Archaeology Odyssey

For more on the 19th-century debate over Layard’s discoveries, see Mogens Trolle Larsen, “Europe Confronts Assyrian Art,” Archaeology Odyssey, January/February 2001.

In later times, Egyptians habitually took off sandals before traversing sacred spaces, such as temples and tomb chapels. Also, in the Bible, as Moses approaches the burning bush, God tells him, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).

The period from the 1st through the 2nd Dynasty is called the Early Dynastic period; some scholars, though I am not one of them, include the 3rd

The Palermo Stone (c. 2400 B.C.) was originally a basalt stela 6.5 feet high and 3 feet wide, inscribed on both sides with royal annals stretching back to prehistoric times. Although most of the stone is now missing, the principal extant fragment is in the Palermo Archaeological Museum, in Sicily, while smaller fragments are in London’s Petrie Museum and Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.

The tunnel would later be used as a place of refuge by an early Christian attempting to avoid the onslaught of the Slavic invasion of Greece in 585 A.D. (By this time, the stadium had long been abandoned, and a farming community populated the Nemean valley.) Before he was caught, he hid his coins under a stone. His scattered skeletal remains and the traces of a wound on the top of his skull tell the story of his violent end, a fate that befell the entire Nemean valley.

This objectivity was largely missing from the musical competitions that were held originally at Delphi and Isthmia, and later at Nemea. These were decided by a panel of judges susceptible to influence and prejudice. Hence the Olympics, which did not include musical competitions, came to be regarded as the purest, most corruption-free of the games.

Three columns of the second sanctuary, the Temple of Nemean Zeus, still stand; some of the columns were taken down about 425 A.D. by Christians seeking building material for a new basilica in the region; 33 other columns were left lying around, and recently we have begun to reconstruct some of them.

See Adrienne Mayor, “Sea Monsters and Other Ancient Beasts: A Tale from a Grecian Urn,” Archaeology Odyssey, March/April 2002.

The altis at Olympia was an enclave of temples, altars and freestanding statuary enclosed by a wall—the cult center of the sanctuary.