Antiquities Exhibits

The sarcophagus of Etruscan priest Laris Partunus found in the Tarquinian necropolis was produced in the late Classical Period.  This exquisite sarcophagus crafted of Parian marble is painted with scenes of the Amazonomachy.  The Greeks are shown in hoplite armor while the Amazons are wearing chitons. Surprisingly, the Amazons are depicted winning most of the paired battles instead of an equal number of victories as depicted on the Amazon sarcophagus also from Tarquinia. The Partunus sarcophagus also depicts blue-skinned demons, but unlike the fearsome blue demons seen in the Tomb of the Blue Demons, also in Tarquinia, these figures appear to be gently guiding an aristocratic lady to her family like Greek psychopomps,  creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife.  The painting on the long side of the sarcophagus depicts the execution of Trojan prisoners. They too are accom...

Protesilaus (also spelled Protesilaos) was one of the suitors of Helen of Troy sworn to defend the honor of Menelaus. He brought forty black ships with him to Troy, drawing his men from "flowering" Pyrasus, coastal Antron, and Pteleus, "deep in grass", in addition to his native Phylace in ancient Thessaly. Protesilaus was "the first man who dared to leap ashore when the Greek fleet touched the Troad", Pausanias recalled, quoting the author of the epic called The Cypria.  An oracle had prophesied that the first Greek to walk on the land after stepping off a ship in the Trojan War would be the first to die, and so, after killing four men, he was himself slain by Hector. (Alternate sources have him slain by either Aeneas, Euphorbus, Achates, or Cycnus.)  The gods had pity on his widow, Laodamia, daughter of Acastus, and brought him up from Hades to see her. She was at first overjoyed, thinking he had returned from Troy, but after the gods returned him to the ...

While browsing the Getty's collections today I saw yet another intricately sculpted Roman cornelian gemstone from the 1st century BCE. "The gem captures the moment when Aeneas, son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the goddess Venus, escapes with his family from Troy at the end of the Trojan War. Aeneas climbs up the steps to a waiting ship, with his father over his right arm and his son, Ascanius, holding his left hand. Aeneas wears a corselet but no other armor. His father wears robes with a mantle pulled over his head. Ascanius, shown just at the moment of leaving the gates of the city, wears a Phrygian cap, a chiton, and cloak while holding a pedum (a hunter's throwing stick) over his left shoulder. Anchises holds a cylindrical box with an X pattern on the side. Behind them, the walls of Troy rise up, and a Greek solider in a crested helmets looks towards them from the battlements while holding a lit torch aloft in his raised right arm, a spear upright in his left. Thr...

All Greek and Etruscan metal rings with engraved bezels ultimately derive from Egyptian and Phoenician cartouche-shaped rings. The cartouche-shaped ring was especially popular in Etruria in the later 500s B.C., where immigrant Greek goldsmiths from Ionia introduced it. This example features an intricate scene of two men approaching a fountain where water gushes into a vessel from a lion's head spout. Behind the fountain, a man squats as if hiding, holding a sword. These details identify the scene as a standard depiction of the ambush of Troilos (Troilus), prince of Troy, by the Greek hero Achilles during the Trojan War. On this ring, however, a strange dog-headed creature, who is not part of the Troilos myth, sits atop the fountain. The creature may actually be jackal-headed and thus meant to recall the Egyptian god Anubis harking back to the origin of such rings from Egypt. Prophecies retold in the Iliad link the fate of Troilos, one of the sons of King Priam (or Apollo in some ve...

Despite the addition of a head of Serapis, recut and restored in the 18th century CE, the overall scene of a relief at the J. Paul Getty Museum portrays Calchas, the Argive soothsayer to whom Apollo had given the gift of prophecy. In Homer’s Iliad (II.300-30), the seer foretold that the Trojan War would last for nine years after observing a snake devour a mother sparrow and her eight chicks. The eclectic style of the relief combines the form of a late Classical Attic stele with landscape elements drawn from the Hellenistic repertoire. It was discovered in 1774 at Roma Vecchia in the Villa dei Sette Bassi, which belonged to the senatorial family of C. Bellicus Calpurnius Apolaustus. Such a panel may have decorated a library assembled by a cultured patron well versed in Greek literature. On the underside is a Latinized Greek inscription that reads XEANTHE—likely a version of Xanthe, the former name for Troy.   It was Calchas who prophesied that in order to gain a favourable wind...

A Tabula Iliaca ("Iliadic table") is a generic label for a calculation of the days of the Iliad, probably by Zenodotus, of which twenty-two fragmentary examples are now known. The Tabulae Iliacae are pinakes of early Imperial date, which all seem to have come from two Roman workshops.  The marble panels are carved in very low relief in miniature rectangles with labeling inscriptions typically surrounding a larger central relief.  The border scenes, where they can be identified, are largely derived from the Epic Cycle, a collection of ancient Greek epic poems, composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War, including the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the so-called Little Iliad, the Iliupersis, the Nostoi, and the Telegony. Eleven of the small marble tablets are pictorial representations of the Trojan War portraying episodes from the Iliad, including two circular ones on the Shield of Achilles. Another six panels depict the sack of Ilium. One of the most com...

Beginning in 5000 BCE, the talus bones of hooved animals (also known as astragali) have been found in higher numbers than other bones and in contexts unrelated to food preparation in archaeological excavations.  Although the astragalus is not entirely symmetric, it is thought these bones were used like dice in games of chance. Sophocles, in a written fragment of one of his works, ascribed the invention of knucklebones to the mythical figure Palamedes, who taught it to his Greek countrymen during the Trojan War. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain allusions to games similar in character to knucklebones.  Palamedes was the warrior Agamemnon sent to Ithaca to retrieve Odysseus, who had promised to defend the marriage of Helen and Menelaus. Odysseus did not want to honor his oath, so he plowed his fields with an ass and an ox both hitched to the same plow, so the beasts of different sizes caused the plow to pull chaotically. Palamedes guessed what was happening and put Odysseus...

In Greek mythology, Telephus (also Telephos - meaning "far-shining") was the son of Auge, a priestess of Athena who was raped by Heracles.  When her father, King Aleus of Tegea learned of her violation, he attempted to dispose of mother and child. But they ended up in Asia Minor at the court of Teuthras, king of Mysia, where Telephus was adopted as the childless king's heir. How mother and son ended up in Asia Minor is explained in a variety of versions. In the oldest extant account from a fragment of Hesiod's "Catalogue of Women, 6th century BCE, Auge goes to Mysia, is raised as a daughter by Teuthras, raped by Heracles when he arrives seeking the horses of Laomedon, and Telephus is born there. In some accounts Telephus arrives in Mysia as an infant with his mother, where Teuthras marries Auge, and adopts Telephus. In still another tale, while Auge (in various ways) is delivered to the Mysian court where she again becomes wife to the king, Telephus is instead le...

The Troy Museum, located just 800 meters from the archaeological site of ancient Troy on the western coast of Turkey, has reopened to the public. The modern facility originally opened in 2018, displays over 2,000 of its 40,000 artifacts from the  Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age presented in chronological order. Objects on display supplemented with models, drawings, maps, and multimedia presentations bring the Trojan War, as recalled in Homer's Iliad, to life including its heroes, minstrels, craftsmen, and dramatic events.  Archaeological remains from the ancient cities of Assos (Behramkale), Tenedos (Bozcaada), Parium, Alexandria Troas (Eski Stambul), Smintheion, Lampsacus (near Lapseki), Thymbra, Tavolia and Imbros (Gökçeada) are also presented. For images of some of the artifacts on display check out my original post from February: https://antiquitiesexhibits.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-troy-museum-in-tevfikiye-turkey.html A recent visitor's experience: https:/...

Yesterday and today I uploaded a group of my images of gladiator helmets and armor that I photographed at various Pompeii exhibits to Wikimedia Commons and added a gallery of those images to the gladiator Wikipedia page. The images are now freely available for teaching, writing, and research.  Most of the equipment was found at the gladiator barracks in Pompeii although one of the most ornate pieces with a relief depicting scenes from the Trojan war was found in Herculaneum. Roman gladiator helmet with relief depicting scenes from the Trojan War from Herculaneum 1st century CE Roman gladiator shin guard depicting Hercules 1st century CE Roman gladiator helmet with relief depicting scenes from the Trojan War from Herculaneum 1st century CE Roman gladiator helmet with relief depicting scenes from the Trojan War from Herculaneum 1st century CE Ornate Roman gladiator shin guards depicting Silenus and swans fighting serpents Ornate Roman gladiator shin guar...