world and contains the richest collection of Greek Antiquity artifacts worldwide."

So this morning we made the 20 minute walk from our AirBnB north to the museum.

Completed in 1889, "It's especially worth visiting if your're traveling beyond Athens (as we are), because it displays artifacts found all around Greece, including Mycenae, Epidavros, Santorini, and Olympia -- and the treasures displayed here are generally better than those remaining at the sites themselves."

Heinrich Schliemann was a fascinating man.  He loved learning languages and by the end of his life had mastered 22 languages, of which he wrote ten fluently.  He could converse in English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Greek, Latin, and Arabic, besides his native German.  A self-made man, the son of a poor pastor, he started from nothing with no connections, yet went into business and became wealthy enough to retire at the age of 42!   During that time he travelled to San Francisco in 1851, during the California Gold Rush, and made money trading gold dust.  He travelled the world extensively and fearlessly and kept detailed diaries of his travels.  He had few friends.  He had the energy of ten men, rising at 3AM in the summer and 5AM in the winter, and unless the weather was unusually bad, always swimming in the sea or ocean, whatever the water temperature.

"Schliemann's adult life -- 1850 to 1890 -- spanned one of the most revolutionary periods in the entire history of science, a time marked not simply by inventions like transatlantic steam travel, telegraphy and gas-lighting, but by an enormous appetite for knowledge.  ...  early Victorian fundamentalist chronology was being replaced by the idea that man had a remote past and that it was becoming possible to explore it.  ... European archaeologists excavated works of art, and brought them back to the great museums of France, Germany and England, not in the psirit of looters, but of conservationists.  It was perfectly clear to them that the inhabitants of the countries in which they excavated were not just incapable of looking after their art treasures, but were in some ways unworthy of having them altogether.  By the time Schliemann turned to archaeology, Lord Elgin had long since delivered his friezes, pediment and sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens to the British Museum in London."   - Caroline Moorehead: "Lost and Found".

Heinrich Schliemann was an amateur archaeologist. He was obsessed with the stories of Homer and ancient Mediterranean civilizations. He dedicated the second part of his life to unveiling the actual physical remains of the cities of Homer's epic tales. Many refer to him as the "father of pre-Hellenistic archaeology".

As early as 1822, however, the famed Scottish journalist and geologist Charles Maclaren had identified the mound at Hisarlik, near the town of Chanak (Çanakkale) in north-western Anatolia, Turkey, as a possible site of Homeric Troy.   Later, starting in the 1840s, Frank Calvert (1828–1908), an English expatriate who was an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist as well as a consular official in the eastern Mediterranean region, began exploratory excavations on the mound, part of which was on a farm belonging to his family, and ended up amassing a large collection of artefacts from the site.  It was Calvert who suggested to Schliemann that he excavate the mound of Hisarlik.

Schliemann was the first to significantly explore the Mound of Troy at Hisarlik in the 1870s. Unfortunately, he had had no formal education in archaeology, and dug an enormous trench "which is still called the Schliemann Trench,"  which "destroyed a phenomenal amount of material."  Schliemann's methods have been described as "savage and brutal. He ploughed through layers of soil and everything in them without proper record keeping—no mapping of finds, few descriptions of discoveries."  "Although there were some regrettable blunders, those criticisms are largely colored by a comparison with modern techniques of digging; but it is only fair to remember that before 1876 very few persons, if anyone, yet really knew how excavations should properly be conducted. There was no science of archaeological investigation, and there was probably no other digger who was better than Schliemann in actual field work."  Furthermore, Schliemann received no outside funding from  government or anything other organization.  He paid for everything -- the permits, the labor, transportation, food, equipment, etc. -- out of his own pocket.

Schliemann discovered what he proclaimed King Priam's Treasure" in his fourth excavation season at Hisarlik on May 31, 1873.  Although Schliemann did not know it, the treasure was found in the Troy II level, that of the Early Bronze Age, long before Priam's city of Troy VI or Troy VIIa in the prosperous and elaborate Mycenaean Age.

Schliemann essentially had "King Priam's Treasure" smuggled out of Turkey to Athens as soon as he discovered it.  In June he concluded his excavations and returned to Athens.  The treasure remained in his possession until 1881.  The Turks were furious.  American diplomat friends in Constantinople (now Istanbul) justified Schliemann's action, saying "It would be worse than throwing away the articles which you have discovered to permit any part of them to go into the absurd collection of rubbish which the Turks call their 'museum'.  Later, Schliemann paid enough "resititution" that the Turks let him come back for further escavataions at Troy.  However, when Schliemann excavated Mycenae, the Greeks monitored him closely during the dig, and all artifacts discovered there stayed in the possession of the Greek government.

Most of Priam's Treasure was acquired in 1881 by the Royal Museums of Berlin.   After the capture of the Zoo Tower by the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin, Professor Wilhelm Unverzagt turned the treasure over to the Soviet Art Committee, saving it from plunder and division. The artefacts were then flown to Moscow.  During the Cold War, the Soviet government denied any knowledge of the fate of Priam's Treasure.  The majority of the artifacts are currently in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Schliemann’s reputation is mixed.  He was a visionary who took Homer seriously as historical evidence.  He brought enormous public interest to archaeology.  He made some of the most spectacular finds of the 19th century.  On the other hand, his excavation methods -- especially in his early digs -- were destructive.  He  sometimes exaggerated or manipulated narratives for publicity.  His identification of “Priam’s Treasure,” “Agamemnon’s mask,” etc., was overly romantic.  Overall, though, modern archaeology owes much to him — both for his discoveries and for the methodological lessons learned from his errors.  He was the man who effectively proved that Troy, Mycenae, and the Bronze Age Aegean were real historical cultures.

In 1893 and 1894, Wilhelm Dorpfeld returned to Hissarlik and resumed the excavations.  Under 50 feet of earth, lying to the southeast of Schliemann's city, he uncovered the enormous walls of a late Bronze Age city.  Here, at last, were the true signs of Homer's 'well-built' city, with its 'fine towers' and 'broad streets'; here, at last, the ever-missing proof that Troy had indeed been one of the finest fortress cities in the Aegean.  Schliemann had quite simply missed it.  Where he had dug, Homeric Troy had been levelled to give space for the Roman city of Novum Ilium.  Dorpfeld's Troy, the Troy of stratum VI, had little gold and no treasure.  The treasure Schliemann had found, the diadems and the gold and the silver, did not belong to the Trojan War at all, were not worn by Helen, or hidden by Priam, but were the possessions of some other people altogether, living at least a thousand years earlier.  - Caroline Moorehead: "Lost and Found".

In 1932 American Carl Blegen excavated at Hissarlik and subdivided the site into yet more sections and concluded taht Troy VIIA -- not Troy VI, as Dorpfeld held, or Troy II, as Schliemann maintained -- was Homer's Troy.

Wall painting fragments from Tiryns (14-13 centuries BC), a Mycenaean palace/town, 12 miles south of Mycenae.

Tiryns was a hill fort with occupation ranging back seven thousand years, from before the beginning of the Bronze Age. It reached its height of importance between 1400 and 1200 BC, when it became one of the most important centers of the Mycenaean world, and in particular in Argolis. Its most notable features were its palace, its Cyclopean tunnels and especially its walls, which gave the city its Homeric epithet of "mighty walled Tiryns".

In c. 1300 BC, the citadel and lower town had a population of 10,000 people covering 20–25 hectares. Despite the destruction of the palace in c. 1200 BC, the city population continued to increase and by 1150 BC it had a population of 15,000 people.

The site went into decline at the end of the Mycenaean period, and was completely deserted by the time Pausanias visited in the 2nd century AD.

The bottom fresco is a representation of a wild boar hunt.  Fresco painters worked for the king.

Clay tablets inscribed with the first form of Greek writing:  Linear B script.  Mycenaean palaces used these clay tablets for administration purposes:  lists, inventories and tax forms.

British architect Michael Ventris, with the assistance of philologist John Chadwick, deciphered Linear B in 1952 and showed that the tablets were written in an early form of Greek, earlier than that of the Homeric poems.

Now we're statues and sculpture area of the museum.

Like so many of the existing bronze statues it seems, this bronze statue of a horse with jockey racing in full stride -- named the Jockey of Artemision – was recovered from the sea in 1928, in a shipwreck discovered in 1926.  A young jockey dressed in a traditional short tunic rides the horse.

The bronze statue is dated to around 150–140 BC.  It is a rare surviving original bronze statue from Ancient Greece and a rare example in Greek sculpture of a racehorse. Most ancient bronzes were melted down for their raw materials sometime after creation, but this one was saved from destruction when it was lost in a shipwreck in antiquity.

Roman copies of the fifth-century BC Greek originals.  Per Rick Steves, "Thanks to excellent copies like this, we know what many (otherwise lost) golden age Greek masterpieces looked like.  It's largely thanks to the Romans and their respect for Greek culture that so much of this ancient art survives today."

Notice how a tree trunk or column buttresses the statue.  That's how you know it's probably a Roman copy.

The Headless Horseman?

At lower right is the statue of a Fighting Gaul.

Another bronze statue recovered from the sea, called the Artemision Bronze (or God from the Sea).  It was recovered from the same shipwreck as the Jockey of Artemision, in 1928.  What a find that was!

According to most scholars, the bronze represents Zeus, the thunder-god and king of gods, though it has also been suggested it might represent Poseidon. The statue is slightly over lifesize and would have held either a thunderbolt, if Zeus, or a trident if Poseidon.  The empty eye sockets were originally inset, probably with bone, as well as the eyebrows (with silver), the lips, and the nipples (with copper). The sculptor is unknown.

Ancient Greece was never an empire, centrally administrated from Athens, like the Roman Empire was from Rome.  Instead, Greek civilization consisted of numerous city-states, all with a common culture.  They traded and interacted with each other, sometimes allied, sometimes warred, but all were independent.

This map shows Greece in the early Classical era, before the Persians invaded.

Bronze parts and decoration of a Roman charior set on a modern construction of wood and pexiglass.  They were found in Nikomedeia, an ancient Greek city located in what is now Turkey, just east of Istanbul, where the Roman Emperor Diocletian probably had a palace.  In 286 AD, Nicomedia became the eastern and most senior capital city of the Roman Empire (chosen by the emperor Diocletian who ruled in the east), a status which the city maintained during the Tetrarchy system (293–324).

One of the most famous battles in history is the rearguard action of the Spartan King Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylae in 480 BC. A small force of Greek heavy infantry -- including 300 Spartans -- valiantly held their ground for days against an innumerable Persian horde, before being defeated by treachery.  Perhaps you have seen the movie "300" staring Gerhard Butler, a fictionalized retelling of the battle.

To go from north to south along the east coast of the Balkans requires use of the Thermopylae pass.

For three days the Greeks held a narrow route between hills and the sea against the Persians vast cavalry and infantry force, before being outflanked on the third day via an obscure goat path named the Anopaea Pass. According to the Greek legend, a traitor named Ephialtes of Trachis showed the path to the invaders. The following epitaph by Simonides was written on the monument: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie."

Thermopylae wasn't really that far from Athens -- a two-hour -- drive but, as usual, we didn't have enough time to go see it.  Or the famous battlefields of Marathon -- fairly close to the airport -- and Plataea.

A display on Ancient Egypt hieroglyphic script.

For over 1,400 years, nobody could read the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.  A breakthrough occured in 1799 with the discovery of the famous Rosetta Stone,  found in July 1799 by French army officer Pierre-François Bouchard during France's invasion of Egypt.  It now resides in the British Museum where it is the most visited object there.  It contained the same text in three scripts:  Greek – fully readable, Demotic – late Egyptian script, and Hieroglyphs – unknown at the time.  Thomas Young, a British scientist, made progress in deciphering the Rosetta Stone, but it was French linguist and Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion who cracked the full grammar system.  In 1822, he announced his breakthrough in his famous paper:Lettre à M. Dacier.  This moment is considered the birth of modern Egyptology.

Champollion proved that hieroglyphs combine: Phonetic symbols (sounds), Logograms (whole words), and Determinatives (meaning classifiers).

Champollion -- like Heinrich Schliemann -- was a language prodigy, fluent in Coptic (the late form of ancient Egyptian), Greek, Latin, and several Middle Eastern languages.  His knowledge of Coptic -- the last stage of Egyptian -- turned out to be the critical key.  Coptic turned out to be the missing linguistic bridge between ancient Egyptian and later Christian Egypt.