My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 2 (June 20th, 2023)

Hello everyone! I’m making this post to give a further update about all the exciting things I’ve been doing in the past week in Greece. This will be the second installment in my ongoing blog of my experience in the ASCSA Summer Session for summer 2023, covering the period of Wednesday, June 14th, through Tuesday, June 20th. The first installment can be found here. In this installment, I will describe how I (among many other things) went inside the Parthenon, walked in the ruins of a 3,500-year-old Minoan city, hiked through the Gorge of Dead, and went swimming in the Aegean Sea.

Wednesday, June 14th, 2023

I woke up and ate breakfast in the dining room of Loring Hall at 7:00 a.m. After that, Dr. Glenn Bugh, the affable program director, whom we all call either “Glenn” or “Bugh,” led my fellow students and me over to the Wiener Laboratory, which is the ASCSA’s state-of-the-art, specialist lab for the analysis of human, animal, and plant remains.

First, we went into the lab for human remains. There, Dr. Maria Liston, a professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo, who is a specialist in the study of human bones, told us about the lab’s resources and her own ongoing research on the skeletons excavated from the ancient Christian cemetery at Thebes and the skeletons of the warriors of the famous Sacred Band of Thebes excavated from their mass grave at Chaironeia. She showed us the bones of a person afflicted with advanced leprosy from the Christian cemetery in Thebes and the skeleton of one of the members of the Sacred Band.

After this, Dr. Panagiotis Karkanas, the director of the laboratory, showed us the room for animal and plant remains, the DNA extraction lab, and the analysis lab. In each room, he told us about the lab’s capabilities and ongoing research. Unfortunately, because many of the materials the lab studies are unpublished, I am not allowed to post any photos of the inside of the lab.

At 10:00 a.m., we went up to the conference room in the Blegen Library and Glenn gave us a brief talk about the Summer Session’s approach to Greek history, explaining that the program is designed with the assumption that we all already have a basic knowledge of Greek history. He also explained that we will be visiting and discussing sites, monuments, and artifacts from all periods of Greek history spanning from as early as prehistoric times to as recently as the World War II.

We were not going to be served lunch in Loring Hall that day, so we all went out to find food on our own at various restaurants in Kolonaki. I ended up going to a café with a handful of other students.

At 1:00 p.m., it was time for us to go to the ancient agora, so we took the Metro to Monastiraki Square, which is located near the ancient agora. As soon as we exited the Metro station, we encountered three major historic buildings dating to different periods of Athens’ long post-Classical history that are all built in close proximity to each other. These serve as a reminder of the fact that, although the population of Athens has grown and declined at various points over the centuries, people have basically been inhabiting central Athens continuously ever since antiquity.

In the middle of Monastiraki Square stands the Church of the Pantanassa, which was originally built in the tenth century CE during the medieval Roman period as the katholikon (i.e., the main church building) of an Orthodox monastery, which covered the area that is now the square and the areas surrounding it.

Today, the church is all that remains of that monastery. As a result of this, during the Ottoman Period, the church became known in Greek as monastiraki, which means “little monastery.” Eventually, locals came to apply this name to the whole area of the city around the church, thus giving Monastiraki its name.

ABOVE: View of the Church of the Pantanassa in Monastiraki Square

On the south side of the square, closer to the ancient agora and the Akropolis, is the Tzistarakis Mosque, which the Ottoman governor of Athens Moustafa Aga Tzistarakis originally constructed in 1759 as a mosque.

There are not many surviving buildings from Ottoman Period in Athens today because, after the Greeks gained their independence from the Ottoman Empire and founded the modern Greek nation-state, they adopted Athens as their capital in 1834 and, in the following years, quickly demolished most of the Ottoman-Era buildings from the city in order to rid it of reminders of the centuries of Ottoman rule over Greece, which they fervently despised and wished to forget.

Thankfully, the Greeks spared the Tzistarakis Mosque. As a result, it is probably the most prominent Ottoman-Era building that still stands in Athens in the twenty-first century. Today, the building is no longer a mosque, but rather an annex to the Museum of Greek Folk Art. In front of the building stand several shops for tourists, which sell the same kitschy, overpriced souvenir items that one can find in similar shops all throughout Greece.

ABOVE: View of the Tzistarakis Mosque, which is nearly the first thing one sees upon exiting the Monastiraki Metro station

Directly to the south of the Tzistarakis Mosque along the route we took to the ancient agora is the Library of Hadrian, which the Roman emperor Hadrian constructed in 132 CE as one of his many gifts to the city of the Athens.

ABOVE: View of the Library of Hadrian, located directly to the south of the Tzistarakis Mosque

As one walks from the Monastiraki Metro station to the ancient agora, one passes a large number of shops and restaurants, which mostly cater to foreign tourists who are visiting the area to see the ancient ruins there.

When we arrived at the entrance to the ancient agora, we met Dr. John K. Papadopoulos, who is a professor of archaeology and classics at UCLA and the current director of the ongoing ASCSA excavations in the agora. He showed us the site where the ASCSA is currently excavating the remains of the Stoa Poikile or “Painted Stoa” on the north side of the agora and we briefly watched the excavators at work.

After that, we headed to the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos, which serves as a museum and as the main office for the ongoing agora excavations. We went up a staircase to the second floor, where we had an excellent view of the agora and the Temple of Hephaistos.

ABOVE: Photo that I had one of my fellow students take of me standing on the second floor of the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos in the Athenian agora with a view of the Temple of Hephaistos in the background

Aspasia Efstathiou, the associate registrar for the agora excavations, took us into a back office that is closed to the public and showed us the archive of notes and reports from previous excavators.

Next, Dr. Jim Sickinger, a professor of classics at Florida State University who is an expert on ancient Greek law and epigraphy, came into the same office space and gave us a lecture about ancient Athenian ostracism and some of the material evidence related to it that archaeologists have found in the agora.

He showed us a box full of ostraka inscribed with the names of Athenian men that excavators had found in the agora in the past year. These included ostraka bearing the names of the famous Athenian politicians Aristeides and Themistokles. He passed the ostraka around and we were able to actually hold them in our own hands, which was really exciting. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to share any photos of the ostraka because they are still unpublished.

After this, we went down a staircase that is not accessible to the public into a vast, dimly-lit basement that lies underneath the reconstructed stoa. It is a gigantic, underground warehouse full of shelves upon shelves of artifacts that excavators have uncovered in the agora: shelves upon shelves of ancient amphorai, inscriptions, and every kind of artifact you can name. Unfortunately, we were strictly prohibited from taking any photos of this underground storehouse, so I cannot share any photos here.

We went back into the storehouse and over to a desk surrounded by open wooden crates full of hundreds of human bones dating back thousands of years to the time of the ancient agora. The crates were open, so we could see dozens of human bones packed away in them. Dr. Maria Liston, whom we all met earlier, sat at the desk underneath a concentrated light that illuminated only the desk and little of the room around it. Laid out on the desk in front of her, she had several sets of ancient human bones.

Dr. Liston delivered a fascinating presentation about the bones she had displayed on the desk. One set of bones were those of a fetus, which was buried in the agora sometime around 850 BCE along with those of its mother, the so-called “Rich Athenian Lady,” who evidently died in childbirth, most likely in considerable agony. Dr. Liston also showed us the bones of a child whose face a Herulian warrior had brutally smashed open during the Heruli sack of Athens in 267 CE and whom the people of Athens had subsequently buried unceremoniously in a mass grave in a well in the agora.

She also showed us the bones of an adult male found in a similar mass grave in a well in the agora dating to the time of the Heruli sack. She told us that she believes that this man was a Herulian warrior. The man suffered a whole litany of escalating injuries prior to his death and, after his violent demise, someone appears to have dragged his corpse with a farming tool and dumped it into the well along with those of victims of the sack.

Around 3:15 p.m., we walked over to the Hephaistion or Temple of Hephaistos, which stands atop a large hill on the northwest side of the agora. The Athenians began building the temple in 449 BCE as part of the Periklean building project and completed it around 415 BCE. They originally dedicated it as a temple to Hephaistos, the patron god of craftsmen.

Sometime around 700 CE or thereabouts, Christian authorities converted the temple into a church dedicated to Saint Georgios Akamates. It remained a Christian church until 1834 when Athens became the capital of the new nation-state of Greece and King Otto ordered for the church to be turned into a secular museum. In 1934, the museum collection was removed and it became an archaeological monument.

As a result of the fact that the building was in continuous use throughout its entire history up until 1934 at least, it was well maintained and no one removed any of its blocks for other construction projects. As a result, today, the Temple of Hephaistos in the Agora is the best-preserved ancient Greek temple in Greece itself. The walls of the naos (i.e., the inner chamber) are fully intact and the temple still has its original roof, which is virtually unheard of for any other Greek temple of its period.

At the temple, Dr. John McKesson Camp II, who was continuously involved in the Athenian Agora Excavations for fifty-six years from 1966 until he retired in 2022, served as the director of the excavations in the agora for eighteen years from 1994 to 2022, has published numerous articles and monographs about Greek architecture, and is regarded as possibly the foremost expert in the world on archaeological sites in Athens and Attica, gave a lecture to us about Doric architecture, using the Hephaistion as an example.

ABOVE: View of the Temple of Hephaistos atop its hill

ABOVE: Photo I took showing the outside of the Temple of Hephaistos in the Athenian Agora

ABOVE: Close-up of the corner of the Temple of Hephaistos

ABOVE: Close-up showing underneath the colonnade of the Hephaistion

ABOVE: Interior view of the roof of the Hephaistion colonnade

The Temple of Hephaistos is permanently roped off and ordinary tourists are not allowed to go inside, but the ASCSA has significant clout in Greece and was able to get permission for us to go behind the ropes and actually go inside the temple because we are a group of archaeological students and we are learning about architectural and archaeological features of the temple that we could only see from the inside.

It felt absolutely thrilling and surreal to stand inside a real ancient Greek temple. This feeling was only magnified by the fact that the particular temple in question is so magnificently well preserved that it still has its complete original roof, which made being inside it feel more like being inside an actual building than inside a ruin.

ABOVE: View of the Akropolis from inside the colonnade of the Temple of Hephaistos

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take showing me standing just inside the front entrance to the naos of the Temple of Hephaistos

After we finished up at the Temple of Hephaistos, Glenn encouraged us to take some time to explore the surrounding Plaka district, which has many shops and restaurants that cater to foreign (especially American) tourists. I ended up looking around in some shops with one of my fellow students for a little while. Then we took the Metro back to the school. We ate dinner in Loring at 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, June 15th, 2023

This day was our first day trip to visit various rural sites in Attica (i.e., the region of Greece that surrounds Athens). I woke up at around 5:40 a.m. and ate breakfast in the dining hall at Loring at around 6:50 a.m. A bus was parked in front of the Gennadios Library and we all loaded into it. The bus left at 7:30 a.m. and, at around 8:15 a.m., we arrived at Brauron, which was a sanctuary to the goddess Artemis in antiquity.

Brauron is an important site for the study of Classical Greek religion, since, during the Classical Period, Athenian girls between the ages of five and ten would go there to participate in a ritual in which they would pretend to be bears, which are known in Greek as ἄρκτοι (árktoi), in honor of the goddess. Young Athenian girls would also dedicate childhood toys and articles of clothing there to the goddess shortly before they married.

We walked along a dirt and gravel path past some agricultural fields to the archaeological site. A small fifteenth-century church was built on a hill above the site. The site itself consisted of the ruins of a temple to Artemis and a stoa, which served as an adjunct building to the temple.

There were no other visitors at the site for the entire time we were there. I overheard Glenn telling one of the other students that Brauron isn’t very well known to non-classicists, that tour buses never take people there, and that the only way foreign tourists can visit the site is if they rent a car and drive out. He said that, as a result, every time he has been there, the site and museum have been mostly or completely deserted.

We sat in the shade next to the church and Dr. Georgia Tsouvala, an associate professor of history at Illinois State University who specializes in ancient Greek history and culture, delivered a lecture about the ancient sources for the rituals that took place at the site and what is known about the site itself. Then she showed us around the site. Visitors are not normally allowed to go off the path and get up close to the ruins, but we were allowed to.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the archaeological site of Brauron, showing part of the ruins of the Temple of Artemis itself (foreground) and the stoa that served as an adjunct building to the temple (background)

ABOVE: Ruins of the Temple of Artemis at Brauron

ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruined stoa that lies next to the ruins of the temple

ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruined stoa from the other side

ABOVE: Photo I took of the fifteenth-century Christian church built on the hill above the archaeological site of Brauron

After that, we went to the Archaeological Museum of Brauron, which has an impressive collection of artifacts and artworks that archaeologists have found at the site. The museum staff told us that we were allowed to take photos of the artifacts in the collection by themselves, but no photos with ourselves standing next to the artifacts.

ABOVE: Marble relief sculpture known as the “Relief of the Gods” dating to sometime between c. 420 and c. 410 BCE, found at Brauron and now held in the archaeological museum there, depicting the deities Zeus (far left), Leto (center left), Apollon (center right), and Artemis (far right)

ABOVE: Marble relief slab dating to before the mid second century CE found at Merenda depicting Odysseus trying to steal the arrows of Herakles from Philoktetes

ABOVE: Terra-cotta doll with joints made as a dedication to Artemis at Brauron

ABOVE: Assortment of terra-cotta figures dedicated to Artemis at Brauron on display in the Archaeological Museum of Brauron

After we left the Archaeological Museum of Brauron, we loaded back into the bus and rode to Thorikos, a deme site of ancient Attica. There, we hiked up the side of the Velatouri hill to the deme theater, which was built sometime between c. 525 and c. 480 BCE and is one of the earliest surviving Greek stone theaters. Unlike the vast majority of surviving Greek theaters, which are round, the theater at Thorikos is semi-rectangular in shape. Dr. Lee Brice, a professor of history at Western Illinois University, delivered a lecture about the theater and gave a us a few minutes to walk around and explore the site.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the ancient deme theater at Thorikos from above

After that, Dr. Brice led us over to the entrance to an ancient silver mine. The mine was closed off with a secure metal gate and we were not allowed to go inside, but Dr. Brice told us what it would be like if we did go in. He said that, as one goes deeper into the mine, the temperature increasingly rises and the air grows increasingly thin.

He vividly described for us the horrific working conditions that ancient workers in the mine, who are thought to have been mostly enslaved men, must have endured. They worked in an extremely cramped, dark mine in absolutely brutal, burning heat with little oxygen, since both the workers themselves and the lamps they used for light produced heat and consumed oxygen. The miners must have worked completely naked, since it would have been too hot for them to have survived wearing any clothing.

The workers would not have found silver on its own in its pure form; instead, they would have been mining for lead ore, which contains very small amounts of silver. Many of the same workers would have also been involved in the process of smelting lead ore for silver, which is an extremely hazardous chemical process that involves the production of enormous amounts of highly toxic fumes, which workers would have been constantly breathing in.

In addition to the absolutely horrific working conditions, which must have taken a severe toll on all the workers’ health, accidents and tunnel collapses must have been extremely common. As a result of all these factors, most ancient mine workers couldn’t have lived for very long. Most probably only survived working in the mines for a few years.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the entrance to the ancient silver mine at Thorikos

Dr. Brice also showed us a very faint ancient inscription carved into a rock above the entrance to the mine that many scholars believe is a map of the mine itself.

ABOVE: Photo of the map of the mine carved into a rock above the entrance

After Dr. Brice’s presentation, we left Thorikos, loaded back onto the bus, and headed to the Archaeological Museum of Laurion. We had forty-five minutes to eat a quick lunch in the shade outside the museum, use the restroom, and see what we wanted to in the museum’s collection.

The museum was small and run-down and clearly had not been updated or renovated in many decades. It also seemed to me like the museum doesn’t get very many visitors, since there was no one else there for the entire time we were there. The most exciting things I saw there were a pair of marble statues depicting the goddess Kybele seated on a throne accompanied by a lion. One statue depicts her with the lion on her lap and the other depicts her with the lion resting beside her throne. Both of the statues date to the late fourth century BCE and were found at Laurion.

I found these statues exciting because I wrote my undergraduate honors thesis about the Galloi, who were mendicant, self-castrated, gender-nonconforming devotees of Kybele, and I am currently writing my master’s thesis about the rituals associated with her worship in the Classical and early Hellenistic Periods. It was really awesome to encounter a couple of statues of her from the period that I study purely by chance during such a quick stop at such a small museum.

ABOVE: The first of two marble statues of Kybele seated upon a throne that I saw in the Archaeological Museum of Laurion

ABOVE: The second marble statue of Kybele that I saw in the Archaeological Museum of Laurion

We left Laurion and rode out in the bus to Sounion, a site located on the sea at the very tip of the Attic peninsula. There we went to see the Temple of Poseidon, a Doric-order temple which the Athenians began building sometime between c. 444 and c. 440 BCE and may have completed sometime in the 420s BCE.

The temple stands on top of a mountain that overlooks and is surrounded by the sea. The view from the temple of the sea and the beaches below is absolutely phenomenal. Unlike Brauron and Thorikos, however, Sounion is very popular for tourists and there were quite a few other visitors there at the same time we were.

At the temple, Dr. Aileen Ajootian, a professor of classics, art, and art history at the University of Mississippi, gave a lecture to us about it. As with the previous temples we visited, we were allowed to go behind the ropes and enter the temple itself, which was really amazing.

ABOVE: Photograph I took of the Temple of Poseidon as we approached

ABOVE: Photo I took of the Temple of Poseidon a bit closer up

ABOVE: Photo I took of some columns of the Temple of Poseidon close up with a view of the sea the background

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow participants take of me standing in front of the Temple of Poseidon

ABOVE: Close-up of the columns and architraves of the Temple of Poseidon

ABOVE: Photo of the other side of the Temple of Poseidon

The temple was covered in graffiti that various visitors over the past two thousand years have left. The oldest surviving graffito on the temple is a Greek inscription that a man named Onesimos carved sometime in the Roman period on the east side of the second marble block above the ground of the south anta of the pronaos.

ABOVE: Photograph I took of the oldest surviving graffito on the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, which dates to the Roman period

Onesimos may be the first person who is known to have inscribed his name on the temple, but he was certainly not the most famous. Over a thousand years after him, the famous English Romantic poet and philhellene Lord Byron visited the temple and carved his name on the east side of the second block above the ground on the north anta of the pronaos.

ABOVE: Photograph I took of Lord Byron’s name on the north anta of the pronaos of the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion

After exploring the Temple of Poseidon, we went down to the hill to the Sanctuary of Athena at Sounion, which is, unfortunately, not nearly as well preserved. The sanctuary does, however, include a small shrine to Athena which still contains the base of a cult statue. The statue itself is long gone, but its base, hewn from gray Eleusinian limestone, remains.

ABOVE: Photo of the shrine of Athena that still contains the base of a cult statue

Excitingly, while we were exploring the Sanctuary of Athena, Dr. Tsouvala happened to find a small, heavily corroded, bronze ancient coin lying on the ground above the surface. (She reported the accidental find to the proper archaeological authorities. I will not say where at the site she found it because I do not wish to encourage looting.)

After we saw all the sites we were going to see for the day, we rode in the bus down to the beach at Sounion (the same one that we had looked down upon from the Temple of Poseidon) and we had the option to go swimming in the Aegean Sea. Most of the students did change into swimsuits and go swimming, but I did not because I generally don’t like swimming and I am honestly terrified of going in the water. (I have many traumatic memories of forced swimming lessons during my K-12 education.) There were several other students who decided not to swim also, so we sat around variously chatting and reading instead.

Finally, at around 5:30 p.m., we all loaded back onto the bus and began the ride back to Athens. We arrived back at around 7:00 p.m. and ate dinner in the dining hall at 8:00 p.m. as usual.

Friday, June 16th, 2023

I woke up at 5:40 a.m. and went to the dining hall for breakfast at 6:30. We all left to take the Metro to the Akropolis at 7:30 a.m. There was a long line for tickets to go up to the Akropolis, but we were eventually able to bypass this line using our ASCSA museum passes. The way up to the Akropolis was already fairly crowded with tourists, even though it was only around 8:00 a.m.

As we went up, we passed through the Theater of Dionysos Eleuthereus, which is the site where the Athenians during the Classical Period staged plays for the City Dionysia. Many of the surviving tragedies of Aischylos, Sophokles, Euripides, and Aristophanes were first performed in that very theater.

The theater looked very different in the fifth century BCE than it does today, though, since, in the fifth century BCE, it had only wooden benches. The marble benches that the theater has today were added in the second half of the fourth century BCE.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the Theater of Dionysos Eleuthereus as we passed through it on our way up to the Akropolis for the first time

On our way up to the Akropolis, we also passed over the more architecturally imposing Theater of Herodes Attikos, which the ultrawealthy Athenian aristocrat and philanthropist Herodes Attikos commissioned to be built in 161 CE in memory of his wife Regilla, whom he allegedly murdered. The theater underwent extensive restoration in the 1950s and is still used as a venue for concerts and performances today.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the Theater of Herodes Attikos as we passed over it on our way up to the Akropolis

We entered the Akropolis through the Propylaia, which is the colossal gateway that the Athenians began to build in 437 BCE as part of the Periklean building project and completed in 432 BCE.

Upon entering through the Propylaia, I experienced my first up-close view of the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. Before seeing them in person, I had already seen both of these buildings a thousand times in a thousand different photos and I knew exactly what they looked like from every angle. Despite this, the experience of seeing them in person was totally different from the experience of seeing photos of them.

Intellectually, I always knew that the Parthenon was enormous. Nonetheless, I still failed to imagine what it would be like to see the same building that I had seen in so many photos on such an enormous scale in front of me. Absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what it was like to see that colossal building towering above me at its full size. It was truly an awesome sight.

ABOVE: Photo I took of my first up-close view of the Parthenon after entering the Akropolis through the Propylaia for the first time

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow participants in the Summer Session take of me standing in front of the east façade of the Parthenon

Vasso Manidaki, the chief architect for the ongoing restoration of the Parthenon, gave us a two-and-a-half-hour presentation about the Parthenon and the ongoing restoration work on it.

The Parthenon is permanently roped off and tourists are not allowed to go inside it or even onto the steps of it. Because we are archaeology students affiliated with the ASCSA, though, during her presentation, Manidaki was able to take us behind the ropes, up the steps, and inside the Parthenon on the east side so that we could see the construction at work clearly with our own eyes.

It was an absolutely thrilling and surreal experience to walk on the original ancient floor of the temple and stand right next to its columns. What made it feel even more thrilling was the knowledge that, of the millions of people who have seen the Parthenon, only an extremely tiny number have been able to go inside it. Now I can say that I am one of those people.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the interior of the Parthenon showing all the construction equipment

ABOVE: Photo I took of the other side of the interior of the Parthenon

ABOVE: Photo I took showing the scaffolding on one column on the east side of the Parthenon

Afterward, she took us into the Parthenon restoration workshop. There, she showed us how specialist stoneworkers precisely carve new marble pieces to fit together exactly with original blocks of the temple that are damaged to complete them while preserving as much of the original stone as possible. She also showed us how they affix new marble to the old and how they carve entirely new blocks to fill in places where the original stones are entirely missing.

By the time Manidaki was finished with us, the Akropolis had gone from crowded to absolutely jam-packed with throngs and throngs of tourists. Glenn told us that he was leaving since he’d already seen the Akropolis plenty of times and he didn’t enjoy the crowds, but he said that we were welcome to stay if we wanted. He reminded us that we would be coming back to see it again later in the program. All of us decided to leave with him.

As we were coming down, I saw the Temple of Athena Nike very clearly. I realized that I had totally misjudged the scale of the temple. I had always imagined it as a small building, barely more than a shrine. Seeing it in person, though, I realized that it is actually enormous. It only looks small when compared to the even more colossal Propylaia, Parthenon, and Erechtheion.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the Temple of Athena Nike as we were coming down from the Akropolis

We all ate lunch at Loring Hall. Later, that afternoon, at 3:00 p.m., we all took the Metro over to the Akropolis Museum. The museum’s current building was designed by a pair of star architects and opened to the public in 2009, so the building was fairly new and very impressive. We met up with Dr. Aileen Ajootian again and she served as our guide in the museum. On our way in, we passed tons of pottery and beautiful sculptures.

ABOVE: Photo I took of two terra-cotta cult statues of Artemis on display in the entry room to the Akropolis Museum

In the first room, I happened to spot a small naïskos relief sculpture of Kybele sitting on a throne holding a tympanon (i.e., a hand drum) in her left hand, so I snapped a quick photo.

We started out by looking at the museum’s collection of artworks from the Archaic Period. We viewed the remaining sculptures from the older temples to Athena that previously stood where the Parthenon stands now. We also saw some beautiful Archaic korai (i.e., statues of beautifully clothed young women in stiff posture) and kouroi (i.e., statues of beautiful nude young men, also with stiff posture).

Unfortunately, for some reason, the museum forbids visitors from taking photos of the artifacts in their collection from the Archaic Period, even though they allow pictures everywhere else, so I have no pictures of my own that I can share of that part of the collection.

After Dr. Ajootian showed us and lectured to us about the artifacts in the Archaic collection, she showed us the sculptures from the Propylaia, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheion. The Erechtheion sculptures included five of the six original karyatids from the karyatid porch. (One of the karyatids is in the British Museum in London because Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, looted it in the early nineteenth century at the same time that he looted many of the sculptures from the Parthenon.)

ABOVE: Photo I took of the karyatids from the Erechtheion on display in the Akropolis Museum

Finally, we went to the top floor to see the star of the collection: the Parthenon Marbles. These are the sculptures from the Parthenon that Lord Elgin did not steal and that therefore remained in Athens.

ABOVE: Parthenon frieze fragment of men carrying jars in the Panathenaic procession

ABOVE: Parthenon frieze fragment of men leading a ram for a sacrifice

ABOVE: Parthenon frieze fragment of men leading a bull for a sacrifice

ABOVE: Parthenon frieze fragment of showing deities on thrones watching the Panathenaic procession

Saturday, June 17, 2023

I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to finish packing my things for Krete. Then I ate breakfast in Loring Hall. At 7:30 a.m., we all boarded a bus for Peiraieus, which is the ancient port of the city of Athens. The bus drove down to Peiraieus and we made our first stop at the Archaeological Museum of Peiraieus.

There, Dr. Olga Palagia, a professor of classical archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, who is one of the most renowned experts in the world on Classical Athenian sculpture, delivered a presentation and showed us the museum’s collections.

The museum was fairly large and it had a truly impressive collection of ancient art and artifacts, but it was very run-down and clearly in need of some updating. The air conditioner did not work very well, so the building was burning hot. The museum seemed to be doing little in the way of conservation. Many of the artifacts on display were not labeled and Dr. Palagia told us that many of the labels that the museum did have were wildly outdated and inaccurate. When I used the restroom, the toilet was broken and wouldn’t flush, one of the two sinks didn’t work and wouldn’t even turn on, and the other sink (which did at least turn on) had a loose and leaky faucet.

Dr. Palagia also made numerous comments during her presentation about the fact that the director of the museum for forty years had absolutely refused to let any scholars have access to any of the artifacts in the collection to do any kind of research or publish about any of the artifacts. She said that, thankfully, a few months ago, the museum had gotten a new director who was more open to allowing scholars to have access and who was planning to conduct a massive overhaul of the museum’s displays.

The museum had several absolutely stunning bronze sculptures dating to the fourth century BCE: one imitation of an Archaic kouros, two statues of the goddess Artemis, one of a tragic theatrical mask, and one statue of the goddess Athena. The statue of Athena was the most artistically stunning of all the pieces in the museum.

Full-size bronze statues of this kind from the Classical Period are extremely rare because people in later periods melted the vast majority of Classical bronze sculptures down in order to reuse their metal. The statues in the Archaeological Museum of Peiraieus have only survived because they happened to be buried in the ruins of a house that the soldiers of the Roman general Sulla destroyed during their sack of Athens in 86 BCE. As a result, later people who might have melted the statues down for their metal were not able to access them.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the fourth-century BCE bronze imitation of an Archaic kouros

ABOVE: Photo I took of the first bronze statue of Artemis, dating to the final quarter of the fourth century BCE

ABOVE: Photo I took of the other bronze statue of Artemis, also dating to the fourth century BCE

ABOVE: Close-up of the second Artemis statue’s head and upper body

ABOVE: Photo I took of the statue of Athena, which also dates to the fourth century BCE, showing her full body from the front

ABOVE: Photo of the full Athena statue from the side

ABOVE: Detail of the upper portion of the Athena statue from the side

I was also especially excited by the fact that the museum had a fairly extensive collection of objects related to the cult of Kybele, including a full-sized marble cult statue of her sitting on a throne accompanied by a lion that was carved in the fourth century BCE and stood in her temple at Mounychia.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the full-sized marble cult statue of Kybele, dating to the fourth century BCE, that stood in her temple at Mounychia

ABOVE: A couple of examples of smaller cult images of Kybele also on display in the Archaeological Museum of Peiraieus

After leaving the Archaeological Museum of Peiraieus, we went down to the harbor and walked a significant distance along the street by the harbor to the location of the ancient Athenian ship sheds, built in the fifth century BCE at the height of the Athenian Empire. Most of the site remains buried and archaeologists cannot excavate it because various shops are built over it, but they have excavated one small part of it.

A run-down building with filthy, opaque windows covered in graffiti covers the excavated portion of the site. Most of us were baffled as Glenn led us up to the building and we wondered whether we were even in the right place. Then we went inside and immediately stepped down an unstable metal set of steps onto the ancient ruins. The inside of the building was dark, extremely humid, and at least five degrees hotter than the street outside. The pungent odor of salt water and mildew filled the air.

The ruins themselves were not terribly impressive, but Glenn explained to us that what we saw before us is what remains of the massive building where the Athenian Empire stored the warships that were the base of its imperial power.

ABOVE: Photo I took of what remains of the Athenian ship sheds, built in the fifth century BCE at the height of the Athenian Empire

After that, we ended up walking further into the city, where we saw the arsenal of Philon. The Athenians constructed the building in 347/6 BCE as a place to house weapons and equipment for their navy (but not the ships themselves). The arsenal receives its name because the architect who designed it was named Philon.

Once again, the ruins themselves weren’t terribly impressive; the excavated part of the arsenal today lies in an overgrown ally behind a protective fence in downtown Peiraieus. Nonetheless, Glenn told us that, because of an inscription that archaeologists found at the site when they excavated it, scholars know more of the process of the building’s construction than most other buildings of ancient Athens. Sulla’s forces destroyed the arsenal when they sacked Athens in 86 BCE.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruins of the arsenal of Philon

After that, we got back on the bus and rode to the location on the harbor of the Olympias, a modern hypothetical reconstruction of what an Athenian trireme of the fifth century BCE might have been like. The ship was commissioned in 1985 and constructed in 1987. The design is based primarily on the Lenormant Relief, a relief carving dating to around 410 BCE depicting an Athenian trireme with rowers that was discovered on the Akropolis in 1852 near the Erechtheion and is currently held in the Akropolis Museum.

The ship is usually housed under a shed near the dock, but we found it floating in the water, tied to the dock. Glenn commented that the Greek navy, who own the ship, must have taken it out to do some exercises. There, with all of us sitting on the dock next to the ship, one of my fellow students delivered a report about the ship.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the trireme Olympias floating in the water while tied to the dock

After all that, we hopped back in the bus and rode back to the school. On our way back, we drove past the main building of the modern Academy of Athens, which is a spectacular Neoclassical building with statues of the gods Athena and Apollon on pillars in front of it.

ABOVE: Photo I took through the bus window of the modern Academy of Athens main building as we drove past

After we arrived back at the school, we had a couple of hours to eat dinner on our own before we needed to go to the bus to ride back down to Peiraieus to board our ferry to Krete. Most of the students went to a burger joint down the street, which very obviously catered to English-speaking tourists. (The menu was only in English, with no Greek anywhere to be seen inside the restaurant, even though the workers were all Greek.)

After we ate, we had a little bit of down time and then we headed to the bus, which took us down to Peiraieus. After we boarded the ferry, there was an absolute mess of confusion about who would be sleeping in which rooms. Eventually, though, we got that sorted out and we were able to go to our rooms.

Sunday, June 18th, 2023

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for the day. We disembarked the ferry in Herakleion at 6:30 a.m. As we were getting off the ferry, a truck was coming past and a woman was warning the disembarking passengers in Modern Greek: “προσέχετε! προσέχετε!” I immediately understood this because the word is exactly the same in Ancient Greek. It means “Pay attention!” or “Watch out!”

We all climbed back onto our bus and rode to a bakery shop. There, we all ate breakfast while sitting under a shady awning near the Morosini Fountain. After that, at 8:30 a.m. we went to the Herakleion Archaeological Museum, which is the largest archaeological museum in Krete and the museum that holds the vast majority of the surviving Minoan artifacts.

At the museum, one of my fellow students delivered a report on the Agia Triada sarcophagus, a limestone sarcophagus painted with elaborate frescoes on all of its sides that the Italian archaeologist R. Paribeni discovered in 1903 in a chamber tomb near the archaeological site of Agia Triada in southern Krete. The sarcophagus most likely dates to between c. 1370 and c. 1320 BCE, a time when the Mycenaeans (i.e., the Bronze Age Greeks) ruled Krete.

The sarcophagus is the only known example of its kind. It most likely belonged to a Mycenaean prince or some other figure of authority. Because it depicts religious scenes in great detail, it is an extremely important source for religion in Bronze Age Krete.

Side A of the sarcophagus depicts an elaborate scene. On the left, two women appear to be approaching a basin to pour libations into it while a man wearing a woman’s dress stands behind them playing a lyre. Meanwhile, on the left, three men wearing loincloths (two of them holding terra-cotta sculptures of cows and one holding a model of a boat, a drinking horn, or some other crescent-shaped object) approach a statue without arms, which probably represents either the deceased or a god, in order to leave their gifts as offerings.

ABOVE: Side A of the Agia Triada sarcophagus

On Side B, a cow is hogtied on top of an altar about to be sacrificed while a woman stands before another altar in front of it and another woman, who is thought to be a priestess, stands behind the altar with the bull to officiate the ceremony. Behind the bull altar a man stands playing a musical instrument that resembles an aulos, which is a kind of double-reeded woodwind instrument that the ancient Greeks of the later historical periods associated with ecstatic religious practices and drinking parties.

ABOVE: Side B of the Agia Triada sarcophagus

After that student gave his report, another student gave a report about the Harvester Rhyton and the Chieftain Cup, both of which are made out of soapstone and were discovered at Agia Triada in 1902. The Harvester Rhyton dates to between c. 1500 and c. 1450 BCE. It depicts a procession of twenty-seven people, most of whom are identifiable as men and carry what look like harvesting tools. Some of them are also singing or shouting and playing sistra (a kind of percussion instrument).

ABOVE: Photo of the Harvester Rhyton

The Chieftain Cup dates to between c. 1580 and c. 1450 BCE and bears two scenes: one showing a man who is thought to be a king or chief standing in front of a young man who is holding a sword and one showing three men bearing ox hides.

Last, but certainly not least, a third student gave a report about the Phaistos Disk. I won’t go into detail about what the Phaistos Disk is here, since I wrote an entire detailed post about it in November 2022. If you want to learn more about the disk, you can read that post.

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing next to the Phaistos Disk

After all three students gave their reports, we had around forty-five minutes to explore the museum on our own. We left the museum and climbed back onto the bus around 10:45 a.m.

The bus drove from Herakleion to Agios Nikolaos. There, at around we visited the Agios Nikolaos Museum. Glenn gave us an hour to explore the museum on our own. It is a small museum, but it has an impressive collection for a museum of its size. The museum is also newly renovated and has very beautiful displays. In fact, the renovations on the museum are so recent that all the labels for the displays are currently just printed on slips of printer paper; they haven’t even made the new permanent labels yet.

One cool thing I saw there was a small Minoan figure of a bare-breasted woman with short hair that was carved from hippopotamus ivory.

Another amusing thing I saw in the Agios Nikolaos Museum was a terra-cotta rhyton dating to the Roman period that is shaped like a ram with its mouth open. If one were to pour it, the wine would come out of its mouth.

After exploring the museum, we climbed into the bus and rode it to Pacheia Ammos, a small town located on the northern coast in eastern Krete. The town is located right next to the sea and there was an absolutely stunning view of the sea and the mountains. A nice cool breeze was coming in off the sea, so it was a very nice temperature.

ABOVE: Photo one of my fellow students took of me standing by the sea in Pacheia Ammos on Krete

We broke up into smaller groups and ate lunch in Pacheia Ammos at different restaurants. I ate with a couple of my fellow students and we had a very nice meal together. Even in a small Kretan village like Pacheia Ammos, all the servers in the restaurants spoke English. I did notice, though, that, unlike in Athens, where all the menus we had seen were printed in Greek and English and in no other languages, in Pacheia Ammos, the menu was printed in Greek, English, German, and Italian. This remained the case at the other restaurants in the other small towns in Krete that we visited.

After that, we climbed back into the bus and rode to the archaeological site of Gournia, which is the best-preserved example of an ordinary ancient Minoan town dating to the second millennium BCE and which gives unparalleled evidence for how ordinary, non-elite Minoan people 3,500 years ago lived.

At the site, we met Dr. John McEnroe, a professor of art history at Hamilton College and an expert on ancient Minoan material culture and society. He showed us around the site and described for us his interpretation of Minoan society based on the evidence at the site, as well as what the structures we were seeing might have originally looked like and how people might have originally used them. He painted a vivid picture of Minoan daily life.

As we walked over the ancient streets, the thought was ever-present in my mind that this site was vastly older than any other site we had seen so far; by the time the other sites we’d seen so far on the trip were built, Gournia was already over a thousand years old and in ruins. It felt so thrilling to walk those streets and know that three and a half millennia of human habitation lay beneath our feet.

Even though most of the ruins themselves were not especially architecturally impressive, since all that remained of the ancient city were the very bottom portions of walls, most of which only came up to our knees, most of us still agreed afterward that visiting the site was a real treat.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the remains of ancient houses at Gournia

ABOVE: Another photo I took of a different part of the site

Afterward, we rode the bus from Gournia to Siteia, a small modern town in eastern Krete. There in Siteia, we checked into a hotel, where we would spend the next two nights. We split up into smaller groups and ate dinner that night at various restaurants in town.

Monday, June 19th, 2023

I woke up around 6:00 a.m. to get ready for the day. The hotel served a continental breakfast at 8:00 a.m. After we all ate, we went out to the bus.

It was only when we went out to the bus that the women of our group found out that Moni Toplou, a monastery on the eastern end of Krete that we would be visiting later that day, has a dress code that requires all female visitors to wear clothes that cover their shoulders and their legs at least down to their knees. My own outfit was fine, since the clothes I was already wearing met all the requirements of the dress code, but some of the other women had to quickly find additional clothes to bring that they could use to cover themselves while visiting the monastery.

We all got onto the bus and rode to the Archaeological Museum of Siteia. There, one of my fellow students gave a report about the Palaikastro “kouros,” a statue of a nude young male figure fashioned from wood covered in gold and ivory that dates to the Late Minoan IB period (i.e., around the middle of the fifteenth century BCE).

Archaeologists affiliated with the British School at Athens excavated the statue at the site of Palaikastro in eastern Krete in the 1980s and it is the star artifact of the Archaeological Museum of Siteia’s collection. It is important for the study of Minoan religion because the highly expensive materials that were used to make it, the figure’s authoritative posture, and contextual evidence from where it was found suggest that it may be a cult statue. If this is the case, then it is the only surviving example of a Minoan cult statue.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the Palaikastro kouros

Although the statue is burned and the face and midsection are both missing, the statue is still remarkably well preserved for its age and displays a truly exceptional degree of detail. The artist carefully sculpted the veins in the young man’s hands and feet, the man’s toenails, and his hair.

ABOVE: Detail of the statue’s left arm and hand showing the veins

ABOVE: Detail of the statue’s feet showing the toenails and veins

After the student finished her report on the kouros, Glenn gave us about twenty minutes to explore the museum’s collection on our own. The most exciting thing I saw there aside from the kouros was a terra-cotta statuette of the goddess Kybele seated on a throne dating to the first quarter of the fifth century BCE wearing a Phrygian cap. The statue especially stood out to me because the label informed me that it is the only surviving Greek representation of Kybele wearing a Phrygian cap; she is usually depicted in Greek art wearing a polos crown.

ABOVE: Photo of the statuette of Kybele on display in the Archaeological Museum of Siteia

After that, we rode out in the bus from Siteia to the Gorge of the Dead, a gorge in eastern Krete which received its name because they found ancient Minoan burial sites in the caves above the gorge. We hiked two miles through the gorge in about two and a half hours.

The terrain of the gorge was rough and rocky and we began our hike without realizing that there was a path, so we spent the first part of the hike stumbling over uneven, rocky ground and trying to avoid lots of prickly plants that grew there. That being said, the gorge was an absolutely stunning place. We had the sun shining on us for most of the hike, but, thankfully, the temperature was relatively low for Greece in June and a nice, cool breeze was constantly blowing into the gorge off the sea.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the Gorge of the Dead as we were hiking through it

ABOVE: Photo one of my fellow students took of me standing in the Gorge of the Dead

Although we did not encounter any zombies while hiking through the Gorge of the Dead, we did encounter a wild goat that was creeping around in the bushes.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the wild goat we encountered in the Gorge of the Dead

Thankfully, we made through the Gorge of the Dead without joining the dead ourselves. The trail let out at the modern village and archaeological site of Zakro, which was an ancient Minoan administrative center during the Bronze Age. There we broke up into smaller groups and ate lunch at different local restaurants. After lunch, we went into the archaeological site itself.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the ruins of Zakro

As we entered the site, we passed basin areas that were filled with water and full of fish and turtles.

ABOVE: Pool filled with fish and turtles at Zakro

ABOVE: More ruins at Zakro

ABOVE: More ruins at Zakro

ABOVE: A different view of the ruins of Zakro from the top of the hill looking down

After visiting Zakro, we loaded into the bus again and rode to Palaikastro, the Minoan site in eastern Krete where archaeologists excavated the Palaikastro “kouros” that we had seen in the museum earlier that day. The site wasn’t listed on our itinerary and Glenn told us that we were very lucky to be able to see it, since he said that the site is usually closed. Thankfully, it happened to be open that day as we happened to be going past, so we were able to go in.

ABOVE: General view of the ruins at Palaikastro

ABOVE: Courtyard where one part of the Palaikastro “kouros” was found

ABOVE: Room where the other part of the Palaikastro “kouros” was found

ABOVE: A street at Palaikastro

After Palaikastro, we got back on the bus and rode to Moni Toplou, which is a monastery that was founded in the fourteenth century CE during the time of the Venetian occupation of Krete. At some point after the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, a cannon was mounted over the door of the monastery for some reason and it became known as “Moni Toplou,” which means “Place of the Cannon.” Today, it remains an active Greek Orthodox monastery and it owns much of the land in eastern Krete.

We entered into an absolutely gorgeous courtyard with a floor inlaid with smooth river stones and exquisitely tended trees and flowers. On our right from the entrance stood a beautiful medieval church building with a late Hellenistic inscribed stele bearing the text of a mediation treaty between two city-states displayed on the wall next to the entry door.

Glenn gave a short lecture about the inscription, then we went inside the church. The smell of burning incense filled the air and absolutely stunning icon paintings and other religious artwork covered the walls. Candelabra hung from the ceiling, illuminating the room by their dim light. Looking up, I saw that the ceilings were decorated with faded frescoes, which I guessed from the style most likely dated back to the Middle Ages.

From there, we passed into another room where paintings and other artifacts associated with the monastery adorned the walls and then into another room, which had a display of antique books, including some handwritten medieval Greek manuscripts and some early modern printed editions of Greek-language texts. Most of them were Christian texts, but some of them were classical. We also went into a museum room next to the church, which had a similar display of antique books.

Unfortunately, the monastery strictly prohibits visitors from taking any photos, so I do not have any photos of it that I can share here.

After our visit at Moni Toplou, we loaded back into the bus and rode back to Siteia, where we returned to the same hotel rooms we had slept in the night before.

Tuesday, June 20th, 2023

I woke up at around 6:00 a.m. We ate a continental breakfast in the hotel at 8:00 a.m. We collected all of our belongings, checked out of the hotel, and loaded onto the bus at around 9:25 a.m. We rode to Mochlos, a small village in Mirabello Bay on the northern coast of eastern Krete. Across the water from the village is a small island with the ruins of a Minoan settlement on it.

In the village, we met Dr. Jeff Soles, who is an emeritus professor of archaeology and classics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the co-director of the ongoing excavations at Mochlos. We took a small boat across the water to Mochlos Island, where the Minoan settlement is located. Because the boat was so small and there were so many of us, the boatman had to make three trips to the island and back to carry us all across.

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me while I was standing on the dock waiting for the boat across the water to Mochlos Island

Once we all made it over to the island, Dr. Soles gave us a brief introduction to the site and to his research on it. Then he handed us over to the assistant director of excavations at the site Dr. Georgios Doudalis, who is a professor in the history department at UNC Greensboro.

Up to this point, all of the professors who had shown us around at the various the archaeological sites we had visited had been old, senior scholars. Dr. Doudalis, by contrast, was young, tanned, and reasonably physically fit with a full head of dark, curly hair and a tattoo of a Minoan seal on his right arm. Most of the straight women in our group were swooning over him afterward because they found him so attractive.

Dr. Doudalis showed us around the site and shared all kinds of fascinating information and stories about it. He was very passionate and full of enthusiasm about his work and painted a vivid picture of what life in Mochlos in the Bronze Age might have been like. He told us that, unlike Gournia, which was more of a working-class village with small houses, Mochlos was a very prosperous village with larger houses and more wealth.

The first part of the site he showed us was the so-called “House of the Theran Refugee,” a house which showed evidence of having been rebuilt after the volcanic island of Thera erupted sometime around 1600 BCE and destroyed the settlement on Thera. The discovery and publication of this house provided evidence that the Thera eruption did not cause the immediate downfall of the Minoan civilization and that the civilization actually bounced back afterward.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the “House of the Theran Refugee”

Later, Dr. Doudalis showed us an open courtyard at the top of the town that appears to have been a sacred grove, since the archaeologists found evidence of trees having been planted there and the architecture of the courtyard resembles sacred groves depicted in Minoan seals.

ABOVE: Photo of the area that the archaeologists believe may have been a sacred grove

He showed us the so-called “Theatral Area” of the town and told us about some of his own very interesting hypotheses about the ritual and religious significance of this area. Unfortunately, I cannot share those hypotheses here because he said that he hasn’t published them yet and expressly told us not to share them anywhere.

ABOVE: Photo of the so-called “Theatral Area” of Mochlos

He also showed us a house in the village where the archaeologists found extremely expensive jewelry indicating that a woman of high status, who he believes was most likely a priestess from Knossos, lived there.

ABOVE: Photo I took of the house where the archaeologists found evidence of a woman of high status having lived there

I really enjoyed Dr. Doudalis’s presentation. Unfortunately, it was a fairly hot day, the sun was beating down on us, there was absolutely no shade anywhere amid the ruins, there was very little breeze, the site was on a hill so we were constantly having to walk uphill, and he was showing us around the site for probably about two hours, so, especially towards the latter part of the presentation, we were all burning up and drenched in sweat.

After he finished showing us around the site, we took the boat back across the water to the modern town. At this point, Glenn gave us an opportunity to swim at the beach and find lunch. As I mentioned earlier, I generally don’t like swimming and I’m afraid of going in the water, so I had originally planned not to swim at all the entire trip. Nonetheless, on this occasion, I changed my mind because I decided that I would regret it if I passed up every opportunity I had to swim in the Aegean. I therefore decided to swim, mostly just so that I could say that I did it.

I changed into my swimsuit (which I had thankfully brought along) and went into the water. I didn’t go in very deep, but I did go in. The water was a perfect temperature and felt very cool after all the time we’d just spent standing in the sun. As far as I can remember, it was my very first time ever swimming in any kind of open sea. I actually kind of enjoyed it, although I’m still not sure if I will do it again.

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me in the water at Mochlos

After we were done swimming, I changed back into my dry clothes. I met up with some other students and we ate a small lunch. After that, we got back onto the bus and rode to the ASCSA’s Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) Study Center for East Crete (SCEC), which is where archaeological specialists process and analyze the finds from sites in eastern Krete. There, Dr. Tom Brogan, the director of the study center, gave us a tour of their facilities. They did not allow us to take any photos inside their facilities, so I cannot share any photos of what we saw there.

After our tour of the SCEC, we were originally supposed to visit the archaeological site of Malia, but the site turned out to be closed that day, so we were not able to go there. Instead, we went back to Herakleion. It was over an hour’s drive back to the city, but, once we got back, we checked into a hotel. This hotel was much nicer than the one we stayed at in Siteia the previous two nights.

This catches my narrative up to where I am right now. As I see and do more things, I will continue to post updates.