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Archaeology & Art

@archaeologyart

Aug 17, 2023

The Great Shigir Idol is an archaeological Ural treasure that mankind has yet to decipher. It is approximately 12,500 years old and is the world's oldest monumental wooden statue. Modern studies on the idol began more than twenty years ago, but there are still many unanswered questions.

1) The middle of the 19th century was the "gold rush" era in the Urals. Due to gold prospecting in the area, the Shigir peat bog was partially drained. Workers found objects made of wood, horns, animal bones, stone, and clay.

The first archaeological discovery at this area was made by M. V. Malakhov in 1880. After Malakhov's discovery, many researchers became interested in Shigir peat bog. Thousands of finds were made here (animal figures, arrowheads, knives, shovels, clay pots, wooden skis, etc.). The age of the finds was very different from each other. This area somehow attracted ancient people for thousands of years.

2) The Shigir discoveries in 1887 aroused great interest at the large Siberian-Ural scientific and industrial exhibition held in Yekaterinburg. However, the most important discovery came three years after this exhibition.

On a winter day on January 24, 1890, fragments of a wooden statue that later became the "Great Shigir Idol" were found in the second Kurinsky section of the Shigirskiy peat bog. The wooden idol was lying under a layer of peat four meters deep. The idol was delivered to the Ural Society of Natural Sciences Lovers Association (UOLE).

Dmitry Lobanov, the curator of the UOLE museum, first undertook to rebuild the Shigir Idol in the 1890s; however, his attempt was not successful because Lobanov used only a half of the ten pieces.

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Archaeology & Art

@archaeologyart

Aug 16, 2023

An X-Ray of the Greek Antikythera Mechanism, which shows the gears inside.

The Antikythera mechanism indeed has an extremely complex structure. Due to its astrolabe-like appearance, it was thought to be a tool used for navigation in ships, but later it turned out to be a much more complex machine. In fact, after a while it started to be seen as the oldest analog computer. , c. 100-150 BC.

1) In April 1900, a group of Greek sponge-divers dived into the Aegean Sea near the island of Antikythera, near Crete. One of the members of this divers-group, Elias Stadiatos, discovered an ancient shipwreck near a small island called Antikythera in Greece. The wreck was 25 meters away from the coast, at a depth of about 50 meters. This was a cargo ship that sank in about 87 BC.

2) The finds included bronze and marble sculptures, as well as clay vases and fragments of furniture. The first object retrieved from the bottom of the sea was the right arm of a bronze statue of the 3rd c. BC depicting a philosopher. The most valuable find among those excavated from the wreck was a wooden box with impellers that had been crushed and intertwined with the effect of saltwater. Inside this box, about the size of a shoebox, there was some mechanisms. In the years of the shipwreck, the box deteriorated and disappeared shortly after it was removed as there were no methods of preserving the wooden finds.

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Archaeology & Art

@archaeologyart

Nov 6, 2022

The 12 Olympian gods of ancient Greece. Top row left to right: Zeus, Athena, Hera, Apollo. Middle row left to right: Demeter, Artemis, Hermes, Hephaistos. Bottom row left to right: Aphrodite, Dionysos, Poseidon, Ares.

@whencyclopedia

All images by Mark Cartwright except middle far-right (Hephaistos) by Jastrow (public domain image). @whencyclopedia

Far back in history, there had been many local gods. Each was linked with a sacred place such as a mysterious corner of a forest or a quiet pool. Gradually, twelve gods became more important than the rest.

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Archaeology & Art

@archaeologyart

Oct 7, 2022

Flood: Thinkers, writers and artists in Ancient Greece.

Greek philosophers asked questions such as : what is the world made of? In trying to answer these questions, they began to study the world and the relationships between shapes, between animals and between numbers.

These studies were the beginning of modern science, algebra, geometry, zoology, botany, geology and history. Greek writers and artists studied relationships too.

Playwrights wrote about the relationship of man and the gods. Artists studied the relationship between the different parts of the body, in order to create perfect beauty.

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Archaeology & Art

@archaeologyart

Oct 6, 2022

New design by archaeologyart: The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. This digitally created drawing is based on Gustav Klimt's 1908 painting "The Kiss".

Design (for US): amzn.to/3CDW2GP
Worldwide: archaeostore.com

In 1903, Klimt traveled twice to Ravenna, where he saw the mosaics of San Vitale, whose Byzantine influence was apparent in the paintings of what would become known as his "Golden Period".

After visiting Ravenna in Italy, where he saw the Byzantine mosaics by San Vitale, Klimt created “The Kiss”. It is possible to see the Byzantine influence in many of Klimt’s paintings during his "Golden Period".

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Archaeology & Art

@archaeologyart

Jul 26, 2022

Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius, AD. 176-177 Gilded bronze, h. 424 cm. Now on display at the Capitoline Museums, Rome.

This is one of the few bronze statues that has survived intact from ancient times. The decision not to melt it down for the sake of the bronze was probably due to the mistaken identification of the figure as Constantine,

an emperor greatly revered in the Middle Ages because he was believed to have embraced Christianity. The pre-medieval history of the statue is obscure: it is not known why it was cast, nor where it stood in classical antiquity.

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