This museum houses some of the most important artifacts from prehistory to late antiquity. It has seven main collections and comprises so many items that it is impossible for the visitor to admire all of them in one day. A day per collection would be ideal.
It was one of the first museums built after 1830, when Greece became an independent state.
What is more, there are many more exhibits kept in its storerooms because there is not enough space to be presented to the public. So we can only have a view of some of the works of art representative of each collection. The clay statue of a seated male figure from Neolithic Thessaly marks the art of the Neolithic era. He is called the thinker, and it is a large, compact, unique, hyphalic figure because of his size, made in 4500–3500 BC to serve a fertility cult.
Mycenae is a citadel that has provided us with many interesting objects. Among the oldest of them are the grave markers found on this site. The first funerary stele is made of porous stone and depicts a relief chariot scene. The spirals in the upper panel may represent waves, thus indicating the coastal locations of the scene in the lower panel. The standing charioteer pulls at the reins while a second person, who holds a sword in his left hand, stands in front of the chariot. It was found in the V tomb of the Grave Circle A of Mycenae. It is the best preserved of the three that have come to light.
Cycladic art surprises us with its originality.
The head of a Cycladic statue is welcoming us. It comes from the island of Amorgos, dating from 2800–2300 BC. Its mouth is open with plastic lips, nose, ears, and painted eyes.
There are some remains of pigment on it. Early Cycladic culture evolved in 3 phases when it was increasingly submerged in the rising influence of Minoan Crete. The marble figurines, or idols, are scattered around the Aegean. The majority of them are highly stylized representations of the female human form, typically having a flat geometric quality, which gives them a striking resemblance to today’s modern art. There are also male figures. A majority of them are depicted nude with folded arms across the stomach, with the right arm held below the left. There is no consensus on their significance.
Are they gods, death images, children’s dolls, or the Great Goddess of Nature? They are regularly used in funerary practice and have all been found in graves. They were found laid on their backs in graves. The larger examples may have been set up in shrines or dwelling places. Some of them are schematic; others combine both schematic and naturalistic elements.
1) Cycladic art surprises us with its originality.
The most famous are those of two musicians. A harp player and a pipe player.
Dating to 2500 BC, these musicians are considered the earliest extant musicians from the Aegean. The Cycladic idol that follows is made of marble, and it is the largest known example of Cycladic sculpture, 1.5 meters in height. (2800-2300 BC). A plastic nose, long legs, folded arms, the pubic areas demonstrated by an incision, and the breasts are modeled.
Some of the most famous Cycladic violin figurines with an implied elongated head, no legs, and a violin-shaped body prove the diversity of the Cycladic art. The early Cycladic pottery is characterized by a wide variety of shapes and decorative themes. It comprises handmade bowls, globular pyxides with lids, krateriski, kandelas, and amphoriski made of coarse dark clay with a black burnished surface.
The peculiar frying-pan vases decorated with incised curvilinear motifs, bowls with a ring base, urchin-shaped pyxides with lids, globular jugs, askoi, beaked bowls, beak-spouted jugs, and pithoi, innumerable cooking and storage vessels, and sauce bowls. A cylinder is probably used as a stand for a vase with a painted representation of fishermen.
Ritual ceramics used for libations.
Bronze-age metals were widely used to produce weapons. Finds from the vaulted tombs in Mycenae and other locations include stone, bronze, and ceramic pots; figurines; ivory objects; golden seals; and rings with precious and semi-precious stones, glass, and faience.
Small bronze knives decorated with gold and silver inlays showing battles and hunting scenes. The Mycenaean artists have created the unique funeral masks. One of them has been called the mask of Agamemnon, although there is no evidence that this is a fact.
The mask of Agamemnon is one of the five masks discovered in the royal shaft graves, smithed in gold. It was created from a single thick gold sheet heated and hammered against a wooden background with the details chased on later with a sharp tool. It is three-dimensional rather than flat, and one of the facial hairs is cut out rather than engraved. The ears are cut out, and the eyes are depicted as both open and shut with open eye lines. The face has a full-pointed beard with handlebar mustaches, the mouth is well defined, and the brows are formed into two arches rather than one.
Finds from a children’s royal burial are also covered with golden leaves having holes for eyes. That they are men and warriors is suggested by the presence of weapons in their graves. A unique plaster head of a woman, possibly a goddess or a sphinx, and one of the very few examples of monumental Mycenaean plastic art.
Touches of vibrant red and black paint highlight the severe facial features, while dotted rosettes enliven the chin and cheek region. Under the apolos, the hair falls in little curls along the forehead. A marble ritual vessel with an ornate handle. The eight shield is a decorative motif usually painted on the walls of the palaces and sacred buildings of the Mycenaean citadels.
1) Cycladic art surprises us with its originality.
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Jewelry and the sacred knots |
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And more Mycenaean gold |
The horse rider of Artemision
It is a bronze statue of the Hellenistic era. A young boy is riding a horse. It is clear that it represents a racehorse. It was found in a shipwreck in Cape Artemision. It was made in 150-140 BC and was discovered in 1926.
The equestrian statue is life-size, about 2.9 meters and 2 meters high, and a most characteristic example of realism. The horse springs away in mid-gallop with its rear feet on the ground and its front legs raised.
The bronze of the rear legs is thicker. The image of the goddess Nike is engraved on the horse’s right thigh, holding a wreath in raised hands. The rider is too young—87 centimeters tall. He rides without a saddle; he wears sandals and a short chiton and looks back over his left shoulder.
1) Cycladic art surprises us with its originality.
Ancient Egypt
The Egyptian collection features rare statues, tools, jewels, a mummy, a bronze statue of a goddess or prince's intact bird eggs, and a 3000-year-old loaf of bread with a bite-sized chunk missing.
The Egyptian art was dominated by the pharaoh and their concern about the afterlife and glory. The world of the gods and the world of the dead were magically united. A sphinx is a mythical creature with the body of a lion, most often with a human head and wings. It was an Egyptian invention, usually worn as a nemes.
Thoth's roles in Egyptian mythology were many. He served as a mediating power between good and evil. He was the gods' scribe and is credited with creating writing. In the underworld, he appeared as an ape. The Egyptians credited him as an author of all works of science, religion, philosophy, and magic. He has been depicted in many ways, usually with a human form and the head of an ibis.
The wooden statue of a woman grinding cereals from the mastaba of the official Ti in Saqqara, old kingdom, during the fifth dynasty (2416–2392). It was believed that the servant would perform the duties for her master’s ka (spirit) for eternity. The wooden funerary model of a ship with its crew.
Boat models were popular grave gifts in the Middle Kingdom. Egyptians believed that the boat would carry them away after death to Abydos to participate in the sacred pilgrimage of Osiris. They also believed that the sun god Ra himself traveled across the sky each day and through the Underworld at night in his divine barque. Ships were made of papyrus or wood. Helped by the current and the north wind, they traveled downriver with oars and upriver with sails.
1) Cycladic art surprises us with its originality.
The Pan
Pan, god of nature, the wild, shepherds, flocks’ mountain wilds, and often associated with sexuality.
This name originates from the word "paein," meaning "to pasture." The modern word "panic" is derived from his name. He has the hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat in the same manner as a faun or a satyr. With his homeland in rustic Arcadia, he is also recognized as a god of fields, graves, and wooded glens because this Pan is connected to fertility and the season of spring. Pan is famous for his sexual powers and is often depicted with a phallus. Pan’s greatest conquest was that of the moon goddess Selene. In order to conceal his hairy black goat appearance, he wrapped himself in a sheepskin. He then lured her down from the sky and into the forest, where he wooed her. We shall see him in two reliefs and three statues feeling unhappy for being in a museum and not in nature.
As a member of a company of Aphrodite and Eros, he is partly amused by the presence of the naked goddess of beauty with the balanced body proportions and the well-combed hair, bound up by means of a scarf bound in a bow above her parting. The manner in which she bends her left leg tends to add gracefulness to her stance. She is covering her pubis with her left hand, and she brandishes her sandal in her raised right hand in an attempt to deter him.
The goat-footed god has seized her left wrist with his sinewy left hand. He leans on a tree trunk with an animal’s skin and has left his hunting stick at the foot of the tree. The little winked son of Aphrodite is trying to repulse Pan by pressing and grasping his right horn. On the low base of the group, we read about Dionysos, son of Zeus, who was the son of Theodoros from Beirut, dedicated to the ancestral gods. It was found on the island of Delos.
1) Cycladic art surprises us with its originality.
Phrasikleia Kore
An archaic statue made by Aristion of Paros in 500-540 BC was found in a tomb in Attica. An inscription says, "The tomb of Phrasikleia Kore must be called evermore." Instead of marriage by the gods, this name became my fate. Aristion of Paros made me. The statue of Parian marble is 2.11 meters high and rises on a pedestal 26 centimeters high. She is wearing a long peplos adorned with flowers and meanders and is standing straight.
A girdle is worn around her waist. You can see the foreparts of her sandals and feet. Her peplos is securely grasped by her drooping right arm. She is holding an unopened lotus flower in her left arm, which is bent in front of her body. She has a bracelet on each arm, a necklace around her neck, and a garland of flowers on her head.
The Kroisos kouros is a marble kouros from Anavyssos in Attica that functioned as a grave marker for a fallen young warrior named Kroisos. The free-standing sculpture strides forward with the archaic smile playing slightly on his face. It is dated to 540–515 BC and stands 1.95 meters high.
The inscription on the base reads, "Stop and show pity in front of the marker of Kroisos, dead, whom, when he was in the front ranks, raging Ares destroyed."
These two sculptures give an answer to the question of whether kouroi and korai represented specific young men or maidens or were idealized archetypes that did not actually resemble specific persons. Bronze-inscribed plaque from the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, 300-250 BC.
The plaque contains an honorary decree passed by the Eleans for the wrestler Demokrates, who won in the men’s wrestling at the Olympic Games. The athlete was proclaimed benefactor and was granted exemption from the tax—the right to own land in the region of Els and to participate in festivals and sacrifices. The decree was to be inscribed on a bronze plaque and set up in the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia and be sent to the Tenedians and Demokrates’ fellows.
In the triangular pediment are the symbols of the island of Tenedos and the god Dionysos: a bunch of grapes and two double axes. By means of such a tool, they used to slaughter a young calf at their festivals in honor of Dionysos. From it, everyone had to eat in order to ingest the god itself.
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