dell'Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica
AIAC NEWS n. 21 (Giugno 1999)
NEW FROM ATHENS AND PIRAEUS.
This brief report highlights developments on the archaeological scene in Athens and Piraeus that took place during 1998/9. Two museums have acquired additional displays and a new museum in Schliemann's House was inaugurated. Excavations at the heart of Athens have brought to light a new quarter of Athens plus unexpected information on familiar monuments.
The NUMISMATIC MUSEUM was finally opened to the public in Schliemann's House (PHOTO) (10 Panepistimiou St., Athens.Guidebook by M.Oikonomidou available. Protocol@nm.culture.gr and http://www.culture.gr/nm/presveis/ ). A very rich exhibition of Greek coins going down to the late Roman period occupies the ground floor but further displays are planned for the first floor. The Museum manages to offer an admirable display of Greek coins in an unobtrusive way, allowing the visitor to enjoy the beauty of this historic house as well. Its value would be further enhanced if a display of Schliemann's furniture and memorabilia were to be included in the first-floor exhibition. The displays are arranged thematically and there are long explanatory texts available on touch-tone computer screens in both Greek and English making the exhibits easily accessible to the non-specialist.
The displays include historical overviews of Schliemann's house, his numismatic collection, the Numismatic Museum and the private collections that were donated to it. There are exhibits on the origins of coinage, counterfeit coins in antiquity, coin nomenclature, hoards and mints, and the iconography of coin types. A special display of the stunning Ptolemaic coins once part of the Demetriou Collection is of particular interest to the specialist.
The ACROPOLIS MUSEUM has acquired a new display of the Nike temple friezes which were removed from the building in order to be protected from the air pollution. These include the east and north friezes, plus a few slabs from the south and west. The rest are in the British Museum. The friezes in Athens are accessible at eye level for the first time in their history.
A special display of archaic horsemen, some of them newly restored with additional fragments, has helped clarify some of the questions concerning the Rampin Rider. The horse fragments once attributed to a putative companion piece to the Rampin Rider turned out to belong to the so-called Persian Rider and to the horseman Acr. Mus. 1359, thus ruling out the possibility that the Rampin Rider was part of a group.
The west frieze of the Parthenon, removed from the building a few years ago, is still in conservation. Its fragments now occupy the room once allotted to the Erechtheion frieze and the Nike temple parapet, which have been removed to the storerooms.
The cast collection of the ACROPOLIS STUDY CENTRE (2 Makriyani St., Athens) has been enriched with a cast of the Monument of Telemachos, founder of the Athenian Asklepieion. It reassembles for the first time casts of the fragments scattered among various museums in Athens and Italy. There is also a new reconstruction by means of casts of the central floral akroterion of the Parthenon, which differs from the restored akroterion in Basel, Skulpturhalle.
The ongoing excavations on the site of the new Acropolis Museum (2 Makriyani St.) have revealed a vast complex of late Roman buildings going down to the seventh century A.D. This includes a Bath of which two phases are preserved, various streets, an extensive drainage system, and a large, impressive building of as yet undetermined purpose. The sophistication of this late Roman quarter of Athens provides important new evidence for the history of the city.
The Acropolis Ephoreia has undertaken an extensive cleaning programme of ancient sites near the Acropolis and the Areopagos. The road between the demes of Koile and Melite (mentioned in Herodotos VI.103 as "the road through Koile") has come to light on the foothills of Philopappos (Mouseion) Hill. It is carved on bedrock and preserves rock-cut foundations for stoas, exedras and benches along the way. The Athenian statesman Kimon was buried beyond this road. The rock-cut remains of the sanctuary of Zeus on the east slope of the Hill of the Nymphs (Apostolou Pavlou and Agias Marinas St.), identified through a rock-cut horos inscription of the sixth century, are now cleaned and accessible through the backyard of the church of Agia Marina. (For the above see W. Judeich, Topographie von Athen, 2nd ed. 1931, 180 and 398.)
A small-scale excavation carried out by Manolis Korres and the Third Ephoreia of Athens in the foundations of the temple of Olympian Zeus has confirmed Korres' suggestion that the temple comprises a hitherto unknown phase of the fourth-century B.C. though it was not completed until the reign of Hadrian.
The PIRAEUS ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM (31 Charilaou Trikoupi St., Piraeus. Guidebook by G.Steinhauer available) has reopened its doors as a regional museum with outstanding exhibits not only from the port of Pireaus but also from Salamis, Methana, Kythera and the coastal demes of southwest Attica. In addition to its extensive holdings of Greek sculpture from Piraeus, the Museum has a new display related to Piraeus' function as a port, which includes a trireme's marble eye and bronze ram, stone anchors, and a decree regulating food prices in port tavernas of the first century B.C. New displays on the first floor are devoted to the minor arts, beginning with the recent Bronze Age finds from the Minoan peak sanctuary on the island of Kythera and the Mycenaean sanctuary at Methana. There is a display of Geometric, Archaic and Classical pottery from the Geroulanos Collection in Trachones and the holdings of the "Tomb of the Poet" in Daphne, comprising his pens, tablets, "harp", lyre, flute and a papyrus fragment. A wooden coffin of the fourth century B.C. from Aigaleon is a curiosity.
The display of funerary monuments has been enriched with additional high quality grave reliefs of the Classical period and a new restoration of the Kallithea Monument. This, however, is bound to be controversial since it is not based on an architectural study of the extant blocks and a few courses, including mouldings, may have been inadvertedly left out. A future publication of this unpublished monument may resolve the questions that remain.
The north entrance to the Arsenal of Philo (fourth century B.C.) was uncovered in 1988 at a short distance from the Museum and can be viewed at 170 Ypsilantou St.
Prof. Olga Palagia, Department of Archaeology, Athens University