Ancient Worlds on Holiday III – Crete September 2014

Archaeological Museum Irakleion, Crete

If it’s been quiet for a while on the blog, it’s because I’ve been taking some annual leave on the island of Crete. Christine and I stayed in a small resort called Gournes to the east of the island’s capital Irakleion. Though it only has a few tavernas, it has the advantage of not being as built up as nearby Gouves, and some of the finest ancient Greek archaeological sites and museums are just a 25 minutes bus-ride away (single ticket 1.8 euro). You can take a bus to the station and ten minutes later be sitting on a bus en route to Knossos. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Knossos room with bull

We found that unlike on an earlier visit some 16 years ago, parts of the site are now closed off, presumably because of the wear and tear of having hundreds of thousands of visitors walk over the site every year. However, it was still possible to see the beautiful, though contested, reconstructions of the rooms of this type-site for Minoan Crete. Though you have to queue to see the Throne Room when its busy there are quiet little corners where few visitors go where you can see a stunning evocation of a Minoan room.

One of the newly laid-out galleries in the Archaeological Museum in Irakleion, Crete.

There is a joint ticket to visit the Archaeological Museum in nearby Irakleion. The Museum has just been redeveloped and new galleries have been added. Do go because the galleries are beautiful, airy and well-lit, the exhibits breath-taking and there’s just the right amount of text for the objects. Treasures here include the Phaistos disc, a boar’s tusk helmet as described in the Iliad, and a realistic model bull’s head.

Votive and the real thing: Rhinoceros beetles from Piskokephalo in Crete.

In my humble opinion some of the most fascinating exhibits are the less obvious, smaller pieces such as the votive models of Rhinoceros beetles from a Cretan sanctuary site at Piskokephalo near Sitia. They date 1650-1500 BC. There is quite a useful little introduction by Liliane Bodson in the Classical Outlook for Oct/Nov 1983. Or check out M.Davies and J.Kathirithamby (1986) Greek Insects Duckworth, London, where there is a passing reference to representations of insects in Cretan sanctuaries but the models are not figured. Why were they making votive offerings of the beetles in this particular sanctuary? What’s the story? I suspect there is more information about this somewhere.

I’ll ask colleague Dmitri Logunov, Curator of Entomology at Manchester Museum. He’ll be sure to know. We have covered bees in an earlier post on the Ancient Worlds Blog. We should get a thread going on ancient insects. A few years ago we were very interested in doing an exhibition centred on Pliny the Elder and Roman Natural History. Manchester Museum’s wide-ranging collections clearly allow us to look at many subjects, and in a multi-disciplinary way, which I suspect may be more be engaging to visitors – but is there any research on this to substantiate this suspicion?

Rhinoceros beetle votives from Piskokephalo in the Archaeological Museum

The only inconvenience is the large guided tour groups who can completely monopolise star exhibits for 10 minutes or so. If you’re prepared to be flexible and move where the guided tours are not, or visit later in the day, this is an absolute treat. There is a separate gallery for each of the major periods and the exhibits are spectacular. The cafe is another improvement at the Archaeological Museum and in fact it’s well-worth going there for a sandwich or for coffee and cake. I particularly recommend the ‘cream pie’. A single slice is sufficient for two people – but don’t go near this if you’re worried about atherosclerosis.

Cretan bull in the Archaeological Museum

Whilst staying near Irakleion we also visited the Natural History Museum. It features some rather basic animatronic dinosaurs. Sadly we could not see a temporary exhibition about historic food plants  nor the mammoth mentioned in a Rough Guide but the room that simulated an earthquake was rather queasy fun and there was a great temporary exhibition about light, trompe l’oeil and holograms, which ironically included a hologram of Lindow Man! One of the more useful displays was a table top case showing the sources of pigments in antiquity. With a temporary exhibition of our own about the Colour of Sculpture in preparation this was very helpful.

Sources of pigmetns in antiquity in the Natural History Museum in Irakleion, Crete

We also visited the Crete Historical Museum which has some great Byzantine mosaics and religious sculptural fragments and tells the story of the later history of Crete. This was far less busy than the Archaeological Museum and was good for an hour or two if you fancy a rest from the beach.

Byzantine mosaic in the Historical Museum in Irakleion, Crete

 

 

A Trio of Mystery Objects for Identification

Object for identification

August is clearly the time of year for reporting unusual discoveries to the Museum’s identificatiosn service. The unusual metal object above was brought into the Museum. It has a silvery or white metal look to it but it’s not heavy enough to be iron or steel or lead. It looks like a casting because it has a very regular smooth and curving  surface on one side and a rough texture on the other (shown above).

Smooth surface

The tip is quite battered and worn from rubbing or scraping it against something else and there is a slight lip where the material has been pushed back so it must be relatively soft. I don’t think this has been deliberately made as an object. It is not a knife or a sword. If it has had a use I suspect that it was opportunistic. The shape of the thing happened to meet the needs of whoever picked it up. As it was found on St Anne’s beach in Blackpool is it possible even that it was used to remove barnacles off the bottom of a ship? I don’t know. If it is man-made rather than natural I doubt it is much older than say Georgian or Victorian but that’s just a gut feeling. I’d be grateful if anyone who has seen something like this before and might know what it is would contact me.

Tip of ‘object’

David Gelsthorpe, Curator of Palaeontology, who is responsible for the Musuem’s minerals collection kindly looked at the object very briefly on the way to a meeting and thought it might be natural and of mineralogical origin, say iron pyrites because of its crystalline structure.

Mystery object from Greece

Another mystery object that came into the Museum for identification is shown in the photo above. The enquirer brought it back from a holiday in Greece, though it’s best not to remove material from the country of origin. It’s hemispherical and the surface has lots of decoration. The reverse is more corroded but it has two ribs. The corrosion products are greenish so it appears to be made of copper alloy. I asked some of my Greek archaeologist contacts if they recognized it. One suggested it might be a brooch for a cloak or the decorative head of a pin or a button. It reminds me of the small, round, concave shield called an aspis that was carried by Greek soldiers called phalangites. This, obviously, is far too small to be a shield but the decoration is reminiscent of the depictions of shields in northern Africa about the time of the Punic Wars.

Back of the object

Finally, to complete the hat-trick of mystery, here’s a bronze tool with a rat tail tang where the handle was attached (long since rotted away). What’s interesting about it is that the blade isn’t sharp as you might expect and there are facets or champfers on either side.

Bronze tool

They can be seen more clearly on the image below. It’s as if the cutting edge is on the outside edges of the tool. Is it some kind of burin? The metal used might suggest it is of Bronze Age date but if so it is incredibly well-preserved. Perhaps it was made for a spark-free environment environment in more recent times to prevent fires or explosions; or perhaps it is a specialised piece of kit used by a saddler, for instance.

Mystery bronze tool showing champfer.

If any one can shed any light on what these objects are I’d be grateful if they woud contact me via the comments function on this blog. Thank you.

A Coin of Corfu in the North West

Greek Imperial issue for Commodus

The copper coin in the image above was found by a metal-detectorist at a metal-detectign rally last month. Keith Sugden, Curator of Numismatics has identified it as a “Greek Imperial” coin (i.e. a Roman coin struck in one of the Greek cities of the empire). It shows the Emperor Commodus (177-192 AD) and the piece was produced in Corcyra (modern Corfu). The god in the shrine on the reverse is Agreus.

The god in the shrine.

As Keith himself has shown with his publication of a hoard of Alexandrian tetradrachms found in Manchester, such coins did not normally circulate in Roman Britain and we might speculate upon the circumstances which led to a Greek Imperial issue of the island of Corfu ending up in North-West Britain. Was it perhaps brought back to the North-West by a soldier returning from service in the Eastern Mediterranean after the First or the Second World War? Such discoveries have been documented in the past.

Harpy Tomb Corridor at Manchester Museum

Harpy Tomb Corridor at Manchester Museum

It is some time since I posted about the Harpy Tomb. I am now pleased to report that John and the technicians completed the installation last week. The in-fill panels representing the missing panels were placed in the sequence, and a line from Virgil about the harpies and some interpretation were put in position. Visitors can simply walk through the corridor and enjoy the plaster casts of the Harpy Tomb or they can sit and enjoy the atmosphere in the gallery. For those who want some information there is some text and a photograph of the monument as it is today (courtesy of Dr Jonathan Prag). I hasten to say that the original carved panels of the Harpy Tomb were moved to the British Museum from the site at Xanthos in the 19th century. The panels we show are plaster casts of these originals. Unfortunately we didn’t have a complete set  so we’ve made do with graphic panels. This isn’t  so much of a handicap in the corridor which connects the Coins and Medals Gallery with the third of the Ancient Worlds Galleries, where the idea is to encourage visitors to make their way through the space without necessarily lingering too long. Unfortunately the text interpretation hasn’t worked very well and we will now re-position it against the dark grey square in the middle of the panels which was the original entrance to the tomb.

Killer Bees

Ancient Greek pot showing swarm of bees stinging some men

Much hilarity earlier in the week when Sally in the Collection Study Centre asked if I had any bee-related objects in the collection. We have some replicas of Myceanaean gold discs which appear to depict bees but I was reminded of a visit to the bee museum on the island of Rhodes a couple of years ago.  Rhodes is one of the sunniest islands in the eastern Mediterranean and Rhodes honey is a popular product.

Poster advertising honey on Rhodes

As part of their displays telling the story of bee-keeping on the island there are some replicas of ancient Greek archaeological material including the famous bee earring from Malia on Crete.

Earring from Malia on Crete

Perhaps the most eye-catching, or perhaps I should say eye-watering, exhibit is a replica of an ancient Greek pot now in the Museum at Basle showing men being attacked by a swarm of bees and being stung in rather painful places.

When bees attack….

I sent copies of the images back to Sally but added a warning about ‘Contains Adult Content’. I think she’s going to use them in her presentation about bee-keeping as part of the Collections Bites programme which should raise a chuckle. I think Campbell’s visiting the museum in question so this may not be the last word from the Killer Bees.

Honeycomb at the Rhodes bee museum

The Rhodes bee-keeping  museum is on the road to the airport and makes a good stopping off place when exploring the island by car.

Harpy Tomb: a Progress Report

Louise and Shaun examining the Harpy Tomb panels

Last week we made  good progress on displaying the Harpy Tomb panels in the linking corridor in between the Museum’s Numismatic Gallery and the third of the Ancient Worlds galleries on the second floor. It has always been a difficult area to use for display because it is quite a narrow space and it is often very busy with people walking through to see the Vivarium on the other side of the Museum. We planned to install some of our collection of plaster casts of ancient Greek sculpture that used to be in storage in time for the opening of the Ancient Worlds galleries just over a year ago but ran out of time. Members of the conservation and collections team had cleaned and repaired them. Since then we’ve explored a number of different options in the space before deciding to install the plaster casts ourselves.

Installation of plaster cast panel from the Harpy Tomb

Our technical team created a framework to support the plaster casts and installed sheets of acrylic to protect them. Unfortunately we don’t have casts of all the panels so we will fill in the gaps using panels printed with a line drawing of the design. This will provide a better understanding of the sculpture, although it is rather different from the original configuration at the top of a square sided tower. We are laying out the panels in a straight run to fit the format of the linking corridor.

View along the linking corridor on the second floor of Manchester Museum

As part of the interpretation we will install some vinyl lettering with a quotation from an ancient text that mentions the Harpies. In the image above the text printed onto paper has been placed in position to check that the font size fits the space. Even though this was only a test it was interesting to see that visitors were very interested and reading the text in the display. A small block of text and a photo of the site of the Harpy Tomb in Turkey will also be installed to inform visitors. The original panels are displayed at the British Museum.

Visitors admiring the Harpy Tomb panels

My thanks to Shaun and Louise from the Visitors Services team and the anonymous couple (above) who very sportingly allowed their photograph to be taken looking at the casts

Teaching Classics using Objects from the Museum Collection and Star Trek

Irit and the Classics students (3rd February 2014)

Some time ago we were asked by tutors in the Classics department to support teaching using objects from Manchester Museum’s rich archaeology collection. We provided a list of objects from archaeology and numismatics to help the teaching of ancient Greece and Rome. Last week a number of preparatory sessions took place. Irit Narkiss from the Museum’s conservation team led a training session to look at not only how the objects should be handled but how to examine objects too. Obviously special care is needed when handling objects that may be fragile because they are several thousand years old but as a university museum we like to try and find ways of making practical use of the objects in teaching and research that is taking place at the University of Manchester.

Irit leading the session about objects

This came to fruition on Friday afternoon when we spoke to two classes of students and they found out for the first time which objects they would be working with. The objects include a mortarium, a miniature amphora, a Roman coin, some samian pottery, a lamp, a glass vessel, some coarseware pottery and a piece of ammunition from a Roman stone-thrower.

There was a ‘bran tub’ lucky dip whereby the students got their objects. As there were a few leftover items there was also the option to swap objects for other items the student might feel more interested in. They will do a written piece of work called an object biography in which they’ll explore what the object is, how it was made, what it was used for and what it tells us about life in Roman times.

This is something of a new development in working with colleagues in Classics to make objects available for teaching and hopefully it will help to surmount some of the difficulties that students may experience in making use of the Museum and its collections as an educational resource. Many are familiar with written records of the period but for some this will be the first time they will have worked with objects.

Students with objects (7th February)

The benefits of working with objects to me seem obvious. I always think of the wonderful scene in the film Star Trek First Contact in which Jean-Luc Picard (played by Patrick Stewart) and his android officer Commander Data (played by Brent Spiner) go back in time and encounter the first spaceship – the Pheonix – to have warp drive. This development made interstellar travel possible for the first time so the rocket is in Picard’s time, several hundred years later, a very popular exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum.

As Picard explains: “It’s a boyhood fantasy Data. I must have seen this ship hundreds of times in the Smithsonian but I was never able to touch it”. Data asks “Sir, does tactile contact alter your perception of the Phoenix?” And Picard gives what I think is one of the best recommendations for handling objects in museums: “Oh yes, for humans touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way and make it seem more real”.

Of course this is lost on Data, who replies: “I’m detecting imperfections in the titanium casing and temperature fluctuations in the fuel manifold. It is no more real to me than it was a moment ago…”

Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner meet the Phoenix

Harpy Tomb Gets Go Ahead

Panel from North Side of the Harpy Tomb at Xanthos in Lycia, Turkey

One of the areas that we did not have time to look at last year when we opened our new Ancient Worlds galleries last October was the corridor between the Numismatic gallery and the third gallery of Ancient Worlds. Which was a shame given that some of the conservation work on the objects we planned to display had already been done. In fact the objects concerned, the plaster casts of the Harpy Tomb from Xanthos in Turkey, have already featured in the Ancient Worlds blog. Earlier this week I met Senior Technician, John Miller, to discuss how we might go about displaying them.

Line drawing of the North Side of the Harpy Tomb from the Illustrated London News (courtesy of Debbie Challis)

Unfortunately we don’t have a complete set of the casts of this impressive 2500-year-old funerary monument, which may be no bad thing because the exhibition space we have in mind wouldn’t be long enough, unless we took out some rather useful cupboards to create the space needed. We’ve decided to get round the problem of not having all the pieces of the jigsaw by showing images of the missing panels alongside plaster casts of the panels we do have. In this way we’ll be able to give visitors an overview of this amazing monument using attractive objects from the store that would otherwise hardly be seen, and in a location that lends itelf to a more visual experience.

The plaster casts are copies of panels that once decorated the four sides of a monument known as the Harpy Tomb or the Kypernis tomb at Xanthos, in Lycia, in south western Turkey. The panels were at the top of a stone tower. They appear to show a ceremony taking place at the Lycian court. The ruler, who is sitting on a throne, receives offerings. The ruler and the courtiers hold sweet-smelling flowers or fruits to their noses. One of the figures is carrying Classical Greek armour: a hoplon shield and a Corinthian helmet.

Panel depicting winged deities – Harpies? – from Xanthus. From the Illustrated London News courtesy of Debbie Challis.

It is not clear what the winged figures on some of the panels mean. They may be carrying off the spirits of the dead to the afterlife. In Greek mythology winged women called harpies tormented people. The best-known depiction of  Harpies is in the film Jason and the Argonauts (1963) starring Todd Armstrong and Nancy Kovack. It is the special effects of  Ray Harryhausen that stay in the memory. They put modern CGI to shame. In the film Jason and his crew land on an island to seek some information from the blind seer Phineus, who is being tormented by the harpies. Every time he is served a meal the harpies turn up and eat his food or defecate on it. Jason catches the harpies in a net, imprisons them in a cage and in return Phineus gives him the information he needs to find the golden fleece.  All of which is great fun, especially when you’re a nine-year-old lad and it’s the best thing you’ve ever seen on TV in your entire life.

Line drawings of the Harpy Tomb from the Illustrated London News (courtesy of Debbie Challis)

The original panels from the Harpy Tomb at Xanthos are in the British Museum. They were collected by English archaeologist Charles Fellows (1799-1860) who travelled in Turkey and found the ruins of the town of Xanthos in Lycia in south west Turkey. At this time Britain and France were competing with one another to collect antiquities for their respective museums. With the help of the Royal Navy, Fellows collected stone carvings from some of the tombs at Xanthos for the British Museum.

Ancient Worlds on Holiday – Egypt in Rhodes

Egyptian statue with Greek legend

I’ve recently been on holiday to Rhodes. Before I left, Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan at Manchester Museum, asked if I’d take a photograph of an Egyptian statuette with a Greek inscription in the archaeology museum in Rhodes Old Town. When my wife, Christine, and I visited the Archaeological Museum we kept our eyes open for the exhibit and I’m pleased to report that we found it (see photo above).  The seated Egyptian statuette fragment is inscribed with letters from the Greek alphabet, which in translation read: ‘….thes dedicated me’. A similar piece in the museum’s epigraphical displays (see below) has the same inscription but this time giving the full name of the dedicatee: [S]myrthes. The museum label says it dates from between 550 and the late 7th century BC.  This statuette was dedicated in the sanctuary of Athena on the acropolis of Kamiros. Campbell suggests that the figure above may originally have represented the Egyptian goddess Isis, but was “re-purposed” as a votive to Athena.

Sometimes referred to as the Rhodian Pompeii: Kamiros

In addition to this piece, someone who appears to have been the same man, Smythes, made an offering at the sanctuary of Zeus Atabyrious on the summit of the highest mountain on Rhodes.  All that survives is the front part of the thighs of a kneeling human figure on which is incised a three line inscription along with the horizontal lines that served as a guide. In translation it reads ‘I was dedicated by Smyrthes son of Syndros’. This second piece is in the Rhodes Museum’s epigraphic section where photography is not permitted.

Rhodes Archaeological Museum

Nor are these pieces the only evidence of Egyptian influence in Rhodes. Another display case in the museum was full of Egyptian faience amulets (see photo below). I should point out that the amulets were found in in burials on the island of Rhodes and they are part of displays intended to tell visitors about ancient Egypt as an exhibition topic, as we do in this country even though the Egyptian antiquities were not found here. Some of them do appear to be somewhat different from the ancient Egyptian amulets excavated in Egypt and shown in the Ancient Worlds displays at Manchester Museum. With some of them there is a certain, what I refer to as, ‘fuzziness’. Not all of them quite carry it off as Egyptian. Were they made for export to the Greek world at Greek colonies in Egypt like Naukratis?

Faience amulets and jewelry at the Rhodes Museum

‘Fuzzy’ Egyptian amulet

I was aware of the support given to the island of Rhodes when the city was being besieged by Demetrius the Besieger in 305-4 BC but the dating of Egyptian material in various grave goods showed that the Egyptian influence on Rhodes went back earlier than the Hellenistic period. Think of Smyrthes above making his dedication in the 6th or 7th centuries. Coincidentally I happened to be reading the second book of  Duncan Sprott’s Ptolomies Quartet: Daughter of the Crocodile (Faber and Faber, 2007). Though fictional it is clearly heavily based upon Classical historical sources. It refers to support given by the Ptolemies after the Rhodians suffered an earthquake that toppled the Colossus of Rhodes and destroyed many buildlings. The Ptolemies helped Rhodes on a number of occasions when the island was in difficulty over the years. When we visited Lindos we saw the bases of the statues set up by the Rhodians  in honour of the Egyptian royal house for the help it had given. Many of the objects dedicated in the sanctuary of Lindos were imported from Cyprus and Egypt. I was delighted when on my return to the Museum Campbell pointed out that the faience hedgehog on display in the Ancient Worlds Egypt gallery was also found on Rhodes. It is the cousin of two hedgehog perfume vessels I saw in the Rhodes Museum.  The two examples shown in the photograph below come from a child’s burial at Kechraki  [T218 (23)] dating from the mid 6th century BC.

Faience hedgehogs in the Rhodes Old Town Museum

It is stunning material and although I’ve focused here on the Egypt-in-Rhodes pieces, there are just as many, if not more, ancient Greek treasures, which I’ll come back to in a future Ancient Worlds blog. We have already featured a slingshot from Rhodes in a previous blog. Incidentally the Archaeological Museum in Rhodes Old Town is well worth a visit and it usually costs six euros per person each for admission but was free on the Saturday that we visited (but very busy for that reason).

Faience hedgehog vessel from Rhodes in the Ancient Worlds displays (accession no.37058)

A petrifying experience – Medusa-related objects for Coral exhibition

Some time ago Dmitri Logunov, Curator of Entomology at the Manchester Museum, and Marion Endt-Jones, who is curating the Coral: Something Rich and Strange exhibition (29th November 2013-16th March 2014), visited the archaeology store to select objects. This might seem a bit counter-intuitive because we don’t really have anything made of coral in the archaeology collection but it turned out there was a really good link with the ancient Greek and Roman collections in the form of representations of Medusa. The connection between coral and Medusa is a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses ((4.782-86).

Bronze figurine of Mercury (1986.13)

The Greek hero Perseus, with the help of a cap that made him invisible, a sickle-shaped sword, a special satchel, and winged shoes, given to him by the god Hermes, chopped off Medusa’s head and escaped. A copper alloy figurine in the archaeology collection, apparently depicting the Hermes, shows the god wearing a winged helmet and sandals, and carrying a bag or purse (1986.13). Or is it Perseus?

Having succeeded in decapitating the snake-headed Medusa, who turned all who looked at her to stone, Perseus rescued the beautiful Andromeda from the sea monster that threatened her. After claiming her hand in marriage, he washed in the sea, accidentally causing the birth of coral by setting down Medusa’s head on the seashore: the seaweed absorbed the Gorgon’s fading power to petrify, and turned into coral.

This reminded me of a holiday in Turkey a few years ago. At the Temple of Didima, near Altinkum in south western Turkey, there are some wonderful representations of Medusa.

Medusa at Didima, Turkey. Note the wings above the forehead

A number of objects in the Manchester Museum’s archaeology and numismatic collections relate to the myth of Perseus, Medusa and the gorgoneion, the severed head of Medusa that Athena put on her shield to terrify her opponents in battle.

Roman Republican coin showing Medusa

A Roman Republican denarius issued by the moneyer L. Plautius Plancus in 47 BC is justly regarded as a masterpiece of the ancient die-cutter’s art. It shows the facing head of Medusa on the obverse: the wide, staring eyes, together with hair in the form of wriggling snakes, provides the most dramatic image of the monster on a coin.

Terracotta antefix or roof decoration depicting Medusa (accession number 1983.335)

An ancient Greek terracotta on display in the Ancient Worlds gallery at the Manchester Museum also depicts the Medusa with staring eyes and protruding tongue but without wings (1983.335). It is a fragment of a terracotta revetment from roof decoration with floral ornament and a gorgoneion in high relief. It is thought to have been found in Campania in Italy.

Bronze bucket mount or escutcheon depicting Medusa (Manchester Museum). Note the wings.

A copper alloy escutcheon, or decoration for a bucket or situla of the Roman period depicts Medusa’s head (1981.935). The open ring behind her head is for the handle. Medusa has wings in her hair and two snakes’ heads, one on either side of her temples, issuing from the hair on either side of her forehead.

Looking forward to seeing all these objects on display in the Coral exhibition when it opens 29th November 2013.

Medusa at Didima Turkey

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Thanks to Keith Sugden in Numismatics who co-wrote some of the text.