Ancient World Review

The Temple Of Poseidon At Sounio, Greece

"Cape Sounion ... is the promontory at the southernmost tip of the Attic peninsula, 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of the town of Lavrio (ancient Thoricus), and 70 kilometres (43 mi) southeast of Athens. It is part of Lavreotiki municipality, East Attica, Greece." Source: Wikipedia.

"Cape Sounion is noted for its Temple of Poseidon, one of the major monuments of the Golden Age of Athens. Its remains are perched on the headland, surrounded on three sides by the sea."

"The original, Archaic-period temple of Poseidon on the site, which was built of tufa, was probably destroyed in 480 BC by Persian troops during Xerxes I's invasion of Greece. Although there is no direct evidence for Sounion, Xerxes certainly had the temple of Athena and everything else on the Acropolis of Athens, razed as punishment for the Athenians' defiance. After they defeated Xerxes in the naval Battle of Salamis, the Athenians placed an entire captured enemy trireme (warship with three banks of oars) at Sounion as a trophy dedicated to Poseidon." (Wikipedia)

"The temple  of Poseidon at Sounion was constructed in 444–440 BC. This was during the ascendancy of the Athenian statesman Pericles, who also rebuilt the Parthenon in Athens. It was built on the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic period."

"Archaeological evidence indicates that Sounion was a sacred area as far back as the Bronze Age," according to Ancient Greece. "... An inscription confirms that the temple was dedicated to Poseidon, and it was built upon the remains of an even earlier poros [a type of stone named after the Poros islands] temple whose foundations are still visible. This Archaic temple was razed by the Persians in 490 BCE [Wikipedia says it was 480 BC] when it still under construction. Very little is known about this earlier temple, but it is certain that it was a revered landmark, visible from afar as sailors approached or left the safety of the Attica harbors. The newer temple closely follows the size and plan of the more ancient one."

Video from 2016.

Construction Unearths "Vast Necropolis" In Cyprus

"The Cypriot Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works, Department of Antiquities has announced the results of the salvage excavations conducted in conjunction with the construction of the sewerage network of Larnaka in the period of 27th June 2016 to 31st October 2018. Throughout this period more than 110 tombs have been excavated and recorded, in a wide area of several kilometres, testifying to the presence of a vast necropolis, as well as to the architectural evidence for the city-kingdom of Kition [1]. The dating of the tombs ranges from the Early Bronze Age to the late Roman period (4th century AD)." Source: Archaeology News Network.

[1] "Excavations in the northern part of modern Larnaca ('Area II') suggest that this was the site of an important Bronze Age settlement, which already flourished between 1500 and 1300 BCE. It must have benefited from the copper trade ... In the thirteenth century BCE, Mycenaean Greek merchants came to trade in this town, and the Greeks settled here after the demise of the Mycenaean palaces in the homeland. Today, Cyclopean walls and five Mycenaean sanctuaries (near and partially replacing Temple 2) have been excavated, together with all kinds of pottery, jewelry, and figurines." Source: Livius.

Lost Greek Temple Found By Swiss Scholars (2017)

Report from 2017. English captions available.

"A group of archaeologists have ended a search lasting more than 100 years for a missing Greek temple, after working out that ancient directions to the site were wrong." Source: BBC (2017).

"In 1964, a Greek and Swiss team began digging at the Eretria site on the island of Euboea, which 'other archaeologists had been excavating in vain since the 19th century', Greece's ERT public broadcaster reports [Greek only, some pictures here].

"They were looking for a legendary temple to the Goddess Artemis, one of the most widely-venerated deities of Ancient Greece, as described by the geographer Strabo, who died early in the 1st century CE."

Closed captions in English available.

Repatriating Two Rare Looted Greek Vessels

"Standing at just under 60 centimeters in height, two 4th century BC marble vessels – a funerary lekythos and a loutrophoros – that the Greek state is in negotiations to repatriate from Switzerland have traveled across four countries, changing hands dozens of times between mediators, merchants, art collectors and even police authorities. They were photographed, sold, confiscated and sold again, leaving a trail – however faint – of shady dealings." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Greek Vases: An Introduction -- Christie's

Video from 2017.

"For a civilisation that disappeared 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks left a great deal behind: philosophy, democracy, poetry, architecture, and an extensive corpus of vases, which comprise a large part of the archaeological record. Their durability, elegance and variety mean that they are as collectable today as when prize examples first began to be actively unearthed during the rise of the Grand Tour in the 17th and 18th centuries." Source: "Collecting Guide: 7 Things To Know About Greek Vases," Christie's (the famous British auction house).

Inscribed Athenian Funerary Monuments In The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Note: "The most lavish funerary monuments were erected in the sixth century B.C. by aristocratic families of Attica in private burial grounds along the roadside on the family estate or near Athens." Source: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, the Met. "... Many of the finest Attic grave monuments stood in a cemetery located in the outer Kerameikos, an area on the northwest edge of Athens just outside the gates of the ancient city wall."

The Enigma Of The Phaistos Disc

Good video, but the nose-ring is distracting.

"The Phaistos Disc ... is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos [next video] on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium B.C.). The disk is about 15 cm (5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and meaning, and even its original geographical place of manufacture, remain disputed, making it one of the most famous mysteries of archaeology. This unique object is now on display at the archaeological museum of Heraklion" (Wikipedia)

"This object has been subject of many studies," according to Ancient Scripts. "Steven Fischer has claimed to have deciphered it [1] and that it was a document in an archaic form of Greek. Because no other similar artifacts have ever been found anywhere in the Crete, it is thought that the object was foreign and brought in from another place. The place of its origin is extremely speculative, although subtle clues may exist in the highly pictorial signs on the disc. A sign depicts a helmet with crest, which was used later by Philistines. Another sign depict a structure similar to sarcophagus used by the Lycians of Asia Minor."

[1] There have been dozens of decipherment claims over the years. According to Wikipedia, "[a] large part of the claims are clearly pseudoscientific, if not bordering on the esoteric. Linguists are doubtful whether the inscription is sufficiently long to be unambiguously interpreted. It is possible that one of these decipherments is correct, and that, without further material in the same script, we will never know which."

Roman Graffiti In Egypt

Related: Archaeologists studying 2,000-year-old graffiti discover reviews from tourists carved into the stone of the tomb of King Ramesses VI (2017)

Ancient Myths Reveal Early Fantasies About Artificial Life

From the classic Jason & the Argonauts (1963)

"Thousands of years before machine learning and self-driving cars became reality, the tales of giant bronze robot Talos, artificial woman Pandora and their creator god, Hephaestus, filled the imaginations of people in ancient Greece." Source: Phys.org.

"Historians usually trace the idea of automata to the Middle Ages, when the first self-moving devices were invented, but the concept of artificial, lifelike creatures dates to the myths and legends from at least about 2,700 years ago, said Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar in the [Stanford] Department of Classics in the School of Humanities and Sciences. These ancient myths are the subject of Mayor's latest book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology."

The Creation of Pandora, John D. Batten (1860-1932) [Public domain].

Comment: I knew that Talos was a giant animated bronze statue -- he was a robot sentry designed to patrol Crete and defend the island from pirates -- but I had no idea that Pandora was also a form of artificial life. I got confused because I didn't realize that there are actually two Pandoras in Greek mythology, one of them a goddess, the other a synthetic woman -- the first human woman -- who was created by Hephaestus, Greek god of blacksmiths, metalworking, carpenters, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metallurgy, fire, and volcanoes:

"Pandora, whose name combines 'all' and 'gifts',  was a goddess connected with the earth, but she is better known as the first human female, the cause of all man's woes [1]. If the name has any relevance here, it sounds ironic; but the two Pandoras may in fact be connected through the idea of the earth as first ancestor." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised).

[1] The artificial woman Pandora takes the blame for all the problems in the world, but in reality she was just a pawn of the high and mighty Zeus. She was also responsible for releasing Hope into the world.

Talos was an ancient security robot programmed to walk around the island of Crete and attack anybody who tried to invade it. He was strictly a machine, a pretty dumb machine at that. His modern equivalents are being manufactured by companies like DARPA Boston Dynamics.

Pandora was a lot more complex than Talos. In a sense, she was one of the earliest sex robots, but she was also a living human being, the original woman, an Eve figure with human emotions like curiosity and regret. The modern equivalents of Pandora are being produced by companies like Abyss Creations (see next video) and Realbotix.

If Pandora, a single artificial woman, could create so much trouble, then there's no telling what all these modern sexbots are capable of doing. And our modern AI military robots could wreak all sorts of havoc if they ever run amok. Talos was the original Terminator, but he was nothing compared to some of the mechanical killing machines being produced right now.

Alexander The Great Pronounced Dead Prematurely?

This is the last of a 14-part lecture series by the historian Robin Lane Fox.

"While details differ, the general outline of Alexander’s death in the city of Babylon in 323 B.C., is roughly the same: Alexander spent a night drinking with the naval officer Nearchus, then hit the booze the following day with his buddy Medius of Larissa. Soon after, a fever struck and he complained of acute pain in his back as if being stabbed by a spear. The fever worsened and he slowly became unable to move and then unable to speak. When he drank wine, he only became thirstier. The paralysis grew, and eventually he could not raise his head." Source: The Smithsonian.

After Alexander's death, his body, according to Petrarch, didn't start decomposing for six days. Decomposition normally starts almost immediately, so if Plutarch is correct this suggests that Alexander didn't actually die when his companions thought he did. There's no way to know for sure, but one expert believes that he may have been paralyzed by a nasty disease known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome:

"... to Katherine Hall of the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Alexander’s symptoms resembled a case of a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves, leading to eventual paralysis. She suggests Alexander contracted a Campylobacter pylori infection, the 'most frequent cause for GBS world-wide,' which set off the autoimmune disorder, a theory she presents in The Ancient History Bulletin."

The question, I guess -- and I haven't been able to find an answer to this -- is whether someone stricken with GBS would end up so totally unresponsive that people might naturally assume that they were dead. Admittedly speculative, this grim scenario isn't totally implausible.

"Once [Alexander] was extensively paralyzed, that could have lowered his body’s demand for oxygen. His pupils would have been fixed and dilated, and his body may not have been able to regulate his temperature properly, making him cold. Because physicians in the ancient world relied on breath not pulse to determine death, Alexander’s death may have been announced prematurely." (Smithsonian)