The sacred mountains

After our class tour of Athens, complete with presentations, long walks uphill and a few failed dinner plans, Chandra and I headed to Delphi.

Once we finally found the bus station, we boarded the sketchiest bus ever. On the way to the bus station I practiced saying Delphi in Greek. It’s pronounced “thel-fon,” like saying “cell phone” with a lisp. Luckily, I never had to embarrass myself because it only takes one bus to get to Delphi and it’s all quite straight forward (we began to appreciate this more once we tried to get to Corinth and Olympia… more on this later!)

We arrived in Delphi as the sun was beginning to set. Over the mountains. It was, from the first moment, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

We checked into our hotel, then spent the next hour or so chasing the sunset. I wanted to get the perfect picture, and we were willing to risk asp-filled fields to get it! How many times will you get a chance to take a photo of Delphi at sunset?

I was waiting for the sun to disappear behind the mountain… Finally, it did.

As I stood, awed and amazed, I realized that I had never really been to place with mountains like these. They made the most beautiful shades of blues I have ever seen.

We ate dinner at a restaurant overlooking the sunset. It was perfect. We stayed in the best hotel of the trip. And the next morning we found out that it’s just as beautiful during the day.

We went to the archaeological site for the day. Delphi was the most important Panhellenic (which means that Greeks from all city states could worship there) sanctuary in Classical Greece. It was a sacred oracle dedicated to Apollo. If you had an question about your future, you could ask the Pythia, beautiful young priestesses who would tell you the word of Apollo. Of course, like most oracles, it’s all about interpretation.

It’s not hard to understand why the Greeks would find this site sacred.

Because of Delphi’s status - both as an important sanctuary and as neutral ground for all Greeks - it eventually became a very important place to control. The Athenians used it as their main treasury when they formed the Delian League (a united Greece under the rule of Athens), and many city states built treasuries or dedications on the site to show their wealth or power.

Delphi really was one of the most stunning places I’ve ever visited, historically and geographically - though I’d argue that, like much of the ancient world, Delphi’s importance is undeniably linked to its geography.

Athens

Before New York City, London and Rome, there was Athens. Athens was the centre of the Greek world for a long time. It was the centre of the beginning of what we like to call Western civilization - home of philosophers like Plato and Socrates, of playwrights like Aeschylus, Eurypides and Sophocles. It was the birth place of democracy. There is no denying that our cultural and intellectual roots can be traced back to Athens.

I fell in love with this city, almost immediately. I say almost because our first impression was largely biased by the fact that it was 9pm, we hadn’t eaten since 1 and we were incredibly lost (more on this later!). But as soon as we found our hotel, dropped off our bags and walked through the Plaka to a great restaurant nearby, I knew that I was going to love Athens.

You could see the Acropolis from our hotel balcony.

It was pretty freaking cool.

But that wasn’t the only thing.

The Theatre of Dionysus, where you can imagine a stunning performance of Antigone or Oedipus the King:

The Erechtheion, the other temple on the Acropolis:

The Karameikos, the earliest Athenian cemetery:

The massive Olympieion, temple to Olympian Zeus:

And the beautiful Hephaisteion, overlooking the Agora:

Just to name a few. We were only in Athens for four days. I could have stayed weeks.

The labyrinth city

One of the main reasons I chose Newcastle for my MA was the two study trips with Greek and Roman Archaeology. In January, we went to Rome for four days. The planned trip to Greece was only Athens for two days, but since I have dreamed of visiting Greece since I was a six year old reading mythology picture books, I had to see more than just Athens.

And so, Chandra and I planned a ten day trip designed to see as much of Greece as possible - and still spend a bit of time in the sun.

The first place we went was Crete. We flew from Manchester to Heraklion, the modern city from which you can visit ancient Knossos.

Instead of staying in the city, we stayed outside at a nice little hotel with a pool and a short walk to the beach. After all, us Canadians (pale as we might be) are used to a warm summer that we’re fairly certain not to get in the Northeast of England this year, so we had to get some much needed Vitamin D while we could.

Our first discovery from Greece was the wonderful food:

And a beer named Mythos, which is like, perfect!

The next day we headed into Heraklion to find our way to Knossos, the ruins of the legendary Minoan city that dates back to about 1700 BCE. It’s the famous city of King Minos and the Minotaur, of the Labyrinth built by Daedalus. It was excavated by the infamous Sir Arthur Evans, starting in about 1900 CE.

And why is Evans infamous?

It has to do with both archaeological theory and the ethics of restoration. Evans restored and reconstructed a number of buildings on the site, something that no archaeologist would dare to do nowadays. It wasn’t long before his British colleagues were pronouncing the reconstructions as wrong. To this day, Evans is used as a bad example in archaeology textbooks.

But the people of Crete see Evans in a different light. Unlike many of the antiquarian archaeologists of the early 20th century, Evans didn’t expropriate the artefacts from Knossos to a fancy cabinet of curiosities in England. He left the site and all its finds to the people of Crete. So they kind of love him.

Part of me disagrees with Evans’ reconstructions, but the other part of me recognizes that it makes the site a hell of a lot more interesting to visit. And to take photos of. Like our tour guide said, it’s easy to imagine yourself back in ancient Knossos.

After an educational morning, we retired to spend our next day and a half on the beach and swimming in the Sea of Crete.

Greece is officially my favourite holiday spot because you get archaeology and history and sun and sand.

Ancient footprints are everywhere…

#48. See the Acropolis and the Coliseum.

It’s recently come to my attention that, in the past 5 months or so, I have seen a lot of the most important monuments and pieces of art in the world.

More importantly, for me, is that I’ve finally seen all of the things I’ve been studying in my years of ancient history classes, essays and books.

Number 48 was about seeing what I thought were the two pinnacles of Greek and Roman civilization. But along the way I’ve seen some pretty awesome things that have come up over and over again in my studies. Not buildings or monumental structures, but artefacts.

It started with the Augustus of Prima Porta in the Vatican Museum in Rome. There was the statue of Laocoon and his sons in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. There were the famous statues of Nefertiti and Akhenaten in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Nike of Samothrace in the Louvre.

This trip to Greece was no exception.

In the Archaeological museum of Knossos in Heraklion, there was the Phaistos disc, a beautiful and mysterious Minoan artefact, engraved in a language (Linear A) that we have never been able to translate:

And this famous faience statue of a Minoan snake goddess that I remember studying in second year Greek history.

In the National Archaeological Museum, the famous bronze statue of a God (Zeus or Poseidon) recovered from a shipwreck:

And the famous Mask of Agamemnon - a funerary mask that Heinrich Schliemann uncovered at Mycenae and wrongly interpreted it as being the Agamemnon (of Homeric fame).

At at Delphi, the Charioteer of Delphi:

Just to name a few, and not to mention all of the hundreds of photos I took of other artefacts that I found super interesting, but aren’t as famous.

I had an interesting revelation, though. As I was taking these photos, I was thinking “So that someday I can use it in a Powerpoint for a lecture.” I always do this when I’m at museums. But I started to think about what that meant. That maybe I want to be a professor someday. Which means maybe I want to do my PhD someday. Which is a little bit terrifying.

It’s interesting how most of the things of my list of things to do before I die have turned out to have completely different meanings from where they started originally. This is just one example.

If you need me…

…I’ll be here:

In this:

Instead of this:

As long as this:

Or, more likely, this:

…doesn’t get in the way. I’ve wanted to visit Greece since I was like 6 years old. Please convince Zeus to let us in?!