Assorted photos from a recent visit to the Thebes Archaeological Museum. So. Much. Incredible. Archaeology.
Category archives: Archaeology
Maussolleion Reconstructions: From Dinsmoor to Dali
I have been thinking a little about where Kühnel got his inspiration to use the “Maussolleion of Halikarnassos” as the model for his crematorium in Nordre Kirkegård. The American architect William B. Dinsmoor (1886-1973) published two papers on the Maussolleion in the 1908 volume of American Journal of Archaeology, from which the above reconstruction is […]
Open Access News: Ephesus and Millennium-Studien
The Forschungen in Ephesus volumes that publish the results of the ÖAI excavations at Ephesus are notoriously unwieldy but also uniquely valuable and important. For these reasons, it is excellent to see the news that ALL of them are now available online in open access. And unlike a lot of other e-books, they seem easy […]
Konstantinos Zachos on the Actium Victory Monument
Here’s an interesting online presentation by Konstantinos Zachos on the excavations of the Augustan victory monument at Nikopolis that revealed thousands of fragments of Pentelic marble sculpture (with some comments on deliberate destruction at around the 33-minute mark). Thanks to Carsten (Hjort Lange) for the tip.
Teaching Thursday: Contexts of Classical Sculpture
One of the fun things I’m doing this semester is teaching a new graduate seminar for our graduate students in classical archaeology on “Contexts of Classical Sculpture.” With them previously having been schooled in the basics of chronology and style, the seminar dives straight into current discussions about the meanings and uses of “context” in […]
Julius Lange at the British Museum in 1867
The art historian Julius Lange (1838-96) is likely to be among the first Danes to have seen the sculptures from the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos. The sculptures, most famously the two colossal portraits usually identified as Maussollos and Artemisia II, had been recovered by the British vice-consul Charles T. Newton in 1857 and then transported by […]
The One That Got Away: The Via Labicana Augustus
Frederik Poulsen wasn’t always successful in getting the pieces he wanted for the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. In the second volume of his memoirs, I det gæstfrie Europa (1947), he discusses some of his experiences working under the direction of Carl Jacobsen as well as his occasional failures in acquiring a number of different sculptures, including […]
Bodrum in “Who is Europe”
As part of the broader work of the CoHERE project that our recent paper on the Maussolleion in Bodrum was one small part of, documentary filmmaker Ian McDonald produced a film, “Who is Europe? A Film in Six Acts” that has been shown at a several film festivals across the world. Act 4 is Bodrum […]
“Possibly the world’s finest Greek portrait”: Demosthenes – from Knole to Copenhagen
Among the most famous sculptures in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is the portrait statue of Demosthenes (inv. 2782; Arachne entry with some further bibliography). The statue is reported to have been found in Campania, where it was once part of the collection of a palazzo in central Naples. In 1770, it then made its way […]
Being Karian: On “Classical” Heritage in Bodrum
Gönül Bozoglu, Vinnie Nørskov and I have a new paper on “The Phantom Mausoleum: Contemporary Local Heritages of a Wonder of the Ancient World in Bodrum, Turkey” out in the Journal of Social Archaeology. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Bodrum that we’ve done over a number of years and especially a series […]