My Exciting Adventure in Greece, Part 6

This is the sixth installment in my ongoing series of posts about my experience in the 2023 ASCSA Summer Session, covering the period from Thursday, July 13th, to Sunday, July 16th. (Here are the previous installments, for those who may have missed them: first, second, third, fourth, and fifth.)

In this installment, I will describe how I saw the ancient site of Delphi and the archaeological museum there, how I saw the hanging monasteries of Meteora, how I saw the tomb of (probably) none other than King Philippos II of Makedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, as well as its spectacular contents, which are perhaps the closest ancient Greek equivalent to the Egyptian treasures of Tutankhamun, and, finally, how I saw the birthplace of Alexander himself.

Thursday, July 13th, 2023

We ate breakfast that morning at our hotel in the modern town of Delphi. After that, we immediately walked over from the hotel to the archaeological site of the sanctuary of Apollon. It was not especially long walk, since the site is located right next to the modern town.

We went into the site and Dr. Edward R. Harris—the same scholar who gave the lecture about the history of Delphi the previous evening—gave us a tour. The site was not very busy when we first arrived, but, within about fifteen to twenty minutes of us being there, it quickly became packed with visitors and tour groups. It wasn’t quite as crowded as the Akropolis, but it was still pretty crowded.

It was brutally hot and, because the sanctuary of Apollon is built on the slope of Mount Parnassos, we had to keep walking uphill throughout our time there. Nonetheless, it was definitely worth it for the sake of seeing the site, which was one of the most gorgeous and historically significant locations we visited during our time in Greece. I would absolutely love to go back there during a time of year when it is not so hot and hopefully not so crowded.

ABOVE: View of the sanctuary of Apollon at Delphi from below

We walked up along the so-called “Sacred Way” (which was not known as such in antiquity). Along the path, we saw many important monuments and treasuries: the monument of the kings of Argos (which originally housed statues of those kings), the Treasury of the Sikyonians (which was commissioned by the city of Sikyon, which is located near the Isthmus of Corinth, sometime around 525 BCE), the Treasury of the Siphnians (which was constructed by the people of the island of Siphnos in the Kyklades sometime around 525 BCE and was the most ornate of all the Archaic treasuries in antiquity), and the Treasury of the Boiotians.

ABOVE: View of the monument of the kings of Argos

ABOVE: View of what remains in situ of the Treasury of the Sikyonians

ABOVE: Reconstruction by Theophil Hansen of what the Treasury of the Siphnians probably originally looked like

ABOVE: View of what remains in situ of the Treasury of the Siphnians

ABOVE: View of what remains in situ of the Treasury of the Boiotians

Rounding the corner, we saw the Treasury of the Athenians. The ancient Greek travel writer Pausanias (lived c. 110 – c. 180 CE) records in his Description of Greece 10.11.5 that the Athenians constructed this treasury after their decisive victory (with help from the Plataians) over the Achaemenid Persians in the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE and that they funded the construction of it using spoils that they took from the Persians. Some modern scholars have doubted Pausanias’s testimony, believing that the treasury may predate the Athenian victory at Marathon, but the archaeological evidence increasingly supports that he was correct.

Of all the treasuries that once stood at Delphi, the Athenian one is the only one that modern excavators have fully reconstructed. As a result, it towers conspicuously above the other treasuries as a visually impressive landmark. One of my fellow students delivered a site report about the treasury.

ABOVE: The Treasury of the Athenians

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me standing in front of the Treasury of the Athenians

ABOVE: Rock of the Sibyl

ABOVE: View of the polygonal wall with the Temple of Apollon in the background

The Greek historian Herodotos of Halikarnassos (lived c. 484 – c. 425 BCE) records in his Histories 9.81.1 that, after the allied Greek city-states (with the Spartans playing the largest role) won their decisive land victory against the Achaemenid Persians in the Battle of Plataia in 479 BCE, they dedicated a bronze tripod at Delphi in front of the Temple of Apollon that rested atop a bronze column with three serpent heads.

In 324 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine I chose the Greek city of Byzantion, located on the Bosporos (i.e., the narrow strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara), as the new capital for the Roman Empire. He renamed the city as Nova Roma or “New Rome” and built a massive hippodrome for the new city. He moved the Serpent Column from Delphi to Nova Roma to decorate this hippodrome.

Today, Nova Roma is İstanbul and the Serpent Column remains where the hippodrome of that city once stood, although the bowl it once supported is long gone and the column is now missing all three of the serpent heads that it once had. The Greek Ministry of Culture, however, has erected a replica of the column at its original location in Delphi.

ABOVE: Drawing from the Freshfield Album, made in 1574, showing the Serpent Column as it looked at that time, when the bowl it once supported was already missing, but it still had all three of its original serpent heads

ABOVE: Modern replica of the Serpent Column at the column’s original location

Then, of course, we saw the Temple of Apollon at Delphi itself, which was one of the most important temples in all of ancient Greek religion. From at least around 800 BCE onward, a series of temples existed at the site, but the one whose ruins are visible at the site today was constructed in the fourth century BCE in the Doric order. Several columns on the temple on the east (i.e., front) side have remained standing since antiquity.

A sunken room near the back of this temple known as the adyton housed the oracle of Apollon, known as the Pythia, a woman from the town of Delphi who, on the seventh day of each of the nine months of spring, summer, and fall, would sit on a tripod holding a laurel branch in one hand and a dish of water from the Kassiotis spring in the other.

Then, somehow (more on this in a moment), the oracle would enter a kind of trance, in which the ancient Greeks believed that she would channel the words of Apollon himself. Petitioners from all over the Greek world would then ask the oracle questions and she would answer in the name and voice of the god. Although many oracles existed throughout the Greek world, the oracle at Delphi was the most famous and widely respected.

A number of misconceptions have developed surrounding the Delphic oracle. Ancient historians like Herodotos tell a lot of stories that portray the Pythia as having given ambiguous, riddling answers to people’s questions. In reality, though, the questions that people asked the oracle that are well historically documented are mostly very simple questions, in response to which the Pythia is recorded to have given very straightforward yes-or-no, this-option-or-that-option kinds of answers. The stories about the oracle giving riddling, obscure answers are most likely a literary embellishment. (For more information on this, the classicist Dr. Peter Gainsford has written an excellent and accessible blog post on the subject.)

Additionally, although a very popular modern hypothesis claims that the Pythia delivered her prophecies while high on geochemical gases that flowed from a natural opening in the ground underneath her tripod, the historical and archaeological evidence does not substantiate this hypothesis, which relies on a naïve interpretation of literary sources from the Roman Period (mostly Diodoros Sikeliotes and Ploutarchos) mixed with dubious speculation. Much evidence is also contrary to this hypothesis.

For more information, the scholar of religion Dr. Andrew Mark Henry has an excellent and accessible YouTube video in which he explains in detail the many problems with the geochemical gas hypothesis. Those with less time who want a shorter summery of the problems with it can read this article by Dr. Owen Rees for the website Bad Ancient, which is dedicated to debunking popular false claims and misconceptions about the ancient world.

ABOVE: View of the Temple of Apollon at Delphi from the front

ABOVE: Photo I had one of my fellow students take of me in front of the Temple of Apollon at Delphi

ABOVE: View of the Temple of Apollon from the north

ABOVE: View of the Temple of Apollon from the west (back)

ABOVE: View of the Temple of Apollon from above, looking down from higher up the mountain

Directly above the Temple of Apollon is a remarkably well-preserved ancient theater. The theater most likely originally had wooden benches, but, in the fourth century BCE, they added stone benches. In 159 BCE, King Eumenes II of Pergamon commissioned it to be refurbished and it was refurbished again in the Roman period.

ABOVE: View of the theater above the Temple of Apollon

ABOVE: View looking down at the theater, the Temple of Apollon, and the valley from higher up the mountain

Near the top of the sanctuary is the stadium. It was originally built in the fifth century BCE, but, in the second century CE, the ultrawealthy Athenian aristocrat Herodes Attikos (lived 101 – 177 CE) had it extensively renovated. The majority of the visible remains date to this renovation.

ABOVE: Stadium at Delphi

After viewing the archaeological site, we broke so that everyone could eat lunch in town. After lunch, we went to the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, which is a fantastic museum with a very impressive collection, including quite a few extremely exciting and famous pieces.

When we first walked into the museum, we saw a portrait bust that many readers of this blog may recognize, since I have used photos of it in a number of my previous posts. The bust dates to the second or third century CE and depicts a philosopher. It is frequently claimed to depict the Greek biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher Ploutarchos of Chaironeia (lived c. 46 – after c. 119 CE), but there is really no good evidence to support this identification and it rests largely on the fact that the bust was found at Delphi and Ploutarchos is known to have served as a priest at the Temple of Apollon there.

ABOVE: Marble portrait bust of a philosopher dating to the second or third century CE, often identified based on very little evidence as a portrait of Ploutarchos of Chaironeia

We also saw a tripod and cauldron dating to the seventh century BCE, which were originally separate, but the museum has chosen to display them together to give viewers a sense of how such objects would have been displayed in antiquity. Cauldrons resting atop tripods were a common form of religious dedication to Apollon in his sanctuary at Delphi, especially during the Archaic Period.

ABOVE: Originally separate bronze tripod and cauldron, both dating to the seventh century BCE

We saw the remains of the colossal sphinx that originally stood atop the Column of the Naxians, which the people of the island of Naxos in the Kyklades erected near the Temple of Apollon sometime around 560 BCE as a dedication to the god. In the same room, we also saw the karyatids and relief sculptures that excavators have recovered from the Siphnian Treasury.

ABOVE: The Sphinx of the Naxians

ABOVE: Karyatid from the Treasury of the Siphnians

ABOVE: Detail of a different relief from the Treasury of the Siphnians

ABOVE: Detail of another section of the same relief

We passed into another section of the museum containing material from the Treasury of the Athenians, including a block of stone inscribed with the lyrics and musical notation of the Delphic Hymns, which are two hymns to the god Apollon that are perhaps the most famous of the fragmentary surviving musical compositions from ancient Greece.

The earlier of the two hymns was composed by man named Athenaios, son of Athenaios, for a performance in either 138 or 128 BCE. The later of the two was composed by a man named Limenios, son of Thoinos, for a performance in 128 BCE. (For more information about the hymns, including links to YouTube videos of modern performances of them, readers should check out this blog post I wrote in October 2019 about ancient Greek music.)

ABOVE: Stone from the Treasury of the Athenians inscribed with the Delphic Hymns

ABOVE: Metopes from the Treasury of the Athenians depicting the deeds of Theseus

In another room, we saw the remains of the so-called “Column of the Dancers,” a column that originally towered at a height of thirteen meters topped with sculptures of three dancing women. The Athenians most likely dedicated this column sometime in the fourth century BCE. The three dancing women most likely represent the three daughters of Kekrops, the legendary first king of Athens.

ABOVE: Pinnacle of the Column of the Dancers

ABOVE: Different view of the Column of the Dancers

Near the Column of the Dancers, we saw a Hellenistic or Roman-Era copy of the omphalos, which was a stone said to be the one that Rhea gave to Kronos wrapped in swaddling clothes instead of their son Zeus. Kronos swallowed the stone and later vomited it up at the same time he vomited up Zeus’s siblings. Later, in an attempt to locate the exact center of the world, Zeus is said to have released two eagles at opposite ends of the earth, which flew at the same speed toward each other. The eagles met at Delphi and Zeus placed the omphalos at the spot to mark the exact center of the world.

The omphalos displayed in the museum at Delphi, which is probably not the original, but rather a later copy, is carved with a net-like pattern over the surface, which is meant to represent the net that wrapped the original sacred stone.

ABOVE: Omphalos

We also saw a lovely full-body statue of Antinous, a Greek boy from Bithynia who became the eromenos (beloved) of the Roman emperor Hadrian. In October 130 CE, when Antinous was only eighteen or nineteen years old, he was on a boat with Hadrian traveling down the Nile and, somehow, he died. (Various stories exist for how this happened.)

Hadrian was absolutely devastated by his beloved’s death and therefore promoted the worship of his dead beloved as a god or hero throughout the empire. In his grief, he commissioned many dozens of sculptures of Antinous. One can see these statues in museums all throughout the various lands that the Roman Empire once ruled, but the one in Delphi is one of the best-preserved full-body sculptures of him.

ABOVE: Statue of Antinous, the eromenos of the Roman emperor Hadrian

Last of all, we saw the famous Charioteer of Delphi, a spectacular, well-preserved life-sized bronze statue of a man riding in a chariot that the tyrant Polyzalos of Gela erected at Delphi to commemorate his victory in the chariot race of the Pythian Games in either 478 or 474 BCE.

As I have mentioned in several of my previous posts about my experience in Greece, people in later times usually melted bronze sculptures down to use their metal for other purposes. As a result, extremely few original Greek bronze sculptures have survived to the present day. The Charioteer of Delphi is one of the exceptionally rare original bronzes that have survived in anything approximating a complete state. It is especially remarkable because most of the original bronze sculptures that have survived do not have their original inlaid eyes, but both of the Charioteer’s eyes have survived intact.

The reason why the Charioteer has survived in such extraordinarily well-preserved condition is because a rock collapse in 373 BCE buried the sculpture and, as a result, it was not accessible to later people who would have melted it down for scrap. The French archaeologists who excavated the ruins of Delphi recovered the statue in 1896 and it has since become one of the most recognizable Greek sculptures.

ABOVE: The Charioteer of Delphi

ABOVE: Different view of the Charioteer

The Charioteer was originally mounted in a chariot pulled by two horses with an enslaved boy tending to the reins. Sadly, only a few fragments of the chariot, horses, and enslaved boy have survived. The museum, however, displays these in a glass case next to the Charioteer.

ABOVE: Remnants of the Charioteer’s chariot, horses, and slave boy

After we all walked through the museum, all the other students went back to the town of Delphi, but I walked on my own over to the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, which lies at a significant walk away from the sanctuary of Apollon and an even further walk away from the modern town. It was mid-afternoon by this point and blisteringly hot. The sun was beating down on me relentlessly and my clothes were soaked through with sweat, but it was still worth the walk.

At the sanctuary, I saw the Temple of Athena Pronaia, which is a Doric tholos or “beehive” temple with a circular plan that was originally constructed between c. 380 and c. 370 BCE. None of the columns of the temple have remained standing since antiquity, but modern archaeologists have reconstructed three of the columns using anastylosis to give viewers a sense of how all the columns would have originally looked. It is one of the most famous structures at Delphi.

Because it was such a blisteringly hot afternoon and the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia is located at such a walk from the modern town, very few people were there while I was. Consequently, I had the site almost entirely to myself. After visiting the site, I walked back to our hotel in the modern town.

ABOVE: View of the tholos Temple of Athena Pronaia from above

ABOVE: Temple of Athena Pronaia from the ground

ABOVE: Other side of the Temple of Athena Pronaia

Friday, July 14th, 2023

We ate breakfast at our hotel in Delphi. We were originally supposed to have an optional hike up Mount Parnassos that morning, but the temperature for the day was expected to get up to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, so Glenn made the executive decision to cancel the hike. We were also originally supposed to visit the Kastalian spring, Marmaria, the gymnasion, and the Korykian Cave, but Glenn decided to cancel those as well.

Instead, we loaded onto the bus and rode back into Boiotia to visit the monastery of Hosios Loukas, which was founded in the tenth century CE and is located on the slope of Mount Helikon. Along with Dafni, which we already visited earlier in the program, Hosios Loukas is considered one of the most important monasteries of the Middle Byzantine Period in mainland Greece. We were originally supposed to visit it on July 12th when we traveled through Boiotia, but we missed it that day because the monastery was closed by the time we were supposed to go there.

The monastery takes its name not from Luke the companion of the apostle Paul who is traditionally said to have written the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, but rather from Loukas of Steiris, a local holy man in the tenth century CE who is said to have predicted decades in advance the Roman reconquest of Krete in 961 CE under the emperor Romanos II.

In the shade underneath a tree in front of the monastery, one of my fellow students delivered a site report about it. After his report, we went into the square and saw the katholikon (i.e., the main church building of the monastery), which was constructed c. 1011/12 CE and is the oldest surviving domed octagonal church. It is one of the most truly awesome churches I have ever personally been inside.

ABOVE: View of Hosios Loukas

ABOVE: Square in front of the katholikon at Hosios Loukas

ABOVE: View of the upper part of the exterior of the katholikon

ABOVE: Mosaic of Christ inside the entrance to the katholikon

ABOVE: More mosaics covering the ceiling inside the entrance

ABOVE: Ceiling of the katholikon at Hosios Loukas

ABOVE: View of the inner dome of the katholikon

ABOVE: View of the ground level inside the katholikon

ABOVE: Narthex to the chapel adjoining the katholikon

ABOVE: Adjoining chapel to the katholikon

After seeing inside the katholikon, we into the museum next to the church. Then some other students and I went down into the crypt underneath the katholikon, where Loukas of Steiris himself is said to be entombed.

ABOVE: Crypt underneath the katholikon of Hosios Loukas

ABOVE: Medieval frescoes in the crypt underneath Hosios Loukas

ABOVE: View behind the katholikon

After our excursion to Hosios Loukas, we rode back into Phokis and stopped at the port town of Itea so that people could find lunch at the tavernas there and those who wanted to could go swimming. This time, I chose not to go swimming. Instead, I ate lunch with some of my fellow students at one of the tavernas and then sat around talking with a few others while most of the other students swam.

After that, we rode the bus back to Delphi. Because it was so hot, Glenn gave us the afternoon free. Most of us chose to stay in the hotel for most of the rest of the day.

Saturday, July 15th, 2023

We ate breakfast at our hotel in Delphi, packed up all our things, checked out of the hotel, and loaded onto the bus. Then we rode in the bus for several hours to Kalambaka, a town in Thessalia located near Meteora, where, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries CE, Eastern Orthodox monks built monasteries atop natural rock pillars. At its height at the end of the fifteenth century, Meteora was home to twenty-four monasteries, but, today, only six remain active and open to visitors.

We ate lunch in Kalambaka. After we ate, the bus took us to Meteora itself. Upon arriving, the first place we went was the Monastery of Great Meteoron, which the monk Athanasios the Meteorite founded in the fourteenth century CE. It is the oldest and largest of the six active monasteries.

ABOVE: The Monastery of Great Meteoron, the first monastery we saw after arriving at Meteora

ABOVE: Me in front of the Monastery of Great Meteoron shortly after arriving at Meteora

The monasteries at Meteora have a very strict dress code that all women who go there must wear sleeves that at least completely cover their shoulders and a dress or skirt that covers at least to below their knees. Women are absolutely prohibited to wear pants. Any woman wearing pants, rather than a dress or skirt, will be denied entry.

I only owned one dress and it didn’t come down to below my knees, so, before we entered our first monastery, one of the other women students in my group loaned me a scarf that I could tie around my waist over my pants as a makeshift skirt. That was apparently sufficient to satisfy the “dress or skirt” requirement.

To get to the Great Meteoron, we had to walk up a rather long series of stairs, but, at the top, we saw a gorgeous katholikon and several small museums containing various artifacts related to the monastery and the monks who lived there. They strictly forbade us from taking any photos inside the katholikon or in any of the museums, so, unfortunately, I cannot share any photos of those places here.

In my opinion, the katholikon was not as impressive as the one we saw at Hosios Loukas the day before, but it was still definitely worth seeing. The most impressive sight at Meteora wasn’t so much the monastery buildings themselves, but rather the view from atop the rock pillars, which was awestriking.

ABOVE: View of the Monastery of Varlaam from the Monastery of Great Meteoron

ABOVE: Me wearing my makeshift “skirt” standing on a railing overlooking the Monastery of Varlaam

ABOVE: Garden at the Great Meteoron

After visiting the Great Meteoron, we took the bus over to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity, which was constructed in the fifteenth century. This monastery is later, smaller, and somewhat less visually impressive than the Great Meteoron, but Glenn was quite keen that we needed see it. He told us several times that the climactic scene of the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only was filmed there and that the monastery is famous because of this.

Despite Glenn’s enthusiasm, I must confess that this pop cultural depiction held little relevance for most of us students, including me. For Your Eyes Only is, after all, a niche genre film that came out well over forty years ago—eighteen years before I was even born and twenty-two years before the youngest student in our group was born. Although a few students had seen it, I’m pretty sure that most of us hadn’t. (I’ve personally never watched any of the Bond movies—not even the more recent ones, let alone any of the ones that came out over forty years ago.)

ABOVE: View of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity

The walk to get up to this monastery was even more arduous than the walk to get up to the Great Meteoron. As a result, Glenn himself and several of my fellow students actually stayed by the bus and did not go up to the monastery at all. The walk was made even more arduous by the fact that we were all already quite exhausted from going up and down all the stairs at the Great Meteoron, the fact that, by this point, it was the hottest part of the afternoon, and the fact that we first had to walk down from where our bus was parked and then back up from the bottom of the stone pillar, ascending a very long staircase. It took us quite some time to reach the top.

ABOVE: Bottom of the staircase leading up to the Monastery of the Holy Trinity

Once we made it to the top, the view of the rock cliffs and the town of Kalambaka in the valley far below us was quite extraordinary. The view alone made it well worth the hike to get to the top.

ABOVE: View of Kalambaka from the Monastery of the Holy Trinity

After we walked down from the monastery and back to the bus, the bus took us to our hotel outside Kalambaka, which was actually one of the nicest hotels we stayed at during the trip, even though we only stayed there for one night.

Annoyingly, though, the hotel was located about a twenty-five minute walk away from the town. None of us felt like walking all that distance into the town for dinner in the brutal hundred-degree-heat, especially after having spent most of the afternoon hiking up to the monasteries and back down. Fortunately, the hotel did have a restaurant built into it, but the food was ridiculously overpriced and, for some reason, in the restaurant, they had all the doors and windows opened and the air conditioning turned off, so the room was stifling.

Sunday, July 16th, 2023

We ate breakfast at our hotel in Kalambaka, then we loaded onto the bus and headed north for Makedonia (the region of northern Greece that includes Thessaloniki, the second most populous city in Greece after Athens).

Our first stop of the day was at Aigai, known today as Vergina. This site was the original capital of the ancient kingdom of Makedonia, from which the modern Greek region of Makedonia takes its name. Even after King Archelaos I (ruled 413–399 BCE) moved the capital from Aigai to Pella, the Makedonian kings and their families continued to be buried there.

First, we went to the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Aigai, which is one of the most truly extraordinary museums in Greece. The museum itself is subterranean and built directly into the Great Tumulus, underneath which lie four tombs of members of the Makedonian royal family dating to the fourth century BCE. It is kept dimly lit and visitors can go up to the entrances of the tombs.

Although two of the four tombs in the Great Tumulus were already looted in antiquity and therefore contained few treasures, two of them were largely intact. The tomb containing the most extraordinary treasures is Tomb II, which the Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos, a professor of classical archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovered in November 1977.

Andronikos identified this tomb as that of none other than King Philippos II himself—the king who expanded Makedonia’s influence over most of mainland Greece and was the father of none other than King Alexandros III (i.e., Alexander the Great). Although a handful of scholars still dispute this, most archaeologists and ancient historians today, as well as the Greek Ministry of Culture, agree that Tomb II belongs to Philippos II. I am personally quite firmly convinced that the tomb is his as well.

The treasures of Philippos’s tomb are perhaps the closest ancient Greek equivalent to the Egyptian treasures of Tutankhamun. The largely unlooted tomb contained a wealth fabulous grave goods, the majority of which are now displayed in the museum built directly into the tumulus. These showcase the extraordinary wealth, power, and artistry of the Makedonian kingdom at its height.

Two of the most prized objects in the museum’s collection are the gold larnax (i.e., a kind of small chest) that held Philippos II’s cremated remains and an intricately worked gold funerary crown crafted to look like it is made of oak leaves with tiny acorns that lay on top of it.

ABOVE: Gold larnax and funerary crown of King Philippos II

ABOVE: Closer view of Philippos II’s gold larnax

ABOVE: Closer view of his gold funerary crown

The museum also houses Philippos II’s gold-and-ivory-decorated funerary armor, sword, and shield. Due to the panoply’s lavishness, it is almost certainly not the armor that he ever actually wore in battle. It is possible that he may have worn this armor for certain special occasions or ceremonies while he was alive, but it is also possible that it was commissioned specifically for his body to be dressed in at his funeral before he was cremated.

ABOVE: Funerary armor of Philippos II

ABOVE: Closer view of the armor

ABOVE: Funerary shield of Philippos II

ABOVE: Closer view of the ivory facing on Philippos II’s shield

ABOVE: View of the back of Philippos’s shield, showing the gold work

The museum also holds the remains of Philippos’s funerary couch, on which his body most likely was displayed before he was cremated. The couch is chryselephantine, which means it was made of wood and decorated with ivory and gold. The wooden parts have mostly rotted away, but pieces of the ivory and gold decorations remain.

The remains include fragments of an extremely fine-quality ornament relief, the central scene of which depicts a battle (most likely the Battle of Chaironeia) and includes two figures who appear to be none other than Philippos II and his son Alexandros III fighting alongside each other.

If this relief truly does indeed depict Philippos and Alexandros, then the figure of Philippos is the only original sculptural portrait made within living memory of him that has survived to the present day and the figure of Alexandros is possibly the earliest surviving sculptural portrait of him and the only surviving sculptural portrait of him made before he began his invasion of the Achaemenid Empire.

ABOVE: Remains of one side of Philippos II’s funerary couch

ABOVE: Detail of the ornament relief showing the ivory figures of Philippos II (second from the left) and his son Alexandros III (to the viewer’s right of Philippos)

In addition to the larnax, gold crown, the armor, and the couch, there are glass cases full of fantastic silver and bronze treasures that filled the tomb.

ABOVE: Silver vessels and utensils from the tomb of Philippos II

ABOVE: Bronze artifacts from the tomb of Philippos II

ABOVE: Closer view of an intricately decorated bronze lantern with a relief of Pan from the tomb of Philippos II

ABOVE: More artifacts from Philippos II’s tomb

ABOVE: Remains from Philippos’s funerary pyre

Philippos’s tomb contained not only grave goods for the king himself, but also those for one of his young wives—most likely the Thrakian princess Meda, whom Philippos took as his wife after Olympias, the mother of Alexandros III. The excavators found a gold larnax containing her remains along with a gold crown shaped like a myrtle wreath in the antechamber of Philippos’s tomb.

ABOVE: Gold larnax and myrtle crown of a young wife of Philippos II, most likely the Thrakian princess Meda, found in the antechamber of Philippos II’s tomb

ABOVE: Closer view of Meda’s larnax

ABOVE: Closer view of Meda’s gold myrtle crown

Because the museum is built directly into the tumulus, it houses not only the grave goods from Philippos’s tomb, but also the very tomb itself. Visitors are not able to actually go inside the tomb because the tomb is sealed and a pane of glass prevents one from going up to the entrance, but visitors are able to walk up quite close to the entrance and see the tomb’s magnificent façade. Remarkably, most of the paint decorating the exterior of the tomb has survived intact, including a beautiful painting of a hunting scene over the entrance.

ABOVE: Entrance to the tomb of Philippos II itself

ABOVE: Closer view of the entrance to the tomb of Philippos II

ABOVE: Detail view of part of the upper portion of the tomb

The other relatively unlooted tomb in the Great Tumulus at Aigai is Tomb III, which is slightly smaller and less ornate than Philippos’s tomb and contained fewer grave goods. This tomb held the remains of an adolescent boy. Andronikos identified the occupant of this tomb as King Alexandros IV, who was the son of Alexandros III and his Sogdian or Baktrian wife Roxane.

In 310 or 309 BCE, to secure his own power, Kassandros, the son of the general Antipatros who, by this point, had managed to claim the regency of Makedonia for himself, ordered a man named Glaukias to secretly murder both the fourteen-year-old Alexandros IV and his mother. It is possible that, after doing this, he may have had Alexandros IV buried in Tomb III in the Great Tumulus at Aigai.

With Tomb II, all of the evidence, in my opinion, seems to clearly point toward Philippos II as the owner. With Tomb III, though, I think the evidence is much more ambiguous. There were a lot of male members of the Makedonian royal families who died as adolescents in the second half of the fourth century BCE and part of me is a little bit skeptical that Kassandros would have given the young king he secretly murdered such a lavish and expensive burial.

ABOVE: View of the entrance to Tomb III

ABOVE: Silver funerary urn and gold oak leaf crown from Tomb III

ABOVE: Ivory decorations from Tomb III, including miniatures of the god Sabazios

ABOVE: Silver utensils from Tomb III

Tombs II and III are not the only tombs that Andronikos found in the Great Tumulus. Tomb I, although it was mostly looted in antiquity, did contain some truly extraordinary, well-preserved frescoes, including one depicting Hades abducting Persephone and one depicting the three Moirai (Fates).

ABOVE: Fresco of Hades abducting Persephone from Tomb I

ABOVE: Closer view of Hades and Persephone

ABOVE: Fresco of the three Moirai from Tomb I

After viewing the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Aigai, I ate lunch with some of my fellow students at a local restaurant in the nearby town of Vergina. After lunch, we went to the brand-new Polycentric Museum of Aigai, which just opened late last year and houses artifacts found at Aigai outside of the Great Tumulus. The museum includes a courtyard, which houses a reconstruction of part of the Royal Palace of Aigai using the original materials.

ABOVE: Reconstruction of part of the royal palace of Aigai

ABOVE: Marble statue dating to around 350 BCE depicting Queen Eurydike I, the mother Philippos II and paternal grandmother of Alexandros the Great, from the sanctuary of Eukleia at Aigai

ABOVE: Marble sculptural group from the sanctuary of Eukleia

ABOVE: Glass case full of terracotta figurines of the Mother of the Gods, Aphrodite, and other goddesses

ABOVE: Jewelry from graves at Aigai

ABOVE: White-ground lekythos depicting a woman grieving and tearing out her hair

After viewing that museum, we got back on the bus and rode to Pella, which was the capital of the kingdom of Makedonia throughout the fourth century BCE, including during the reigns of Philippos II and Alexandros III. Indeed, it was in Pella that Alexandros himself was born in July 356 BCE. Here we went to the archaeological site first.

ABOVE: Floor mosaic and ruins at Pella

ABOVE: More ruins at Pella

ABOVE: Entrance to the agora at Pella

ABOVE: Mosaic floor of the abduction of Helene at Pella

ABOVE: Mosaic floor depicting a stag hunt

At Pella, just beyond the agora are the ruins of a small sanctuary that is dedicated to the Mother of the Gods (a.k.a., Meter or Kybele) and Aphrodite. Naturally, since I’m researching the cult of the Mother of the Gods, I had to go see it, even though it was quite a walk to go over there and most of the other students didn’t want to see it.

ABOVE: View of the sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods and Aphrodite at Pella

ABOVE: View of the sanctuary from a different angle

As I was walking back after visiting the sanctuary, I stumbled across two shed snake skins lying in the grass next to each other. The skins gave me a bit of a fright when I first saw them before I realized that they were just skins and not actual snakes.

Seeing the snake skins reminded me of Ploutarchos’s account in his Life of Alexandros 2.6 that Philippos once saw a serpent lying beside his wife Olympias, the mother of Alexandros, while she slept. It also reminded me of his related account (Al. 2.7–9) that Olympias was involved in the Orphic and Dionysian mysteries and that she supplied her fellow initiate of the mysteries with tame snakes to use in their ecstatic rituals. I remembered that it was there, in Pella, the very city in whose ruins I stood, that those events are supposed to have taken place and the realization filled me with some sense of awe.

ABOVE: Snake skins lying in the grass at Pella

After visiting the site, we left to go to the Archaeological Museum of Pella, which has a nice collection. I found it especially interesting because it holds a significant number of artifacts related to the related cults of the Mother of the Gods and Aphrodite, who were among the most important deities worshipped in the city in ancient times.

ABOVE: Marble head of Alexandros III dating between c. 325 and c. 300 BCE, found at Giannitsa

ABOVE: Marble statuette depicting Alexandros III as the god Pan dating to the late fourth or early third century BCE

ABOVE: Mosaic of the god Dionysos riding a leopard

ABOVE: Terracotta statuettes of molds of the Mother of the Gods

ABOVE: Near-identical terracotta statuettes of Aphrodite, an example of how divine images in the ancient world could be mass-produced

ABOVE: Assorted finds from the sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods and Aphrodite

ABOVE: Marble grave stele dating to the early fourth century BCE

ABOVE: Marble statue of a dog dating to the middle of the fourth century BCE

Finally, after viewing the archaeological museum, we boarded the bus and rode to Thessaloniki. There, we checked into our hotel. Unfortunately, by this point, it was the middle of July, we were in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave, and air conditioning at the hotel we stayed at was not fully working, which is just a recipe for bad things to happen.

Many of the other students decided to go out bar-hopping on our first night in Thessaloniki. Even though I did try alcohol when we were in Sparta, I still don’t really drink and I certainly wasn’t interested in bar-hopping all night, so I stayed back at the hotel all night. My roommate went out drinking with the others, so I was alone in the room basically all night with the air conditioner that wasn’t fully working. I spent most of the night in my underwear, going to the shower every twenty minutes or so to douse myself in cool water to keep from overheating.

In my next post, I will tell all about the bad things that happened during our stay in Thessaloniki, as well as some of the exciting things that happened. For instance, we were given exclusive access to go inside the Kasta tomb, which is an enormous Makedonia royal tomb dating to the fourth century BCE that is even larger and more lavishly decorated than the tomb of Philippos II. Archaeologists first entered the tomb in 2014, they are still excavating it, and they don’t normally allow anyone to see it, but they allowed us to go inside. To learn more, be sure to read my next update!