Inscription from 600 BC. About two inches high. At Delos, statue platform.

Events of the day:

Acropolis. National Archaeological Museum

East end of the Parthanon. There should be three horse heads. The left hand one is a copy of the head in the British Museum. The two amorphous lumps are what similar heads look like after years of not being protected, cared for. The following photos will make things more clear, I hope.

... and below we see, in the New Acropolis Museum (superb) the same three heads... a plaster cast from the British Museum, plus, I believe, what is left of the originals after they were exposed to the modern "air" over the period since the largest one went to London and was saved from the effects of modern pollution. What a tragedy... the art survived centuries, only to be "lost" recently by modern man's lack of care. I won't dispute that Elgin behaved badly... but his actions did save for us one of the heads in near original condition, thankfully.

Artistic photo of Acropolis repairs (ongoing!): by a friend, not me.

Athens Archaeological Museum

To the right, a photo of an astounding artifact. To see it again was one of my reasons for returning to Athens. It is in the bottom part of the display which also contains the "Mask of Agememnon". It is about 9" long. Bronze, with gold decoration. Decorated on both sides. The pattern would be hard to do in ink on paper. It is hard to do it justice here. But I've spent many hours trying, and would appreciate it if you were to visit the page set up for the dagger. The dagger was found at Mycenae, which we visited, also the source of the "Mask of Agamemnon". (In a different grave.) 16th century B.C. Words fail my hopes of conveying the delicacy of this, and the wonder of its survival for 2,600 years so that we can be entranced by it today.

I believe it was recovered by Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist who found Troy. The dig at Mycenae was later, in 1876

I would also invite you to a page I did about the National Archaeological Museum after my 2009 trip to Athens.

(Also at the National Archaeological Museum...) At the risk of upsetting purists, I have cleaned this up some, removing chips, etc. It is a roughly life size bust of, to quote the helpful placard placed on it in the Athens Archaelogical Museum, "Polydeukion... Herodes' pupil and favourite. The bust was found together with a bust of his teacher. Middle of the second century B.C." (Herodes is interesting. The link will give you the Wikipedia article. "A distinguished rich Greek aristocrat of Athenean descent. Served as a Roman Senator")

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