Sunday, March 20, 2011

Greece Trip: Day 9

Here is the last journal of the Greece Trip.  It is probably a little briefer than most of the others.

Mask of Agamemnon

Day 9: March 18, 2011
Column from the Tomb of Agamemnon
Today, our final day, was spent back in Athens seeing several museums. The first one, and biggest, was the National Archeological Museum. It was built in the mid 19th century in the neoclassical style and houses many of the most precious archeological artifacts of Greece. Inside it is broken into areas based on time period. Prehistoric (17th century-11th century BC), Geometric (11th century-8th century BC), Archaic (8th century-6th century BC), Hellenistic, then Roman period (up through 1st century or so AD). While there was a lot there, I will just touch on a couple of big pieces. The primary civilization in the prehistoric period was Mycenae. Here is displayed the so called “Mask of Agamemnon.” This was found in a tomb at the fortress of Mycenae that we had previously visited. The man who found it claimed at the time it was the death mask of agamemnon, but it turns out it was made 500 years before he supposedly lived. However, it is still an amazing piece worked from pure gold. All in all, 30lbs of gold items were found in those tombs. Also found there were wall paintings, particularly significant because they displayed everyday life and helps show that this was probably a matriarchal society.
Large pot from Geometric Period
In the geometric period the society has abolished the monarchy and the king is only the head of the religion. Artwork in this period was all geometric shapes, hence the name, and there were seldom left empty spaces in the designs.
Bronze Poseidon from 470BC
The archaic period was when they started to come into contact with other civilizations from the east and egypt which affected their work. Started making life sized statues, but the design was still stylized. The statues were all made of one piece as they didn't yet have the skills to connect different pieces into one. As the archaic period progressed the style became smoother and began to transition to the idealistic form. A famous example is the bronze statue of Poseidon from around 470BC.
Bronze Horse and Jockey from C2 BC
In the Hellenistic period the style transitions from idealistic to more pragmatic, they start showing movement and action and emotion in the faces, i.e. pain or anxiety, etc. A good example is a bronze statue of a horse and jockey from the 2nd century BC. Once they progressed into the Roman period they moved this realistic, but still more ideal form, into doing portraits of actual people.

After the museum we had a presentation on ancient weapons. Weapon technology can frequently be a deciding factor in a battle. Warfare in ancient Greece was no different. The first armor was made of bronze and started in the bronze age (3000-1100BC). The early form is called dendra armor, it is made of overlapping bronze plates, kind of like the scales of a fish. Armor like this has been found in the the tomb of Agamemnon (12th century BC). This, and other technologies, developed into the more well known Greek soldier, the Hoplite. This name comes from their armor type. They had a bronze helmet, sometimes with a leather lining), bronze breast and back plate, greaves of bronze covered their shins and forearms. They had a round shield 3-4 ft in diameter made of wood and covered in bronze. These shields protected the body and were very important in the phalanx formation where the soldiers would all stand side by side in close formation and each man's shield overlapped and protected the man on your left. They used spears in this formation to level them forward as part of the charge, these were typically 9ft long, but sometimes were as long as 14ft. They also had a double edge sword for close combat.
Cycladic Statue
The next museum we visited was the Benaki museum. It is a private museum started with the private collect of a man named Benaki, since then they have acquired other pieces. Here there was a selection of statues and art ranging from cycladic art (we went to a museum for this also) and early jewelry to many icon paintings. This museum was interesting in that it had pieces up to the period when Greece was ruled by the Ottoman empire and into the victorian era, it had some clothes and furniture, etc.

Icon from Benaki Museum
To finish out the trip a handful of us went to the Cycladic Art Museum. This museum is dedicated to Cycladic art which is from a ring of islands in the Aegean sea, it is in a circle hence the name Cycladic. They circle around the island where the god Apollo was born. This museum was interesting, particularly because it was so focused on one area of history. It was also fun in that it was optional to go to so the group was much smaller and it was neat having a personal tour guide with such a small group.

Shirt seen while souvenir shopping
After the museum we went out for coffee. I've got to say, that is one aspect of Greece that is pretty awesome. They love their coffee and cafes here, there are cafes everywhere and there are always people in them and sitting outside drinking a coffee drink. When we were driving places in the bus we would usually stop every 2 hours or so at a rest stop of sorts for a bathroom and break and coffee break. Every place we went always had an espresso machine and sold coffee. I've got to say their obsession with coffee is pretty awesome, even if it does cost a lot.

We flew out of Athens Saturday morning. Travel went reasonably well except for an extra 5 hour delay in Newark because of mechanical problems, so we didn't get back to school until 5:20am, a little later than preferred, but it still works and what's flying without some sort of delay.

Final group picture in Athens

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

........And Jim falls off the planet..... (apparently, or at least off the blogosphere)

Sydni said...

Won't you blog about how awesome your wife is? :)

Hopps said...

Well, I would have to blog to do that. Do we know you? :-)