Palamari, an Early Bronze Age site on Skyros

I chanced to have had the opportunity to visit Palamari whle chasing bats with Dr. G in June 2011 – more about which I hope to write soon. Of my impressions at the time, my diary records only the following:

"The site of Palamari is well worth visiting. It’s like a Kastri on Syros only on a lower hill with less clambering. Brilliant EBA fortification, way more impressive than Lerna in its size and scope. Glad to have made the detour."

View over the excavations

Verbose, this description is not. And I will not be any more verbose now, fourteen months on.

There is an onsite “museum” with a pretty funky model of the excavated site and plenty of text with images on boards covering stuff like the changing environment from the EBII through the MBA as evidenced by faunal remains and the links with other civilisations as evidenced in the ceramic types found on site.

Model of the excavations

The ceramic types cover Trojan depas amphikupella through to Cycladic beaked jugs and Mainland Minyan kantharoi. Not surprising really, given the location of the island and the site, but reassuring to see it.

I stand by my “worth a visit” conclusion of 14 months ago, even for the uninitiated for whom this sort of thing isn’t their bag:

Bunny Burritos

So here’s what I did yesterday:

I started with three onions, this much goes without saying. Coarsely cut up, these were fried in butter with some olive oil to keep it from overheating, until they became transparent. Next, I took the meat off a rabbit – apart from one leg, a big piece of saddle and one arm plus chest (those are for tonight). I then liberally applied Montreal steak seasoning, which is essentially garlic, coriander, black pepper, red pepper flakes, dill seed, and salt, so it gives the meat a nice kick, but also has the coriander and dill in there for some underlying interest.

This then went in the frying pan until done. I snacked on the kidneys and liver at this point as no one else wants them. The rest then came out of the frying pan and was kept on the side.

I deglazed with some cheap white wine, and then put in a tomato (sliced) and two aubergines (cut into sticks). When these had started to soften and the tomato had disintegrated, I added two courgettes (cut into sticks) and two green peppers. Every now and then it was necessary to put more white wine in to avoid sticking and I put some more olive oil in at some point to help the process. When the courgettes were softish, the rabbit came back in for long enough for the flavours to talk to eachother.

This was then spooned onto tortilla wraps, grated cheese was added and burritos were thus fashioned.

Yummy!

All work and no play...

Every retelling of an experience is a recreation of that experience – it goes one step further from the experience itself as every re-imagining requires us to recreate in our minds eye that which we are retelling. I do not fancy going into Plato’s theory of forms right here, so don’t push me.

I woke on Saturday morning after seeing an amazing dream. I have recounted it twice, very conscious how each retelling destroys some of the magic and awe in the original dream I experienced, but since I haven’t had one in a while, here is the dream I had on Saturday night, in its third outing, and the first time in English – all original dialogue or rather esologue was in Greek.

I was sleeping in bed – not my bed, but my bed, you know how it is in dreams. I was hot, too hot to sleep, so I woke up and noticed I had two t-shirts on, and took one off. I woke up again, too hot to sleep, and again I had two t-shirts on, so I took one off. In the end, realizing I would not be sleeping any longer, I got up.

K was there and told me to come and see how things were, now the packing cases had been moved away. There, behind where the packing cases had been, a narrow corridor led away, glass blocks making up the wall on the right, and on the left the main door to the apartment, which I realized we weren’t using because it had been hidden away behind the packing cases. The corridor had a large room at the end of it, and when I reached it I was in a huge sitting room with sofas and armchairs on a number of levels, with all mod cons and plenty of space and good lighting. The house was not set up as I would like it, being something a little too much towards a sort of seventies set up, but it had everything I could want or need. From the sitting room, a dining room led off, with dining table and chairs, again, everything anyone could possibly want. Up some stairs, a second sitting room, less formal, with huge TV, stereos, electric guitars with amps, and a playstation with a broken steering wheel accessory.

And I remember at this point thinking to myself, where has all this stuff come from, and sensing the answer that it has always been here: I just couldn’t see it because the packing cases had shut off access to these rooms. So there I was in a house full of everything anyone could want or need, and realizing that I had always had it.

Jack Torrance aside, it was an amazing, awe-inspiring dream. I woke fully aware of the interpretation of the trunk of the dream, if not all the details and said to myself, oi – you better not forget this one if you go back to sleep now!

Three days on, I am still high on the realization that it’s up to me to move the packing crates and reveal what I know to be behind.

About moving the cheese

Yesterday I was somewhere between denial and rage and not ready for this new movement of the cheese. Fuck my bastard luck. Another day spent reading dodgy statistics and wallowing in various blogs. It all felt like what I imagine freefall to be like: the only sense of movement is the whistling of the air in your ears and the ground spiraling towards you, fields visible, then individual trees, then the crops or blades of grass and all along you have known what grows in the fields but when you’re looking from afar, it’s all so easy to ignore... A new adventure, but I am not ready to see it as such – when I started the 'old' adventure, I was unmarried and young. Now I have a family and this makes it all so much more difficult to come to terms with. And yet, talking about it helps so much, and so does having the family.

I woke today so much more ready for the adventure, so much readier to step out.

Урок 30, 1997

I learned Russian for about two years, more than fifteen years ago, with the Athens branch of the Pushkin Institute. When I visited Kazakhstan in late 1997, I got by easily enough and even now, I can figure out what our slavic northern neighbours are talking about, despite how they treat their articles. Feels like only yesterday, but fifteen years sounds like a long time ago...

Part of a new series, called "Cleaning out my closet" (ComC), where I present things I find while tidying up packing boxes from our recent house moving.

Leaves, 1980s

This is from the early 1980s, a collage of autumnal leaves, made no doubt after a nature walk. When I was younger, I could probably have named all of the trees these came from. Now I doubt I can identify one.

Part of a new series, called "Cleaning out my closet" (ComC), where I present things I find while tidying up packing boxes from our recent house moving.

Avocado, June 1980

June 23rd
This is my avocado. It needs to be watered every Friday. Its got light green leaves. We have lots of cacti in our class. We have a green pepper. We have lots of other plants.



This also dates to June 1980. I still have an avocado plant, though obviously not the stringy-looking one in the image.

Part of a new series, called "Cleaning out my closet" (ComC), where I present things I find while tidying up packing boxes from our recent house moving.

Cyclops, June 1980

June 24th
My puppet is a cyclops from Greek mythology. Odyssiuses ship landed on a greek island. He went to a cave for shelter not knowing it was a cave of a cyclops. Then he came back with his herd of sheep. He ate two of the men for lunch the other two for dinner. Odyssius gave him some wine when he was drunk they made him blind. He screamed nobody made me blind.

Nearly at the beginning of the story he said that his name was Nobody.



The text is from an exercise book I came across at the weekend from 1980. The spelling is great. I have photographs of the Cyclops puppet, but I am not sure if it is still around. I very much like the post punchline explanation of the whole thing - nearly at the beginning of the story... I also like the was the cyclops is never named when the subject of the sentence, always “he”, even when this is confusing to the flow of the text. Well tried, indeed. I have recycled the exercise book.

Part of a new series, called "Cleaning out my closet" (ComC), where I present things I find while tidying up packing boxes from our recent house moving.

The dead pool

STELIOS
1. 105 William Shatner
2. 48 Jim Bowen
3. 93 Arnold Palmer
4. 41 Chuck Berry
5. 65 Rhodes Boyson
6. 91 Noam Chomsky
7. 1 Queen Mum
8. 32 Tony Curtis
9. 77 Marti Caine
10. 54 Warren Mitchel[l]


I date this piece from between November 1992 and July 1993, probably in the first part of this range. We got together with ten other guys (I am pretty sure they were all guys) and put ten names each into a hat and then drew names for each of us. The idea is that the guy holding the card with the first celebrity to die would win the pot. In short, betting on random outcome events. I came across my card, written in someone else’s hand while cleaning out boxes from our recent moving house thing.

It is interesting to note that of my list, I recognise / recognised only six of the names. I had six entertainers, one sportsman, one academic, one politician and one Royal. Also interesting to note is that I got a real bum deal, given that seven of my celebs are still very much alive, though some have been in and out of hospital recently, almost 20 years after the list was drafted. Only the Tony Curtis (2010), the Queen Mum (2002) and Marti Caine (1995) are gone and although Marti Caine left us soonest someone else won. I can’t remember who actually won the jackpot and with which names.

One of a new series, called "Cleaning out my closet" (ComC), where I present things I find while tidying up packing boxes from our recent house moving.

Trojan war so much alive still

THE TROJAN WAR

Six hundred ships
Set sail from shore
And soon arrived at Troy

Our attack began
And when we’d won
We gladly sailed for home

By Stelios

[Good **]


I date this to between 1979 and 1981, probably in the middle of this range. I just want to comment on the quality of the stick man and wooden horse, surely worth the two stars; also on the interesting use of the first person personal pronoun. I would say that is shows how the young Stelios identifies with the subject (rather than believes that he was there when the shit went down). If he had been there he would know that there were in excess of 1,000 ships.

The first of a new series, called "Cleaning out my closet" (ComC), where I present things I find while tidying up packing boxes from our recent house moving.

Time passes, stuff happens

In 2001, in spring, while making a circuit of Sicily in my old cinquecento with a friend from college, I bought two paper bags of sun-dried tomatoes from an open market next to the temple of Apollo, on Ortygia in Syracuse. I ate the last of those tomatoes with K tonight in a rather fine risotto. I really ought to get round to writing about Sicily some time.

Degree from UK university just not good enough for Greek state

I took my desmond to DOATAP this morning for the last time. DOATAP is one small part of the monstrous bureaucracy of the Greek state. It has for years existed and sapped precious funds from the state budget in an effort to protect the musty-smelling state educational system from having to hold a mirror in front of its face and see how truly without merit it is.

DOATAP is the old DIKATSA. I do not know why the initials changed although I am sure the Greek taxpayer paid unnecessary money for this unnecessary re-branding.

The essence of the work of DOATAP is to wave a magic wand over academic degrees and thereby declare them to be of equal merit to the equivalent degrees from a Greek institution. My degree, which I was awarded by the alma mater of Byron and Newton for studies at a department inaugurated by Erasmus himself, is not considered to be of equal merit to the equivalent degree from a Greek institution.

I have no quarrel with Mr. Papavlasopoulos the friendly guy in charge of classics degrees. As he said, he was just following orders. Actually, to give the guy credit, he said that he is only implementing the law, and not involved in passing it. I have to write to the members of parliament to see where they stand.

I cannot apply to the University of Athens to read for an MA because I do not have a degree that is considered good enough for them. I am not certain, but I have a sneaky feeling that my rights as a human being are being curtailed here. Article 26 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects my right to higher education: “higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit”. On the basis of merit. In any one of the other countries of Europe and a whole bunch of other countries besides, my degree would be considered good enough. Not in Greece. Not for DOATAP.

I will be writing to my MPs. I will be writing to my Alma Mater. We are not done here.

Open e-mail to the New Acropolis Museum

" Is the museum still implementing its no-photography policy? If so, how is it justified, given that the archaeological law (Ν. 3028/2003) in conjunction with the joint decision of the Ministers of the Economy and Culture of 28 December 2011 (126463, Article 1.1) permits free photography in museums when carried out with non-professional equipment?

What is the procedure for an interested amateur photographer to be granted permission to take photographs inside the museum for personal / educational purposes? Many thanks for your time. "

So - let's see what they reply.

On having hair and drinking milk...

- Μπαμπά, γιατί έχεις τρίχες;
- Γιατί είμαι θηλαστικό. Και εσύ είσαι θηλαστικό, αφού έχεις τρίχες και πίνεις γάλα.
- Η [αδελφή μου] είναι θηλαστική;
- Θηλαστικό. Δεν έχει τρίχες; Δεν πίνει γάλα από το στήθος της Μαμάς;
- Και η Μαμά είναι θηλαστική;
- Θηλαστικό. Δεν έπινε και η Μαμά γάλα από την Γιαγιά, όταν ήταν μικρή;
- Και η Γιαγιά είναι;
...etc.

Desmond saga continues

So, following up on my DIKATSA post from 2005, I went in January 2009 to the successor organisation, DOATAP, and had a huge argument with some needle-dick pencil pusher who wanted to tell me that I would only ever be recognized as a graduate of a technical college, because my course at uni was only three years long, and then left.

Now, three years on, I went again and showed the restraint of a man genuinely trying to understand what the fuck sort of logic lies behind the system. I was told to ring a number and talk to Mr. Papavlasopoulos who deals with my sort of degree.

I phoned today, spoke to a soft-spoken lady who fed me the same line about having my desmond recognized as being equivalent to a degree from a technical college, but suggested that I come on Wednesday to have a chat with Mr. P.

I am not holding my breath.

Merbakas: A byzantine jewel in the Argolid

The church just outside the modern village of Aghia Triada is dedicated to the dormition of the theotokos. It was built some time in the period between about a century before and after the fourth crusade. The actual dating is one of the great mysteries of the building as it rests to some extent on written evidence (which may or may not be flawed) for the building of a nearby stylistically similar church and to some extent on the immured ceramics. Τhe dating of these are also much debated by scholars, not least because the dating of the immured ceramics had been 'fixed' by a possibly inaccurate date for this church itself.

The village of Aghia Triada used to be known as Merbakas. The old name is largely forgotten outside Byzantist circles apart from its pejorative use in the phrase: "Καλά ρε φίλε, απ΄τον Μέρμπακα είσαι;" as used even into the 1990s by Nafplio kids to indicate a school friend is particularly stupid.

I first heard of the village in 1988 when touring the Peloponnese with JHWM (and PAGS) although there was no time to visit the church, and again in 1990 when SFM replaced PAGS. I don't think I actually saw the church itself until 1995 or even as late as 1998, when it was still serving as the cemetery church and the village cemetery itself still surrounded the church.

I have tried to drive past the church every time I have visited the area since then. Every time I visit, I see more and every time I leave I read more about it and around it and come back with more to look at. There is so much to look at in this one small Byzantine building and while something is urging me to insert the word intertextuality in here somewhere, I fear that so many years away from mildewey libraries may have blunted my ability to pull off that sort of writing...

Merbakas is unknown as a toponym elsewhere in the Balkans or even in Turkey. The word is not encountered in any of the languages of the peoples who have at some time established themselves in the Peloponnese. However, the Dutch village of Moerbeke happens to be the place of origin of William of Moerbeke, Latin bishop of Corinth, a Dominican and a pretty shit-hot classical scholar of his time. So while many chose to deny any link with Moerbeke for whatever reasons, if we do so, another William (almost contemporary with ours, but Franciscan and an Englishman from Ockham in Surrey) would have been rightly upset.

I cannot write about the similarities and differences with the churches at Areia and Chonikas, nor do I know enough about the ceramics to make some sort of judgment on the date of the church and therefore the likelihood of the patron being William of Moerbeke. Guy Sanders has a paper up on academia.edu in which he argues for the late date and the patronage of William. Although every time I read the paper I end up on different sides of the fence as to whether he convinces, the questions being asked are definitely going in the right direction.

The late date is supported by the ceramic evidence. The church has a whole lot of ceramic bowls immured in the walls. The mortar used has been shown to be one with the mortar used in the building of the walls: hence the bowls are contemporary with the original building, and dating the bowls will allow dating the church.




The bowls in this images are called Grid Iron Protomaiolica bowls. Similar bowls are immured in the walls of the Dormition at Gastouni which has been recently dated to the last quarter of the 13th Century. The bowls are the product of a Western (Italian) workshop. Other immured ceramics have an eastern provenance, such as the Zeuxippus ware from Constantinople. The choice of ceramics from both edges of the Greek world, east and west is used by Sanders to support his position.



This view from the apses gives an opportunity to see a number of features of the church. From the ground up, we have the three steps reminiscent of an ancient stylobate. Christianity standing on ancient foundations, or triumphing over the old religion? The lower courses actually use building blocks taken from the Argive Heraion a few kilometers distant, while the blocks in the higher courses were brought from Corinth, presumably quarried fresh from local stone.



The higher courses are in cloisonné style with decorative brick-work at the top made to look like a Greek key (meander).



The central apse, with its Gothic engaged columns in the trilobed sanctuary window, and more Greek key decorative brickwork. A meander is also visible running horizontally in the marble under the windows.

So, going back to the spolia... apart from the otherwise non-descript blocks from the Argive Heraion (which I still have yet to visit), there are two blocks of spolia with figured representations still on the church (a third is in Copenhagen, for some reason), in addition to a classical sundial reincorporated into the wall of the church and two blocks bearing inscriptions.



The sundial is on the south wall towards the SW corner.



One of the two, figured spolia. The low relief sculpture is a classical grave marker with three figures on it. There is an inscription which reads something along the lines of "[Ε]ΥΠΟΡΟΣ ΕΥΠΡΑΞΙΣ [Ζ]ΗΑΝΤΕΡΩ[Σ]" which is probably three proper names. The Inscriptiones Graecae online gives the text as: Εὔπορος Ἀντέρωτος. Εὔπραξις ζῇ. Ἀντέρως and if I had not looked it up in the concordance, I would not have noticed the lower line of text underneath the text Εὔπορος. Have I mentioned how much I love the internet? The inscription is known as IG IV 539. Given the probably correct reading in the IG catalogue, it is probably a marker for Euporos (on the left) who was the son of Anteros on the right and is survived by his mother Eupraxis (centre).

It is said that the village ultimately gets its modern name from this grave marker, by way of the village church, which was dedicated to the holy trinity because of this very prominent spolion on the corner of the village's cemetery church.



The second stele on the north wall of the church, shows two more classical figures, with no discernable inscription. The placing of the two grave stelai and the subject matter are used to argue for the involvement of a Latin churchman in the foundation and building of the church at a time when the argument over the filioque was ongoing. The north stele shows two figures (argued to represent the father and the son from whom the unseen spirit is presumably processing in a western way) and the south stele shows the holy trinity in all its orthodox oriental glory. I don't buy into this in a wholehearted way, although as circumstantial evidence, I feel it ought to be mentioned.

Next up, the two spolia with inscriptions, one placed near the north door, the other near the east door. The one near the east door I did not know about and as a result, I have not got a photograph of it (and it is not immediately obvious when looking for it, else I would have noticed).



This is the first inscription, reading: Q(UINTO) CAECILIO C(AII) F(ILIO) METELO | IMPERATORI ITALICI | QVEI ARGEIS NEGOTIA(NTUR). Now the Metelus in question was the chappy who conquered Crete for Rome, thereby clearing the Aegean and this part of the Mediterranean of piracy. To me the echoes with the council of Lyons which amongst other things (such as the union of the churches) sought to suppress piracy are a little faint, but it has been argued that the founder of the church was aware of the historical Metellus and wished to make such a link. In any case, it is strange that a text in latin script which would not have been understood at all by the local population was immured with the inscription visible.

The final spolion bears a Greek dedicatory inscription and is immured close to the east door. As I have already mentioned, I have not seen it.



The bell tower above the east door, where the spolion bearing a Greek inscription is to be found.



The dome colonettes, showing gothic architectural influences. The crocket capitals are a decorative element common in Gothic architecture. This element is also used as an ornament on furniture and metalwork in the Gothic style. The name derives from the diminutive of the French croc, meaning "hook", due to the resemblance of crockets to a bishop's crosier.



And final photo – the south door, which is built in the Byzantine rather than the western style (all other doors on the building are built in the western style). In Byzantine architecture, the jambs are separate from the matrix of the walls, as they are here. In western doors, the jambs bond with the walls.

Next time I have to go back, with all this in mind, to take photographs which illustrate the points in question better. As it is, the information on the church I got from the internet fit reasonably nicely with the photos I took, but not perfectly. Next time, it would be nice to get inside too to see the frescoes of St. Leo of Catania and to see how truly western some of the non-figured frescoes are.

Kerameikos cemetery and museum

On the Sunday after Easter, I took A to the Kerameikos. I wanted to have another look at the sub-mycenaean and protogeometric pots after my visit to Nauplio archaeological museum a week before and the Easter holidays seemed to give themselves to this, what with the gentle beginnings of spring coming on. It was going to be quite an adventure. I had not yet been left alone in charge of A out of doors for quite so many hours, and we had public transport and dangerous roads to deal with (and a lot more besides).

The metro station called Kerameikos (despite what the name may suggest) is not the closest stop to the site and museum. The closest is actually the Thiseio stop, but this does not have the escalators to help with arriving and leaving with a pram. Do not make the same mistake I made and expect anyone in the vicinity of the metro station to know how to go to the homonymous archaeological site and museum from the metro. Do not even expect them to know that the stop they are standing in is named after the old cemetery which used to stand in the potter's quarter. That's the sort of mistake that idiots with over-idealized images of their own countries make.

Finally getting oriented with the GPS maps on my swanky Nokia 5800 (which them promptly proceded to die on me) we set off up Pireos towards the entrance of the Kerameikos. At some point in between death-defying maneuvers necessitated by the lack of pavement on some parts of the road, I realized that A. was missing a sock. She had been playing with them, and evidently she'd been playing with the sock formerly on her right foot a little too much. We proceeded barefoot for the rest of the journey. It was a Sunday, early afternoon. The fleasiest part of the flea market is set up just outside the entrance to the site and with it a plethora of 'used' goods, prospective buyers and the sort of people who trade in used goods of uncertain provenance. Great.

Once we found the entrance, behind a stack (literally) of used stereos and speaker systems, the museum and surprisingly the site itself are quite pram-friendly.

The museum is essentially a square building with an atrium-like light well in the centre. Gone are the old-school wooden cases from years ago (that you can still see in museums like Thera and Naxos). Everything is new and shiny, including the patches of damp causing the paint to bubble and crumble in some places.

One side of the square houses the sculpture - two kouroi, a number of sphinxes and some grave stele, together with a boundary marker with interesting epigraphy. There are also some classical family grave markers of the overly classical style which is too much for me. The exhibition passes into the Atrium where the large marble bull memorial draws all the attention and smaller low relief works sit around the edges overshadowed by the bull. From there, we start the history of Athenian pottery…

The first leg covers the sub-mycenaean, protogeometric and geometric eras.

Next we have the first representational ceramics, going through to the mature black and red figure eras.

The final leg of the square has more classical and too much hellenistic pottery. Labelling is in the most rudimentary name rank and serial number style which characterises so many Greek museums, which is a pity as there is a lot of potential to explain aspects of the ancient world in this museum.

Pieces I particularly enjoyed are:


Grave marker - bearded boxer: The piece was found re-incorporated into the Themistoclean walls of Athens as a spolion. It is remarkable for being a quite individualistic portrayal of a presumably recognisable person at a time when portraiture was not really developed.



Boundary marker, showing the boundary of the road for Eleusis (a nearby town with a very important sanctuary, the road for which passes through the cemetery of the Kerameikos): ΗΟΡΟΣ ΤΕΣ ΟΔΟ[Υ] ΤΕΣ ΕΛΕΥΣΙΝΑΔΣΙ
It is interesting to see the H being used as a rough breathing on the word Horos, but not on Hodos and also interesting to see the E used where we would expect an H. Guys who dig epigraphy could probably date it on these grounds alone to the nearest five years, but this kinda thing ain't my bag, baby.



It's archaic. I like it for the hair, for the hands and for the smile, although I did not make a note, so I cannot write too much about this.



The cinerary urn from tomb 18/I of the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens dates from the 10th century BC and aside from the wavy lines, sports one of the earliest depictions of horses in Attic vase painting.



From a tomb dating between 750 and 700 BC. The depiction of the warrior is pretty standard - helmet plume, beard, twin spears and swords together with a sort of "boeotian" shield. I like this sherd because you can clearly see the individual brushstrokes used to make up the warrior and at the same time you have a nice look into a cross section of the fabric.



This vase dates from the first quarter of the eighth century BC and depicts two men taming a horse. It is one of the earliest depictions of the human form in Attic vase painting.



From a tomb dating between 740 and 730 BC. The tripod shape is one associated with ritual use, burnt offerings or funerary meals. The decoration is split into two bands - a frieze along the top showing standard geometric-era warriors and little vignetted warriors wrestling lions in the legs. The depiction of the warrior is pretty standard - helmet plume, beard, twin spears and swords together with a sort of "boeotian" shield, alternating with the standard round shield. The lion in the lower register is depicted as a ferocious beast, but clearly not one with which the artist is familiar.

More pots can be viewed on Flickr here: A visit to the Kerameikos in April 2010

We then went outside with A. for a photograph together in the Kerameikos proper.

Reopened archaeological museum in Nafplio / Nauplion / Nauplio

On one edge of Constitution Square, opposite the old mosque which now serves as a cinema, sit the Venetian-era barracks of the town's military garrison. This building now houses the offices of the local ephorate of antiquities and the town's archaeological museum. I am particularly fond of the ephorate here as they issued me my very first free-entry card to the antiquities of Greece and did so in one day! It was not until many years later that I realized how lucky I was to get the card issued so fast.

External view of the Museum of Nafplio on Constitution Square.

Following a lengthy refurbishment which seemed to last most of the present decade and which saw little seismic stickers put all over the building and the bulk of the Mycenaean finds go to the new museum at Mycenae, the Nafplio Archaeological Museum has been re-opened with a new layout and a refreshingly decent set of texts accompanying the finds. A lot of stuff has come out of storage, not least the Francthi child burial (more about that later) so the visit I made in April this year felt in part like a visit to old friends, and in part like a new museum altogether.

The museum houses finds from many of the sites of the Argolid, including Tiryns, Asine, Berbati, Francthi, Dendra / Midea, Kazarma, Nauplion itself and probably more that I do not recall. It used to be the best collection of Mainland Bronze Age stuff in Greece after the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, although now I would think the title of second best has to go to the Mycenae museum itself.

The museum is organized on the first and second floor of the building as before, with the first floor dedicated to the prehistoric periods and the second to the Iron Age onwards. The finds are exhibited either according to findspot / period or according to type - meaning that we have all the Franchthi finds in one corner, and all of the Dendra finds in another, but at the same time, the MH vessels are placed separately from the figurines, which are separate again from a bunch of sherds with imprints on their bases showing either mats or leaves.

The truth is that visiting with A in the pram was not 100% practical (despite the AMEA / wheelchair lift which we preferred not to use) so we did not spend too much time on the top floor which in any case has marginal interest.

The Bronze Age floor or more accurately Neolithic and Helladic floor was really quite fun. First in on the left, there are the finds from the Kazarma tholos including some nice palatial style jars, together with a good photograph of the state of the tholos at present (only the back wall is standing). Moving round the room clockwise, we have the cemetery of Dendra along the wall, joined by Asine later on and the Dendra panoply in the middle of this part of the room. The panoply is displayed nicely along with other bronze finds from the tomb allowing the visitor to build a good sense of what goes with what and what finds are from which tombs. The Dendra finds are displayed next to a scale model showing the placement of each tomb in the hillside. This provides another valuable link to the findspot which enhances the visitor's understanding of the finds as part of a functional whole rather than as individual pieces of art each independent of those around it.

Kazarma: display of palatial style vases together with other grave goods.

Dendra: Model of the cemetery showing the relative locations of the Tholos Tomb, the Cuirass tomb and the other Chamber tombs.

Dendra: Nice schematic LH murex shell on grave goods .

Dendra: the finds from the Cuirass tomb, all together in one case.

Further down we pass the Asine finds, with some good diagrams of the tombs as excavated and this is followed by some cases containing only figurines, whether wheelmade or hand made from a number of different locations and of different sizes, all presented together. These include the famous Lord of Asine.

Asine: sketches showing the findspots and context of the finds together with decent texts.

Asine: the "poor" man's Vapheio cup! ceramic Vapheio cup showing a goat rather than the bull one would expect...

Various sources: various figurines whether wheel-made or coiled, all together in one case. The so called Lord of Asine is the solitary head to the right of the image.

Moving on, there are finds from the MH (including some stirrup jars with simple painted motifs) and part of the plaster floor of the megaron at Tiryns showing two dolphins, heraldically opposed.

Various: MH era ceramics, including a coarse-ware bowl with carbonised figs.

Tiryns: painted decoration from the floor of the throne room of the megaron.

Moving on clockwise, we enter the MH period properly and this is represented by burial goods from Berbati and elsewhere. The finds reproduced in the burial of the MH with articulated skeleton are in stark contrast to the finds on show from the LH graves of Dendra.

MH burial reproduction: A is surprised at the austere nature of the grave goods.

The EH is represented by impressed hearths and pottery from Tiryns and Berbati, and the room finally closes with the NL just before the door leading us to feel that perhaps we should have gone anti-clockwise rather than clockwise round the room! Apart from the Urfirnis pot which used to be the highlight of the Franchthi section in the old museum, there are now a great number of small finds on display along with one of the famous child burials of NL Franchthi - again articulated with the grave goods in place in the display. The Franchthi section also has photographs and drawings of the cave itself with much information.

EH Pot bases: Impressions with plaster "positives", with some EH sauceboats in the background (sauceboats are the archetypal EHII type shape).

EH hearth: one of a number of such ceramic hearths decorated with relief patterns. This one is from Tiryns.

EH hearth: one of a number of such ceramic hearths decorated with relief patterns. This one is from Berbati (I think)...

Franchthi cave: Decent text introducing the visitor to the complexities of the NL.

Franchthi cave: Urfirnis ware - the best of the best of NL ceramics.

Franchthi cave: infant burial on display.

Franchthi cave: repaired ceramic bowl - shows the value of ceramics at the very beginning of their use.

The texts are well thought-out and the layout of the finds (especially the articulated skeletons) adds much to the visitors' understanding.

As I said - this is one of my fave museums anyway, but I think I have to give it a thumbs-up for the way it has been refurbished, re-planned and re-opened. Well done Δ ΕΠΚΑ!

Second floor: ceramic masks - an opportunity for some interaction with A.

Monastery at Daphne / Dafni

So we took A to the monastery at Daphni. I had not been since 1991, almost twenty years ago. I remember walls and fortifications and a blurry photograph I have of the pantokrator (which I may be confusing with a pantokrator in Mystra). I did not remember the Ionic columns from the temple of Apollo and I would not then have been able to spot any trace of Gothicness on the narthex, let alone remember it. Given how much we did learn and retain while making this study tour with the school, there is no fault to be ascribed to Jimmy and the gang if we missed some of the Mediterranean Gothic...

Walking into the site today, the visitor is confronted by the massive block of the Daphni church, orange and pink in limestone and brick with its impressive drum and dome on top, all covered in scaffolding and dotted with stickers labeled ΕΜΠ and NTUA. The south door which was in front of us was locked. We headed to the west colonnaded section of the monastic complex's southern courtyard. The buildings there housed classical sculptures from the Daphnephoros sanctuary and late antique, Byzantine and medieval architectural fragments. Across the court, on the top floor, there is an exhibition on the restoration and the work being done. After wandering about a bit more, we found the phylax and much of what follows we were either told or I figured it out for myself as the phylax took us up the scaffolding.

Photos and videos are not allowed inside (rofl). No, really, they are not, so I was all fidgety and annoyed both because of the brevity of the preparation time available to take some photos while no one was looking but also by the need to keep my (now handheld) helmet-cam hidden.

On the way up, we first see two Gregories, amazingly large when at eye-level, amazingly pink-skinned and white haired in their restored splendour. Each mosaic we saw was an invitation to spend a whole afternoon there, wondering in awe at the work of the mosaicist. Opposite these was Zacharias in an arch, with his funny cuboid hat and then onwards and upwards - the guide rushing us upwards, but telling us to take our time... At conch level, we were face to face with (from NE-NW clockwise): Annunciation (amazingly tranquil and inspiring), Birth, Baptism (no willy), and Metamorphosis (badly damaged). And like the Narnian Mouse - "Further up and further in!", cried the phylax and we found ourselves face to face with sixteen prophets around the drum, again splendidly pink and white, like the Gregories or Zacharias, all of course with their golden backgrounds and with calligraphic names but also with conspicuous tubes and plastic pipes sticking out of them for the strengthening of the mosaics and eventually for the cement enemas which will serve to strengthen the walls and finally allow the walls to again take the weight of the building for themselves.

Then, finally, on the top floor of the scaffolding, we stood face to face with the pantokrator in awe, and were able to distinguish the tesserae and notice that each one is quite a large stone. Amazing indeed, but I had to let K see it too. I came down with appetite for close-up mosaic unsated and told her to go up while we played with A in the garden to the West. The narthex contains one of the four original Ionic columns from the Daphnephoros sanctuary. I am not sure where the other three are, various sources give various stories about what indeed Elgin took from here. The asymmetric gothic exonarthex is rather fun as well, with its arches not quite lining up on each side.

The need for restoration came with the famous quake of 1999, where, apparently the mosaic decoration all came to the ground. On commencement of restoration, they only replaced whatever pieces had a definite provenance, meaning that there are great chunks which will never be replaced. The opportunity to get this close to such exquisite mosaic work was amazing and I totally recommend a visit. The feeling it inspires reminds me of the feeling I had when facing some fresco work in Ochrid or facing the frescoes of the Protaton in Karyes, both pretty much contemporary with these mosaics. I want to go again...

View towards the exonarthex from the North West

View towards the exonarthex from the North West in clunky HDR

Base of the Ionic column from the exo narthex colonnade, complete with seismic sensors

Capital of the Ionic column from the exo narthex colonnade

Ionic column from the exo narthex colonnade