ANCIENT GREECE

TIME PERIODS

Archaic

• Kouroi and Kore

Style changing end 6^th BC / beg 5^th BC to:

Severe Style (early Classical: 480 BC-450 BC)

• Naturalism
• Counterbalancing
• Controposto
• bronze statues
• breaks away from traditions of Orient and Egypt
• athletic ethos
• Pan Hellenic Games – statues of victors
• Peplophoros, woman dressed in heavy woolen garment
• Portraits of important personalities
• Important sculptures for Doric Temple (ex. Temple of Olympian Zeus)
• Exquisite votive reliefs
• Carving of gravestones in all cities except Athens
• Sculptures: Kalamis of Athens, Pythagoras of Samos, Myron of Eleutherai who made the discobolos. And four more…

Classical Style (480 BC-330 BC)

• Establishment of democracy in Athens by Kleisthenes (508/7 BC)
• Successful war against the Persians (479 BC) – stopped their expansion
• Athens takes over leadership of the Delian League (478/7 BC)
• Perikles
• Peace of Kallias (449 BC) – btw Greeks and Persians
• Personal responsibility
• Sophists – first sociologists and anthropologists
• Socrates – founder of philosophic ethics – against subjectivity of Sophists – ‘good life’ highest human goal

Lecture on Greek Bronze Age Writing at the British Museum Oct 02

• 776 BC – 1^st Olympiad, beginning of history (writing)
• Bronze Age known from material history, some scripts, proto history, some knowledge from them
• Hieroglyphics and Linear A though not deciphered
• 3200 BC – Metallurgy introduced from the east. Also in 3^rd mill: writing rises, began in meso cuneiform. Hieroglyphs around 3000 in the Nile. They were also short lived scripts. (the meso cuneiform or the hieroglyphs in Egypt?)
• 3^rd mill Cyclades is still Neolithic, mostly glass, not metal use, but by middle some metal introded, life close to survival level
• Crete (Minoan) 3^rd mill: Genesis of Minoan Palaces – impetus to writing.
• 3 Palace Periods: 1950-1700 earthquakes, 1700-1450 and 1450-1375 (1350) only Knosos
• Huge storage capacity, agricultural products brought in, craftsmen paid in rations, need administrative control
• 1^st cretian script – local, pictographic (hieroglyphic) found on seal stones
• Personal pattern impressed on soft stones to show ownership
• Number of broken seals in a discard “file” records amount of access to a stone, no need for writing
• Hieroglyphs mainly characteristic of N. Crete
• 1^st palace at Mysos? – new script – Linear A takes over in the Later 1^st Palace period and comprehensively in the 2^nd Palace period.
• Only one ex. In the museum
• Appears on pottery, (and) as votive offerings
• 7800 BC earliest settlers of Crete from Anatolia.
• Linear A has a distribution beyond Crete as well as a measurement system. Used in Akrotiri, Santorini.
• 1450 palaces destroyed. Only Knosos continues to function.
• Two Linear B tablets (rooms 12 and 69) deciphered in 1952ish: Greek 80 syllabels, record sheep accounts (room 69), offerings of oil to Priestess of Minoan dieties, the wind, patheo.. = all the gods in one offering
• Knosos may actually be a Mycenaen city – military advance or just take advantage of a weakening in Minoan
• 1530 was the volcano at Santorini, she says
•  Linear B certainly could have been widely used on papyrus which is now gone – but very likely just used for admin seals which is what we have
• 1200 BC Bronze Age collapses, dark age, isolation and poverty. Loss of golden jewelry, frescoe painting and writing. Occupation in Knosos remains continuous. Athens also remains strong.
• Reintroduced writing – Phonecian
• 776 Olympics – Renaissance – look back to legends – epics of Homer around 700 BC
• Writing not used to show kingship like it does in Egypt -= not a strong tie of the rulers to priestship
• Linear B comes from A – not sure where created – Mycenae or Knosos