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Athens, Greece
Where is the Acropolis located?
High City
What does Acropolis mean?
447-432 BCE
What are the dates of the construction of the Parthenon?
They kept very detailed record for how much they paid for stone and for workers
How do we know such precise dates for the building of the Parthenon?
Pediment
Metopes
Frieze
What are the three kinds of sculptures that make up the Parthenon?
Triangular space and highest point
What are Pediments?
Pediments
What kind of sculptures are represented by the “green” color?
Metopes
What kind of sculptures are represented by the “red” color?
Frieze
What kind of sculptures are represented by the “yellow” color?
Squarish sculpted panels in the front of the Parthenon
What are Metopes?
Each cardinal direction depicts a different battle
What is unique about the Metopes?
Gods vs Giants
What battle is depicted on the Eastern Metopes?
Greeks vs Trojans
What battle is depicted on the Northern Metopes?
Greeks vs Amazons
What battle is depicted on the Western Metopes?
Lapiths vs Centaurs
What battle is depicted on the Southern Metopes?
Continuous long band of sculptures that runs around the inner set of columns in the temple
What is the Frieze?
Debated, but considered to represent the Panathenaic Procession
What does the Frieze depict?
Celebration of Athena where the purpose is to make sacrifices to her and give her a new dress
What is the Panathenaic Procession?
Thomas Bruce (7th Earl of Elgin)
Who is responsible for parts of the Parthenon arriving to the British Museum?
Ottoman Empire at the time gave Lord Elgin to take pieces
How was Lord Elgin able take pieces from the Parthenon?
An Athenian alliance with other sea born city states to stand against Persia where they pooled money, ships, and materials
What was the Delian League?
Possible Athens embezzled Delian League funds to build the Parthenon
What’s the possible controversy over the construction of the Parthenon?
-machy
What suffix is used to describe “the battle of”?
Gigantomachy (Gods vs Giants)
(Greek) What is shown on the East Metope?
Centauromachy (Lapiths vs Centaurs)
(Greek) What is shown on the South Metope?
Amazonomachy (Greeks vs Amazons)
(Greek) What is shown on the West Metope?
Sack of Troy (Greeks vs Trojans)
(Greek) What is shown on the North Metope?
He was interested in decorating his mansion and also wanted to sell antiquities to pay off his debts
Why was Lord Elgin so interested in antiquities?
They looked down on Elgin for taking the marbles
At the time when Lord Elgin took the marbles, how did the English upper class look upon him?
British government financed the shipping of the marbles
How was Lord Elgin able to transport the marbles from Greece to Britain?
1970
What year was the first UNESCO Convention?
Series of individual laws passed by specific countries (especially those where artifacts were rich) saying items found in their boarders belonged to them
Before the UNESCO Convention in 1970, what kind of artifact laws were in effect?
Idea was to establish disincentives for looting to keep people from raiding historical sites
What was the main idea of the 1970 UNESCO Convention?
Antiquities discovered on private property belong to the owner of the property and not the state (while antiquities found on public land do belong to the state)
What is unique about America’s antiquities laws?
Established that the President can declare places National Monuments thereby protecting the land and anything discovered there
What did President Teddy Roosevelt do that is important for antiquities?
Before this there weren’t many people to enforce these laws so people were getting away with looting even though there were laws against it, and international agreement was important to get it to work and have countries enforce the laws
Why was the UNESCO Convention important?
America is more of an antiquities buyer than they are a seller, yet they were at the lead for international laws restricting the selling of antiquities
Why was it curious that America was so invested in the UNESCO Convention?
Each country has to pass their own laws to make the convention work, so each country has to get it up and running on their own
What were the weaknesses of the UNESCO Convention?
Enforced by the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) whose jobs is to block antiquities from some countries but not others
Who in America enforces the UNESCO Convention?
Looting is a common practice in the country so the item has unclear provenance or if a country is in a period of active war (looting becomes much more accessible)
Why would America block the import of antiquities from a specific country?
Enter bilateral agreements (refers to an agreement between parties or states that aims to keep trade deficits to a minimum) with other countries
How (through what) does America enforce UNESCO?
Warning sign that it is looted, because after 1970 unless an artifact has a great story ancient artifacts should have clear provenance
What is the problem with ancient artifacts that come into collections after 1970?
3rd Century BCE
What is the date of the famous Morgantina Silver?
Looted items came from the ground which means no one has seen them for hundred or thousands of years before then
Why is it so difficult to prove if items were stolen?
Found looters in the area and got eyewitnesses to cooberate that they looted silver
What trick did Italy use to prove the Morgantina Silver was looted?
Looters identified an image of Scilla (mythological Greek monster)
What mythological creature was identified by Morgantina looters?
Archeologist who went to Morgantina excavation site and found a coin that fell out of a looters pocket dated to 1978, which means the looting happned after 1978 (hit the market in 1981, so looting happened between 1978-1981)
Who is Malcolm Bell?
Artifacts went back to Italy for 4 years, then back to America for 4 years in a constant cycle til 2046
What was the ultimate fate of the Morgantina Silver, starting in 2006?
Island of Sicily, Italy
Where is the city of Morgantina located?
Usak region of Turkey (Western Turkey)
Where was the Lydian Hoard discovered?
6th Century BCE
What is the date of the Lydian Hoard?
The MET purchased them in the late 1960s and purposely mislabeled them (because they were stolen) by saying they were Eastern Greek instead of from Turkey and they held them in their basement for 20 years so they could claim the statue of limitations was up once they were displayed
What was the controversy surrounding the Lydian Hoard?
Returned to Turkey in 1993
In the end, what happened to the Lydian Hoard?
Perge (Western Turkey)
Where was the Upper Half of Weary Hercules found?
2nd Century CE
What is the date of the Weary Hercules?
Shows him after the last of his 12 big labors where he collected golden apples (behind is back in many depictions)
What is the context behind Weary Hercules sculpture?
Upper half appeared on the art market in 1980, while the lower half was properly excavated in 1980. But Boston MFA did not want to return the upper half even though a cast was made of the upper half and it fit perfectly with the lower half. MFA then claimed it wouldn’t return it because you couldn’t prove it did not break in ancient times or that the sculpture was in someone’s attic for all that time.
What was the controversy around the Weary Hercules?
Returned to Turkey in 2011
In the end, what happened to Weary Hercules?
Petrie and Maspero convinced the Egyptian government that no one wanted the stuff they were taking anyways
Initially, how were objects able to be exported out Egypt when the export was considered illegal?
Small finds (trinkets, brushes, scarabs, pins, coins)
What were the first things that Petrie was able to export out of Egypt?
He thought that by paying close attention to the small things we could discover a lot about past cultures
Why was Petrie interested in the small items?
Smaller museums that could not get their hands on larger items found the small items much more valuable because they were more attainable
To whom were these small finds valuable too?
They were a diplomatic gift from the Khedive of Egypt
How did Britain get its hand on their first large Egyptian sculptures?
granite falcon with inscription naming the Pharaoh Ramses II
human figure with inscription of Osorkon II
What were the actual first large Egyptian objects to go to the British Museum?
Him and his men discovered the Rosetta Stone
What is Napoleon’s connection to Egyptian artifacts?
Has 3 languages (Greek, Demotic, Heiroglyphs) on it and allowed for the deciphering of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs
What is the significance of the Rosetta Stone?
They leave the office in the charge of France because France has government funding for excavations while the British did not
What happens to Egypt’s office of antiquities once Britain takes over Egypt as a colony?
America did not feel they had their own culture because they were so young as a nation, so they felt they could tie themselves to another places deep history
Why does America become so interested in Egyptian artifacts?
Reverend William Copley
Who founded the American branch of the EEF?
Interested in the possible biblical connections that could be discovered through archeology in Egypt
Why was Copley interested in Egypt?
Ramses II
During whose reign is the Exodus story set?
Ramses II because of his connection to Exodus
What Egyptian figure caught the imagination of Americans?
Large statue from Tell Nabasha that made its way there thanks to the EEF
What was the first Egyptian sculpture to make it to America?
Pairs of tall structures that mimicked the rays of the Sun
What are obelisks?
Egyptian obelisk that was gifted to America and is now in NYC
What is Cleopatra’s Needle?
A spectacle was made of mummy unwrapping’s in Britain and sometimes America where mummies were shown in theaters or educational spheres
What was the deal with mummy unwrapping’s in the 19th century?
Individuals would fly to Cairo to buy antiquities from markets
How did Americans acquire Egyptian artifacts in the early 19th century?
Obelisk
What kind of sculpture is the Washington Monument?
Egypt: in the form of an Egyptian obelisk
Greece: One of the blocks comes from the Parthenon and was a gift from the Greek government, the block says “To George Washington” in Greek
What are the Egyptian and Greek connections to the Washington Monument?
Equal 50-50 splitting of artifacts found at a location where the country it is found in gets 50% and the country leading the excavation gets the other 50% and items are split in a draft style
What is partage?
Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Cypress
What countries specifically used partage?
Akhenaten
Who was the controversial Pharaoh who tries to change the Egyptian religion from a pantheon of Gods to one Sun god?
Akhetaten
What was Akhenaten’s capital city?
Tell el-Amarna (on Nile near Red Sea)
What is modern day Akhetaten?
