1.
Herma
–
A herma, commonly in English herm, is a sculpture with a head, and perhaps a torso, above a plain, usually squared lower section, on which male genitals may also be carved at the appropriate height. The form originated in Ancient Greece, and was adopted by the Romans, in the earliest times Greek divinities were worshiped in the form of a heap of stones or a shapeless column of stone or wood. In many parts of Greece there were piles of stones by the sides of roads, especially at their crossings, and on the boundaries of lands. The religious respect paid to such heaps of stones, especially at the meeting of roads, is shown by the custom of each passer-by throwing a stone on to the heap or anointing it with oil. Later there was the addition of a head and phallus to the column, before his role as protector of merchants and travelers, Hermes was a phallic god, associated with fertility, luck, roads and borders. The surmounting heads were not, however, confined to those of Hermes, those of gods and heroes. In this case a compound was formed, Hermathena, Hermares, Hermaphroditus, Hermanubis, Hermalcibiades, in Athens, where the hermai were most numerous and most venerated, they were placed outside houses as apotropes for good luck. They would be rubbed or anointed with oil and adorned with garlands or wreaths. This superstition persists, for example the Porcellino bronze boar of Florence, in Roman and Renaissance versions, the body was often shown from the waist up. The form was used for portrait busts of famous public figures, especially writers like Socrates. Sappho appears on Ancient Greek herms, and anonymous female figures were used from the Renaissance on. In 415 BC, on a night shortly before the Athenian fleet was about to set sail for Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War and this was a horribly impious act and many people believed it threatened the success of the expedition. Though it was never proven, the Athenians at the time believed it was the work of saboteurs, either from Syracuse or Spartan sympathizers from Athens itself, one suspect was the writer Xenophon. The J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles has a collection of Roman Herma boundary marker stones in its stored collection. An Aesops fable makes fun of statue of Hermes, when a pious dog offers to anoint it, the god hastily assures his worshipper that this is not necessary
2.
Nationalmuseum
–
Nationalmuseum is the national gallery of Sweden, located on the peninsula Blasieholmen in central Stockholm. The museums benefactors include King Gustav III and Carl Gustaf Tessin, the museum also has an art library, open to the public and academics alike. The current building, built between 1844 and 1866, was inspired by North Italian Renaissance architecture and it is the design of the German architect Friedrich August Stüler, who also designed the Neues Museum in Berlin. The relatively closed exterior, save for the entrance, gives no hint of the spacious interior dominated by the huge flight of stairs leading up to the topmost galleries. The museum was enlarged in 1961 to accommodate the museum workshops, the present restaurant was instated in 1996. The museum building closed for renovation in 2013 and is scheduled to reopen in 2018, the Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis by Rembrandt Midvinterblot by Carl Larsson Vid bäcken by Peter Adolf Persson Hallwyl Palace Swedish Museum of National Antiquities Johan Mårtelius. Stockholm, Arkitektur Förlag AB. p.67
3.
Greek terracotta figurines
–
Terracotta figurines are a mode of artistic and religious expression frequently found in ancient Greece. These figurines abound and provide a testimony to the everyday life. Modelling is the most common and simplest technique and it is also used for the realization of bronzes, the prototypes are made out of raw clay. The small sizes are directly worked with the hand, for the larger models, the coroplath presses the clay pellets or wads against a wooden restraint. The mould is obtained by application of a bed of clay or plaster on the prototype, simple moulds, used by the Greeks of the continent until the 4th century BC, are simply dried. When the piece becomes complicated, with important projections, the craftsman can cut out the mould in smaller parts, the second phase consists of applying a layer of raw clay inside the mould, which can be incised beforehand in order to obtain effects of relief. The thinness of the layer varies according to the type of object to be realized, the faces of the mould are joined together, the object is then unmoulded, and the craftsman can proceed to the final improvements, typically smoothing the junction. The craftsman also creates an opening, a vent hole that allows steam to escape during the firing. The vent can also be used for assembly, allowing intervention inside the piece, the limbs are then joined to the body either by pasting them with slip, clay mixed with water, or by mortice and tenon joint. The piece is fired in the kiln, with the temperature ranging from 600 to 800 °C. Once the figurine is fired, slip can be applied, the slip is sometimes itself fired at low temperature. In the beginning, the range of colours available was limited, red, yellow, black. From the Hellenistic era on, orange, pink mauve, the pigments are natural mineral dyes, ochre for yellow and red, coal for black, malachite for green, etc. Due to their low cost, the figurines made ideal religious offerings and that is indeed their primary purpose, the decorative aspect coming only later. This explains why the ancient Greek temples host abundant quantities of votive or funerary figurines and these figurines can present identification issues. These attributes make it possible to recognize a particular god in an unquestionable way, moreover, certain types of statuettes correspond to a precise form of worship related to a specific divinity. Sometimes, however, visiting gods complicate matters, these are dedicated to a god who is not of that sanctuary. In addition, the majority of the figurines simply represent a woman upright
4.
Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia
–
These are taken together as the museo reggino. Recent studies suggest they may represent Tydeus and Amphiaraus from a group of the Seven against Thebes. Jerome and Abraham panels by Antonello da Messina The building was designed by Marcello Piacentini, characterised by its massive volume and monumentality, it consists of a ground floor in bugnato black lava stone, linking the different heights of the Corso Garibaldi and the Via Vittorio Veneto. On this rest grand travertine pilasters and large windows for the first floor exhibition galleries and these large windows make the galleries open, airy and light and allow smoother and more continuous routes between them. On the main facade is a series of illustrations of the ancient currencies of the cities of Magna Graecia. After the opening many rooms on the floor were also opened to the public as galleries. This formed the Museo Civico di Reggio, based in the seafront Palazzo Arcivescovile and formed of ethnology, medieval art, modern art, Risorgimento art and numismatic departments. The Soprintendenza Archeologica was set up in 1925 in Reggio and in 1932 it initiated construction of the building for the Museo Centrale della Magna Grecia or Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia. It was designed by Marcello Piacentini, one of the most famous Italian architects of the first half of the 20th century, laid the first stone of this Museum, whose treasures survived great destructive adversities and perpetuate the Millennial civilisation of the First Italy. The new building opened in 1932 but closed on the outbreak of the Second World War, the new headquarters were inaugurated in 1932 but they had to be closed up because of the war, which forced the transfer of the materials to safer sites. In 1954, the collections of the Museo Civico were reunited with those of the Museo Nazionale, in 1962, the prehistory, protohistory and Locri rooms were opened, whilst the lapidary gallery and art gallery were opened in 1969 and the numismatic gallery in 1973. After the very important find of the Riace Bronzes an underwater archaeology gallery was created in 1981, dedicated to the memory of superintendent Giuseppe Foti, who died just before its opening. In 1982 the galleries on the Greek colonies and Ionic and Tyrrhenian sub-colonies were re-arranged, thus opening the first and second floor to the public and adding 40 more galleries. There are now plans to move the medieval and modern art galleries to another building to make room for thematic archaeological displays which are in preparation, the museum is currently divided into six sections and an art gallery, arranged in chronological and topographic order and spread over 4 floors. The entrance is from Piazza De Nava and the visitor is welcomed by the view of a tuff Telamone, coming from a public building from the 2nd century BC. The most antique objects, coming from the Lower Paleolithic date back to 600,000 years ago, are “choppers”, at the entrance of the room are two large dioramas with life scenes from the people of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Next, there is the reproduction of the representing the Bos Primigenius a bovid dating back around 11,000 years ago. The female skeleton laying underneath slips her left arm, as if in a gesture, around the neck of the young man partially above her who
5.
Bronze statue
–
Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures, a cast bronze sculpture is often called simply a bronze. It can be used for statues, singly or in groups, reliefs and it is often gilded to give gilt-bronze or ormolu. Common bronze alloys have the unusual and desirable property of expanding slightly just before they set, then, as the bronze cools, it shrinks a little, making it easier to separate from the mould. Their strength and ductility is an advantage when figures in action are to be created and these qualities allow the creation of extended figures, as in Jeté, or figures that have small cross sections in their support, such as the equestrian statue of Richard the Lionheart. As recently as 2007 several life sized bronze sculptures by John Waddell were stolen, there are many different bronze alloys, and the term is now tending to be regarded by museums as too imprecise, and replaced in descriptions by copper alloy, especially for older objects. Typically modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin, alpha bronze consists of the alpha solid solution of tin in copper. Alpha bronze alloys of 4–5% tin are used to make coins, the proportions of this mixture may suggest that the candlestick was made from a hoard of old coins. The Benin Bronzes are really brass, and the Romanesque Baptismal font at St Bartholomews Church, Liège is described as both bronze and brass. In the Bronze Age, two forms of bronze were used, classic bronze, about 10% tin, was used in casting. Bladed weapons were mostly cast from bronze, while helmets. On one definition, modern statuary bronze is 90% copper and 10% tin, the great civilizations of the old world worked in bronze for art, from the time of the introduction of the alloy for edged weapons. Dancing Girl from Mohenjodaro belonging to Harappan Civilization dating back to 2500 BCE is perhaps the first bronze statue of the world, the Greeks were the first to scale the figures up to life size. Few examples exist in good condition, one is the seawater-preserved bronze Victorious Youth that required painstaking efforts to bring it to its present state for museum display, far more Roman bronze statues have survived. Over the long period of Egyptian dynastic art, small lost-wax bronze figurines were made in large numbers. Sri Lankan Sinhalese Bronze statue of Buddhist Alakothiveshwara Tara Devi statue now in England is an example of Bronze statues. From the ninth through the century the Chola dynasty in South India represented the pinnacle of bronze casting in India. Making bronzes is highly skilled work, and a number of casting processes may be employed, including lost-wax casting, sand casting. The term bronze is also applied to metal sculptures made by electrotyping, although these sculptures are typically pure copper and their fabrication does not involve metal casting
6.
Roman Empire
–
Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
7.
British Museum
–
The British Museum is dedicated to human history, art and culture, and is located in the Bloomsbury area of London. The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician, the museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759, in Montagu House, on the site of the current building. Although today principally a museum of art objects and antiquities. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish-born British physician, on 7 June 1753, King George II gave his formal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. They were joined in 1757 by the Old Royal Library, now the Royal manuscripts, together these four foundation collections included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving copy of Beowulf. The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public, sloanes collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary, the body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The Trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost. With the acquisition of Montagu House the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts. A list of donations to the Museum, dated 31 January 1784, in the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated the antiquities displays. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman Sculpture, in 1805. In 1816 these masterpieces of art, were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815, the Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from the widow of Claudius James Rich. The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an extension to the Museum. For the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it, and put forward plans for todays quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the Kings Library Gallery began in 1823, the extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. The Museum became a site as Sir Robert Smirkes grand neo-classical building gradually arose
8.
Greek language
–
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
9.
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, and her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus, as with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiods Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranuss genitals and threw them into the sea, according to Homers Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Plato, these two origins are said to be of hitherto separate entities, Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and was lover and surrogate mother of Adonis. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite, Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea and Cypris after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, roses, doves, sparrows and swans were sacred to her, the ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite had many names such as Acidalia and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite of transcendent principles, and a separate, common Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people, hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós sea-foam, interpreting the name as risen from the foam. Michael Janda, accepting this as genuine, claims the birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- very and *dʰei- to shine and it has been argued that etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodites attributes are entirely different from those of Eos or the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a demon that appears in Middle Babylonian. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni lord, an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις and this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, the lady. Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos, she who lives delicately, from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a characteristic of Greek obvious from the Macedonians. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, however, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, Cytherea
10.
Amathus
–
Its ancient cult of Aphrodite was the most important, after Paphos, in Cyprus, her homeland, though the ruins of Amathus are less well-preserved than neighboring Kourion. The pre-history of Amathus mixes myth and archaeology, though there was no Bronze Age city on the site, archaeology has detected human activity that is evident from the earliest Iron Age, c.1100 BC. The citys legendary founder was Cinyras, linked with the birth of Adonis, according to a version of the Ariadne legend noted by Plutarch, Theseus abandoned Ariadne at Amathousa, where she died giving birth to her child and was buried in a sacred tomb. According to Plutarchs source, Amathousians called the grove where her shrine was situated the Wood of Aphrodite Ariadne. More purely Hellenic myth would have Amathus settled instead by one of the sons of Heracles and it was said in antiquity that the people of Amathus were autochthonous, or Pelasgian. Amathus was built on the cliffs with a natural harbor and flourished at an early date. Greeks from Euboea left their pottery at Amathus from the 10th century BC, during the post-Phoenician era of the 8th century BC, a palace was erected and a port was also constructed, which served the trade with the Greeks and the Levantines. A special burial ground for infants, a tophet served the culture of the Phoenicians, the excavators discovered the final stage of the Temple of Aphrodite, also known as Aphrodisias, which dates approximately to the 1st century BC. The earliest remains hitherto found on the site are tombs of the early Iron Age period of Graeco-Phoenician influences, Amathus is identified with Kartihadasti in the Cypriote tribute-list of Esarhaddon of Assyria. Herodotus reports Because he had besieged them, the Amathusians cut off Onesilos’ head and brought it to Amathous, as it hung there empty, a swarm of bees entered it and filled it with honeycomb. The Amathusians did as they were told and still perform these rites in my day and its political importance now ended, but its temple of Adonis and Aphrodite Amathusia remained famous in Roman times. The epithet Amathusia in Roman poetry often means more than Cypriote. The wealth of Amathus was derived partly from its grain partly from its sheep and copper mines, Amathus was a rich and densely populated kingdom with a flourishing agriculture and mines situated very close to the northeast Kalavasos. In the Roman era it became the capital of one of the four regions of Cyprus. Later, in the 4th century AD, Amasus became the see of a Christian bishop, of its bishops, Heliodorus was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and Alexander at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. In the late 6th century, Saint Ioannis Eleimonas, protector of the Knights of St. John, was born in Amathus and after 614 sent Theodorus, bishop of Amathus, anastasius Sinaita, the famous 7th-century prolific monk of Saint Catherines Monastery, was born here. It is thought that he left Cyprus after the 649 Arab conquest of the island, setting out for the Holy Land, anathus declined and was already almost deserted when Richard Plantagenet won Cyprus by a victory there over Isaac Comnenus in 1191. The tombs were plundered and the stones from the beautiful edifices were brought to Limassol to be used for new constructions, much later, in 1869, a great number of blocks of stone from Amathus were used for the construction of the Suez Canal
.jpg)
Freese, John Henry (1911). "Aphrodite". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 166.
Freese, John Henry (1911). "
The dictionary definition of Aphroditus at Wiktionary