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Wednesday, July 19th, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 8:11a | Next week's blog OK everyone. After months of preparation, we are moving onto the TLS/Wordpress of this blog from next Monday, 24th July. http://www.the-tls.co.uk/category/a-dons-l The most you will have to do in order to comment is register once. It is simple. It has taken so long because the valiant TLS people have tried very hard to respond to your very useful comments and criticisms of the protype (thank you commenters, and thank you TLS). I am assured that all the previous posts and the comments will be there, there will be no unsightly gaps between comments etc etc. Of course, there may well be a few teething troubles, but very few I hope. See you there -- with all those learned, witty, incisive and temperate (sic) comments for which this blog has become known.
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| 10:33p | A great little Greek Museum Just to prove that I put my break to good use, let me recommend another little gem of a museum, this time on the Greek island of Kalymnos. We went over there from Turkey for a night. The formalities are a bit time consuming (couldnt help thinking that this is what it might be like trying to get to Calais in years to come) but, boy, was it worth it. The museum on the island is famous for its ancient bronzes, especially the Lady of Kalymnos (above), who came up out of the sea in some fishing nets in 1995: probably (its devilish difficult to date bronzes) a second century BC piece, probably lost in a ship wreck on the way from Greece to Rome. (Any Greek sculpture found on the Mediterranean bed is always assumed to be Roman plunder: some of it might well be, but it is a tremendously catch all assumption.) But there is a lot more that makes the museum really worth visiting.
When we first went in, my eye was caught by this sixth-century BC figure a standard archaic type of kouros, except that this one is clothed. There are a few others like this, but the norm is for these male figures to be naked, and it is striking to notice the really different impression they make when they are draped. (You cant really see it on this photo, but he has also got a lot of still surviving red paint on him, especially on the back.) As for two other highlights amongst a lot of good marble pieces, then I would go for this wonderfully characterful Roman portrait.
Hes a bit battered, but makes a great match (as the husband observed) for some of the late second/early first century BC sculpture on the island of Delos. The usual guess would be that he was part of the Roman community of traders making a lot of cash out of the new opportunities in the East (on Delos, it was the slave trade that brought the profits; on Kalymnos, Im not so sure). And my favourite little bit of re-identification is this one.
Its labelled in the Museum as the statue of a boy wearing an unusual diaphanous chiton. Well so he might possibly be, but he also has a strangely prominent willy. He must in fact be Attis, the young consort of the goddess Cybele; suspecting his affections were straying (or at least this is one version), she sent him mad so that he castrated himself. Hes often represented in something like this style, or even more revealing. This isnt the best parallel (not sure about the strange leggings), but I hope you get the point.
So not an ordinary little boy at all. Anyway, its a small, high quality collection, which takes an hour or so to enjoy. And after that, the swimming is great. |
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