Archive for ottoman
translation, revisited
Photo by Dimitris Plantzos
The Acropolis, 2 November 2008.
In the land where the past is eternally present, where the unburying of antiquities has become a national quest, one is surprised to find some of the remains of this very past buried anew. Certainly, this particular piece is not just any odd block of the Erechtheion architrave, but one now adorned by an Ottoman inscription, reminding us just who was running things up on the Acropolis in the not so distant (though ever so un-classical) past. Yannis Hamilakis has talked about this piece in his Nation and its Ruins and elsewhere, though since 2000, when he first saw it and photographed it, the “violated” piece of marble has become even less conspicuous. At a time of extensive restoration and overall cleaning-up of the proverbial “sacred rock” this block now lies buried under a mass of gravel, accidentally (?) fallen over it. Needless to say, the custodians of the nation’s relics are busy elsewhere.
Dimitris Plantzos
venus cami, II
Roman Agora, Küçük Cami, 02-06-2007 [Photo: F.I.].
“A wall, half meter long, discovered on the eve of the Olympic Games of Athens in 2004, the base of a michrab and the first steps of a minaret that can be hardly seen, a vertebra pillar that has rolled down from the Acropolis, large amounts of ink, paint and disrespect, is the monument of “Küçük Cami” on the edge of Rizokastro.
This was, most likely, a mosque of Muslim Gipsies of the Ottoman Athens (Muslims had also their race discriminations), the smallest of the seven temples of the city – that is the reason why it is named Küçük, which means small – which comprises a friction point amongst the supporters of the archaeological realism and of the antiquity lovers, who, without excavation of the many meters of the landfill, discovered there the temple of Aphrodite and made sure to announce this discovery by carving the name of Cypris Goddess on the inscription of the temple.
Who said that modern Greeks do not care about archaeology? They do care but with a unique way of their own which is very “Greek-centered” and, at the same time, barbaric. Significantly, this approach comes from those who accuse Christians for acts of vandalism.
The only thing that remains to be seen is to watch one day robes and burgas fighting each other in such sacred places. Everything is possible in our allegedly multicultural city.”
[text by akestor]
translation
Ottoman inscription on an architectural fragment from the Erechtheion, 30-10-2007 [Photo: F.I.].
[theotheracropolis.com] 