April 14, 2005
April 14 Photos: Peter
Nafplio, the town where we’re staying, as seen from across the bay. Nafplio is an exceptionally pretty town and well worth a stop. In addition to its archaeological museum (which is sadly closed while we’re here), Nafplio offers an amazing Italian ice cream shop.
Our first stop of the day was Lerna, mostly a prehistoric settlement but also the site of many later buildings. Because of careful preservation, we can still see the three thousand year old mudbrick at Lerna that is visible behind Professor Rutter.
Aware of the earliness of the hour, Professor Rutter uses engaging gesticulation as he tells us about the House of the Tiles. Dating from an early Helladic period, the House of the Tiles is the first building in the Aegean to have a tile roof, a major breakthrough in the permanence and engineering necessary to build the building.
The group looks on in interest as Professor Rutter discusses a Mycenaean shaft grave that was cut into one end of the House of the Tiles.
Kissed by the brilliant morning sun, our cheerful group walks back to the bus through a fragrant orange grove.
Laura and Caleb give their stamp of approval to a large, intricately decorated Geometric pot at the Argos Museum. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the Argos museum is beautiful, well-lit, and has a superb collection of objects on display, and all of us gave it a hearty thumbs up.
Ben face to face with one of the earliest suits of Greek bronze armor. The armor includes a breastplate and backplate as well as a helmet which originally would have had a horsehair crest.
Neha standing next to an incredibly large storage jar in the Argos Museum
Professor Rutter discusses a fine collection of bronze artifacts. The two items on the topmost shelf are andirons in the shape of warships. The lower items are spits, known as obols. Three obols make a drachma. These spits were very popular in the Archaic period and lent their names to Greek currency. Each obol was deemed to be worth a certain weight in silver, and this weight in silver then came to be known as an obol. Three times this weight was a drachma.
Part of a particularly beautiful 5th Century AD mosaic of the Four Seasons that was at the Argos Museum. This figure, ximon, symbolizes winter.
The remains of the Classical Doric temple to Hera at the Argive Heraion, with the valley and the mountains rising in the back.
Professor Rutter points out column bases on the stylobate of an older temple at the Argive Heraion.
Caleb leans on half of a column base in the heat of a discussion about the possibility of a large scale stone lathe existing in the Archaic period. When Professor Rutter presented the theory that a lathe could have been used to make the column bases we were looking at, the group became sharply divided and we had our first real group debate.
The famous theater at Epidauros. The acoustics in this building are amazing – a coin dropped on the central amplifying stone can be heard by someone sitting in the topmost row of the theater! Incredulous? We were – we tried it and were amazed that we could clearly hear it from many meters away.
Nkosi whispers sweet nothings to us from the bottom of the theater. Even in the top row, we could make out almost every word.
Everybody hanging out at the top of the theater. From here, you actually can hear paper being torn over the central amplifying stone!
Laura and Jackie treat us to their rendition of “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.
“Bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stay!”