Athens2

Here are the rest of the pictures of Athens (of course I'm only putting up a select few of the hundreds I took). I know museums tend to have a boring-association, but the National Athenian Museum was spectacular! They had such a vast collection of items, all of which date back to millenias ago and have so much history and significance to mankind today. A lot of these artifacts show the progression and progress of ancient people that led the way for where we are today. I just felt so humbled to be in presence of these things. Then of course there are a lot of pictures from the Acropoils-it was just such an amazing complex. I wish I could have seen it at its prime and glory, it would have been magnificent!

 These are an assortment of objects, many of which were for the dead for the afterlife, but some were used as weapons and jars in ancient daily life

This pot is really kind of cool because it indicates the way people dressed-and they look like Spartans or exactly what we picture as ancient Greeks! They have the gladiator sandals (which I got a pair myself btw), the bronze circular shields, spears, and the helmets!

I have many pictures of swords and ancient weapons, but I chose to post this one because of the handles. The swords themselves are bronze (which is incrediblyyy heavy first of all) and then are decorated in gold, gems, and marble. Before this, I didn't realize that swords were really this ornate back then.

This may look like a slab of gibberish, but it is one of the first accounts of writing in ancient Greece. This slab was used for some sort of accounting for a business and the writing is more like symbols or hierogliphics (sorry about the spelling on that one). This indicates the close proximity and relationship between the Greeks and Egyptians.

The difference from the idols from Athens1 post to this, is that you can clearly see the progression in skill and technology in the craftmanship. In the idols, the arms were akwardly across the body and the face and details were simple. Here, we can see more movement in the statue and get a sense of the development in the tools available (which also indicate trade between countries because Greece didn't have the materials to produce this statue without trading for it from other countries). Also, not the faint color of the statue- it is assumed that all the statues were once painted, so this woman must have been from a very wealthy family who could afford a paint that would last thousands of years.

This was the first statue made of bronze and with such detail and movement of the body. It was found at the bottom of the Mediterranean and is assumed to have been a tribute to either Zeus or Poseidon. Notice the flow of movement in the figure, his legs are in a position which are mid-motion, our tour guide really emphasized the importance of the development of capturing movement and details, so that's why I am noting it so much.

Now this figure is of significance because it is an exact replica (minus the pure gold and ivory) of Athena of the Parthenon. The statue was originally over 20m high! And all the clothing was of gold, the skin of ivory, and the rest was detailed with fine gems and jewels. Athens of course was named after Athena-they believed she was there protector and she therefore inspired the Parthenon.

This statue was just really good, but I liked it because I could recognise that it was representing the god of medicine. You many already know this, but if you picture the symbol of medicine or hospitals it often has a winding snake or ribbon around it. This originated from the medicine god. The snake is a creature of the Gods (because it lives in the ground) and also of earth (because it also lives above ground), so to the ancient peoples it represented the connection between God/afterlife and the erath/mankind.

 

Here, we are approaching the Parthenon-on our way up the Acropolis

Look at all of the city behind us! There is a sea of buildings!

In Cyprus we mostly have cats everywhere, in Athens they have dogs. This scene reminded me of the phrase "it's raining cats and dogs" because there were dogs everywhere! They were all so cute and pretty friendly, but so sad to look at-they had such sad eyes.

Well, apparently I just ran out of GB on the blog, so will have to go through a bit of a process to add more on, sorry for the tease of the  lead up to the Parthenon! Hopefully I'll have this figured out soon!