1.
Erechtheion
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The Erechtheion or Erechtheum is an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis of Athens in Greece which was dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon. The temple as seen today was built between 421 and 406 BCE and its architect may have been Mnesicles, and it derived its name from a shrine dedicated to the legendary Greek hero Erichthonius. The sculptor and mason of the structure was Phidias, who was employed by Pericles to build both the Erechtheum and the Parthenon, some have suggested that it may have been built in honor of the legendary king Erechtheus, who is said to have been buried nearby. Erechtheus was mentioned in Homers Iliad as a king and ruler of Athens during the Archaic Period, and Erechtheus. It is believed to have been a replacement for the Peisistratid temple of Athena Polias destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC, the need to preserve multiple adjacent sacred precincts likely explains the complex design. The main structure consists of up to four compartments, the largest being the east cella, the entire temple is on a slope, so the west and north sides are about 3 m lower than the south and east sides. It was built entirely of marble from Mount Pentelikon, with friezes of black limestone from Eleusis which bore sculptures executed in relief in white marble. It had elaborately carved doorways and windows, and its columns were decorated, they were painted, gilded and highlighted with gilt bronze. The building is known for early examples of egg-and-dart, and guilloche ornamental moldings, the Theory of Mouldings, p22, J. H. Janson 1926, has detailed drawings of some of the decorations. On the north side, there is another large porch with six Ionic columns, and on the south, the famous Porch of the Maidens, with six draped female figures as supporting columns. An olive tree remains on the Western side of the Erechtheus, though it was planted there in modern times by Sophia of Prussia, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, in honour of the Athenians. In front of the statue, a golden lamp called asbestos lychnia made by the sculptor Callimachus burned continuously with its asbestos wick and was refuelled once a year. The eastern part of the building was dedicated to Athena Polias, while the western part served the cult of Poseidon-Erechtheus and held the altars of Hephaistus and Voutos, according to the myth, Athenas sacred snake lived there. The snake was fed honey-cakes by Canephorae, the priestesses of Athena Polias, by custom the women of the ancient family of Eteoboutadae, the snakes occasional refusal to eat the cakes was thought a disastrous omen. The Erechtheion underwent extensive repairs and reformation for the first time during the 1st century B. C. after its burning by the Roman general Sulla. The intact Erechtheum was extensively described by the Roman geographer Pausanias, the building was altered decisively during the early Byzantine period, when it was transformed into a church dedicated to the Theometor. With this alteration many architectural features of the ancient construction were lost and it became a palace under Frankish rule and the residence of the Turkish commanders harem in the Ottoman period. Athenian legend had it that at night the remaining five Caryatids could be heard wailing for their lost sister, Elgin attempted to remove a second Caryatid, when technical difficulties arose, he tried to have it sawn to pieces
2.
Contrapposto
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Contrapposto is an Italian term that means counterpose. It is used in the arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips. This gives the figure a more dynamic, or alternatively relaxed appearance and it can also be used to refer to multiple figures which are in counter-pose to one another. It can further encompass the tension as a figure changes from resting on a leg to walking or running upon it. The leg that carries the weight of the body is known as the engaged leg, contrapposto is less emphasized than the more sinuous S Curve, and creates the illusion of past and future movement. Contrapposto was an important sculptural development, for its appearance marks the first time in Western art that the human body is used to express a psychological disposition. The balanced, harmonious pose of the Kritios Boy suggests a calm and relaxed state of mind, the first known statue to use contrapposto is Kritios Boy, c.480 BC, so called because it was once attributed to the sculptor Kritios. It is possible, even likely, that earlier bronze statues had used the technique, the statue is a Greek marble original and not a Roman copy. Prior to the introduction of contrapposto, the statues that dominated ancient Greece were the archaic kouros, contrapposto has been used since the dawn of classical western sculpture. The Polykletian statues – for example, Discophoros and Doryphoros – are idealized athletic young men with the divine sense, in these works, the pelvis is no longer axial with the vertical statue as in the archaic style of earlier Greek sculpture before Kritios Boy. Contrapposto can be seen in the Roman copies of the statues of Hermes and Heracles. A famous example is the statue of Hermes with the infant Dionysus in Olympia by Praxiteles. It can also be seen in the Roman copies of Polyclitus amazon, Greek Art emphasized humanism along with the human mind and the human body’s beauty. Greek youths trained and competed in contests in the nude. A great contribution to the pose was the concept of a canon of proportions. Classical contrapposto was revived in the Renaissance by the Italian artists Donatello and Leonardo da Vinci, followed by Michelangelo, Raphael, one of the major achievements of the Italian Renaissance was the re-discovery of contrapposto, although in Mannerism it became greatly over-used. The technique continues to be employed in sculpture
3.
British Museum
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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
4.
Greek language
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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
5.
Column
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A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member, the term column applies especially to a large round support with a capital and a base or pedestal and made of stone, or appearing to be so. A small wooden or metal support is called a post. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces, other compression members are often termed columns because of the similar stress conditions. Columns are frequently used to support beams or arches on which the parts of walls or ceilings rest. In architecture, column refers to such an element that also has certain proportional. A column might also be an element not needed for structural purposes, many columns are engaged. All significant Iron Age civilizations of the Near East and Mediterranean made some use of columns, egyptian columns are famously present in the Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak, where 134 columns are lined up in 16 rows, with some columns reaching heights of 24 metres. Some of the most elaborate columns in the ancient world were those of the Persians and they included double-bull structures in their capitals. The Hall of Hundred Columns at Persepolis, measuring 70 ×70 metres, was built by the Achaemenid king Darius I, many of the ancient Persian columns are standing, some being more than 30 metres tall. The Minoans used whole tree-trunks, usually turned upside down in order to prevent re-growth, stood on a set in the stylobate. These were then painted as in the most famous Minoan palace of Knossos, the Minoans employed columns to create large open-plan spaces, light-wells and as a focal point for religious rituals. These traditions were continued by the later Mycenaean civilization, particularly in the megaron or hall at the heart of their palaces. Being made of wood these early columns have not survived, but their bases have and through these we may see their use. The Greeks developed the classical orders of architecture, which are most easily distinguished by the form of the column and their Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders were expanded by the Romans to include the Tuscan and Composite orders. Columns, or at least large structural exterior ones, became less significant in the architecture of the Middle Ages. Early columns were constructed of stone, some out of a piece of stone. Monolithic columns are among the heaviest stones used in architecture, other stone columns are created out of multiple sections of stone, mortared or dry-fit together
6.
Entablature
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An entablature refers to the superstructure of moldings and bands which lie horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals. Entablatures are major elements of architecture, and are commonly divided into the architrave, the frieze. The Greek and Roman temples are believed to be based on wooden structures, the structure of the entablature varies with the three classical orders, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. In each, the proportions of the subdivisions are defined by the proportions of the column in the order, in Roman and Renaissance interpretations, it is usually approximately a quarter of the height of the column. Variants of entablature that do not fit these models are derived from them. Pure classical Doric entablature is simple, the architrave, the lowest band, is split, from bottom to top, into the guttae, the regulae, and the taenia. The frieze is dominated by the triglyphs, vertically channelled tablets, separated by metopes, which may or may not be decorated. The triglyphs sit on top of the taenia, a flat, thin, horizontal protrusion, and are finished at the bottom by decoration of drops, called guttae, the top of the triglyphs meet the protrusion of the cornice from the entablature. The underside of this protrusion is decorated with mutules, tablets that are finished with guttae. The cornice is split into the soffit, the corona, the soffit is simply the exposed underside. The corona and the cymatium are the parts of the cornice. The Ionic order of entablature adds the fascia in the architrave, which are flat horizontal protrusions, and the dentils under the cornice, which are tooth-like rectangular block moldings. The Corinthian order adds a far more ornate cornice, divided, from bottom to top, into the cyma reversa, the dentils, the ovulo, the modillions, the fascia, and the cyma recta. The modillions are ornate brackets, similar in use to dentils, the frieze is sometimes omitted—for example, on the portico of the caryatides of the Erechtheum—and probably did not exist as a structure in the temple of Diana at Ephesus. Neither is it found in the Lycian tombs, which are reproductions in the rock of timber based on early lonian work. The entablature is essentially an evolution of the lintel, which spans two posts, supporting the ends of the roof rafters. The entablature together with the system of columns is rarely found outside of classical architecture. It is often used to complete the upper portion of a wall where columns are not present, the use of the entablature, irrespective of columns, appeared after the Renaissance
7.
Karyes
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Karyes is a village and a former community in Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Sparti, the municipal unit has an area of 64.426 km2. It is located midway between Tripoli and Sparti. Caryae or Karyai was a town in ancient Laconia, near the border with Arcadia and it was situated on the road from Tegea to Sparta. Caryae had a sanctuary of Artemis, where the Lacedaemonian maidens held chorus dances, the caryatids, sculpted female figures used in architecture, were probably named after these maidens from Caryae. The modern village Karyes was named after this ancient town
8.
Peloponnese
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The Peloponnese or Peloponnesus is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece. It is separated from the part of the country by the Gulf of Corinth. During the late Middle Ages and the Ottoman era, the peninsula was known as the Morea, the peninsula is divided among three administrative regions, most belongs to the Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica regions. In 2016, Lonely Planet voted the Peloponnese the top spot of their Best in Europe list, the Peloponnese is a peninsula that covers an area of some 21,549.6 square kilometres and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece. It has two connections with the rest of Greece, a natural one at the Isthmus of Corinth. The peninsula has an interior and deeply indented coasts. The Peloponnese possesses four south-pointing peninsulas, the Messenian, the Mani, the Cape Malea, mount Taygetus in the south is the highest mountain in the Peloponnese, at 2,407 metres. Οther important mountains include Cyllene in the northeast, Aroania in the north, Erymanthos and Panachaikon in the northwest, Mainalon in the center, the entire peninsula is earthquake prone and has been the site of many earthquakes in the past. The longest river is the Alfeios in the west, followed by the Evrotas in the south, extensive lowlands are found only in the west, with the exception of the Evrotas valley in the south and in the Argolid in the northeast. The Peloponnese is home to spectacular beaches, which are a major tourist draw. Two groups of islands lie off the Peloponnesian coast, the Argo-Saronic Islands to the east, the island of Kythera, off the Epidaurus Limera peninsula to the south of the Peloponnese, is considered to be part of the Ionian Islands. The island of Elafonissos used to be part of the peninsula but was separated following the quake of 365 AD. Since antiquity, and continuing to the present day, the Peloponnese has been divided into seven regions, Achaia, Corinthia, Argolid, Arcadia, Laconia, Messinia. Each of these regions is headed by a city, the largest city is Patras in Achaia, followed by Kalamata in Messinia. The peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times and its modern name derives from ancient Greek mythology, specifically the legend of the hero Pelops, who was said to have conquered the entire region. The name Peloponnesos means Island of Pelops, the Mycenaean civilization, mainland Greeces first major civilization, dominated the Peloponnese in the Bronze Age from its stronghold at Mycenae in the north-east of the peninsula. The Mycenean civilization collapsed suddenly at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, archeological research has found that many of its cities and palaces show signs of destruction. The subsequent period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, is marked by an absence of written records
9.
Artemis
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Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek, Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron, Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals. The Arcadians believed she was the daughter of Demeter, in the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her, in later Hellenistic times, she even assumed the ancient role of Eileithyia in aiding childbirth. The name Artemis is of unknown or uncertain origin and etymology although various ones have been proposed, for example, according to J. T. Jablonski, the name is also Phrygian and could be compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon. Anton Goebel suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, to shake, babiniotis, while accepting that the etymology is unknown, states that the name is already attested in Mycenean Greek and is possibly of pre-Hellenic origin. It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshiped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, R. S. P. Beekes suggested that the e/i interchange points to a Pre-Greek origin. Artemis was venerated in Lydia as Artimus, various conflicting accounts are given in Classical Greek mythology of the birth of Artemis and her twin brother, Apollo. All accounts agree, however, that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, an account by Callimachus has it that Hera forbade Leto to give birth on either terra firma or on an island. Hera was angry with Zeus, her husband, because he had impregnated Leto, but the island of Delos disobeyed Hera, and Leto gave birth there. In ancient Cretan history Leto was worshipped at Phaistos and in Cretan mythology Leto gave birth to Apollo, a scholium of Servius on Aeneid iii. The myths also differ as to whether Artemis was born first, most stories depict Artemis as born first, becoming her mothers mid-wife upon the birth of her brother Apollo. The childhood of Artemis is not fully related in any surviving myth, the Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, who, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus. She wished for no city dedicated to her, but to rule the mountains, Artemis believed that she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife, particularly since she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo. All of her companions remained virgins, and Artemis closely guarded her own chastity and her symbols included the golden bow and arrow, the hunting dog, the stag, and the moon. Okeanus daughters were filled with fear, but the young Artemis bravely approached and asked for bow, Callimachus then tells how Artemis visited Pan, the god of the forest, who gave her seven bitches and six dogs. She then captured six golden-horned deer to pull her chariot, Artemis practiced with her bow first by shooting at trees and then at wild beasts. As a virgin, Artemis had interested many gods and men, Orion was accidentally killed either by Artemis or by Gaia
