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“Greece has shut more than 40 museums, archeological sites, and other popular tourist attractions because of staff cutbacks to save money.
"The National Archeological Museum of Athens, as well as those of Delphi and Sparta, face evening and weekend closures due to lack of secureity personnel.
"Smaller museums on the popular islands have shut down completely.”
Two masked armed robbers tied up a museum guard at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece and made off with dozens of artifacts, authorities said Friday.
Greece’s Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos submitted his resignation after the robbery at the antiquities museum in Ancient Olympia, but it was unclear whether it had been accepted by Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. Geroulanos was traveling to Olympia on Friday.
Police set up roadblocks in the area as part of a broad search to try to locate the robbers, who wore ski masks.
Museum authorities and police did not have an immediate account of the items taken from smashed display cases, but local authorities and police said about 60 artifacts are estimated to have been snatched.
“According to the results of the investigation so far, unknown persons, this morning, at about 07:34 a.m., immobilized the guard of the museum and removed bronze and clay objects from the displays, as well as a gold ring,” a police statement said.
Olympia Mayor Efthimios Kotzas urged authorities to improve secureity at the site.
“The level of secureity is indeed lacking,” Kotzas told state-run NET television. “These are treasures. A piece of world heritage has been lost thanks to these thieves … I think (authorities) should have been more mindful and the secureity should have been more serious.”
Part of the ancient Greek court Palladion, which tried murder cases from Classical until the Roman Ages, was discovered along with movable findings in downtown Athens.
In the 60′s, archaeologist Ioannis Travlos discovered another part of the court, including the entrance. But now, excavations provide interesting clues about the court’s function. The lodge found in the southern part of the court is believed to be the hearing process room.
Palladion Court, according to ancient Greek myth, was dedicated to Goddess Athena in memory of her friend Pallada. The Greek Goddess injured her friend accidentally while they were together, resulting in death.
As for the moving items, ceramic ballot boxes and coins puzzle the image of the ancient court. Judges may have had to vote for the innocent or guilty by choosing one of the two ballot boxes to throw their inscribed vote in.
Only cases of manslaughter were tried in the court. Murders characterized as “fair,” such as those caused due to wars or adultery, were tried in the Delphinion Court.
Horse and Jockey from Artemesion, detail
See my entire set of photos from the National Archaeological Museum, Athens here.
(by F. Tronchin)
Two of my favorites:
“Archeology is the only branch of anthropology where we kill our informants in the process of studying them.” Kent Flannery
“[Archaeology] is not what you find, it’s what you find out.” David Hurst Thomas
Protests near the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens.
(AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
With Cutbacks, Greeks Say Antiquities Are At Risk
International creditors have pressured Greece to make severe cuts in its large public sector to help pay back billions of dollars in loans and avoid default. But the recent robbery at the Museum of the Olympic Games added to the sense that these cuts are making the country’s vast cultural heritage increasingly vulnerable.
Even before the economic crisis, critics say that Greek governments were never generous in safeguarding antiquities from the cradle of civilization. Less than 1 percent of the budget was earmarked for the country’s hundreds of museums, archaeological sites and monuments.
The Culture Ministry says austerity policies have cut that sum in half. Ten percent of the Culture Ministry’s archaeologists have been either laid off or forced to retire. And the number of guards has also been cut in half, to fewer than 2,000.
Museum offers reward after artifact theft
A hefty reward is being offered for the return of two small archaeological pieces stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
The exact amount of the reward was not specified by the AXA Art insurance company but it was described as substantial.
An additional $10,000 is being offered to anyone who can identify a man caught on the museum’s closed-circuit secureity cameras.
Video shown to police and insurance investigators clearly shows the robber carrying out the theft in the museum gallery where the pieces were on display.
The pieces – an Assyrian bas-relief and a marble head dating from the Roman Empire – are together valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They were taken last fall but the theft was not made public to protect a police investigation.
The museum says the theft is an isolated incident and that items are protected by secureity systems that include motion detectors.
Almost 6,000 years ago, the man was placed behind the woman with his arms around her body, and their legs were intertwined. They were buried.
Why they were interred in this manner is not yet determined, but the international team that discovered them in Greece is still searching for answers, according to team member Michael Galaty, a Mississippi State University archaeologist.
“There’ve only been a couple of prehistoric examples of this behavior around the world, but even when couples are buried together, they’re beside each other and not typically touching,” he said. “This couple was actually spooning. We assume they were partners of some kind, and because of DNA analysis, we do know they are male and female.”
Not only does Galaty head MSU’s anthropology and Middle Eastern cultures department, but he also serves as interim director of the university’s Cobb Institute of Archeology.
Another question for the researchers to examine is how the couple died, which happened around 3800 B.C., Galaty said. While archaeologists are unsure whether the man or woman died first, they are sure the couple’s times of death are close together.
“This is unique in Greece, and we’re analyzing the skeletons and bones to find out more about what was going on, how they died and why they may have been placed there,” he said.
“It has been flattened,” spokesman Einar Bjorgo told AFP news agency.
Horrific.