Kouros from Palaikastro

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Kouros from Palaikastro

The kouros of Palaikastro ( modern Greek Κούρος του Παλαικάστρου Kouros tou Palekastrou ) is a chryselephantine statuette from the late Minoan period. It was found from 1987 to 1990 during archaeological excavations in Roussolakkos near Palekastro in the far east of the Greek island of Crete . The kouros is now in the Archaeological Museum of Sitia .

Find description

Coordinates of the place of discovery: 35 ° 11 ′ 43.4 ″  N , 26 ° 16 ′ 32.2 ″  E

The site of the Kouros of Palaikastro is 270 meters from the northeast coast of Crete in the small valley of Roussolakkos (Ρουσσόλακκος), after which the archaeological site is named. Roussolakkos means “red pit” and refers to the reddish colored fine, impermeable marl sandstone in the area. The place named for the Kouros Palekastro, in older romanization Palaikastro, is located 1.5 kilometers to the west.

Site plan of the site

The Palaikastro kouros is not a fully preserved find. Parts of the torso and the face of the statuette are missing. It had broken into several pieces, which were discovered in building 5 of the Roussolakkos archaeological site and within 11 meters of the building. The Kompositarbeit the statuette was made with gold hook ivory from hippopotamus teeth , wood, Egyptian Blue , a head of serpentinite and eyes of rock crystal . The 54 cm high and maximum 18.5 cm wide figure has visible burn marks. The fragments of the kouros were found in an undisturbed find context of the late Minoan phase SM I B.

Steps to room 1 of building 5

The location of the individual parts of the kouros suggests that the statuette was subjected to human violence. The figure's legs were in front of a wall in room 2 of building 5, which is interpreted as a shrine and in which an amphora and two cups were also found. The other parts of the statuette, the torso, the head, the eyes, the front half of the feet and the remains of the base, lay in front of the steps of the entrance to Room 1 of Building 5, an open area called Plateia , which faces northwest from the building 1 and bordered in the northeast by building 3. Farthest from Building 5, in front of the west facade of Building 3, was the back of the head and neck. The closest scattering of small fragments of ivory and gold leaf was found northwest of the steps.

Upper part of the kouro

The first parts of the kouro were found on April 28, 1987 on the Plateia, including the torso and an arm, the legs of the statuette in 1990 in the so-called shrine. The excavation campaigns of Roussolakkos under Hugh Sackett and Alexander MacGillivray , which began in 1986 and lasted until 2003, were the third excavation in the Palekastro area. A horizon of destruction at the end of the ceramic phase SM I B was found in all areas, which occurred in about the first half of the 15th century BC. Corresponds to. The excavators assigned the production of the kouros to phase SM I A. Due to the valuable materials, the workmanship and the posture of the figure, it is assumed that the Kouros by Palaikastro is a statuette of gods.

Alexander MacGillivray saw the kouros of Palaikastro, the embodiment of a youthful male figure, an equivalent to the Egyptian god Osiris , a ruler who dies and is reborn in the change of nature. He reminds us of the dictaean Zeus of classical Greek antiquity , the young Zeus as the "greatest kouros". This is connected to Palekastro as a place of discovery via the hymn to the dictaean Zeus (also hymn of the Curetes ) from the Hellenistic period . The fragmentary inscription of the hymn was discovered in May 1904 during the first excavations at Palekastro under the direction of Robert Carr Bosanquet and Richard MacGillivray Dawkins . The four found parts of a limestone slab written on both sides, on which the hymn was recorded, were located about 140 meters southeast of the Kouros site in the Chi (Χ) block of the Roussolakkos excavation site.

literature

  • Judith Weingarten: Measure for Measure: What the Palaikastro Kouros can tell us about Minoan Society . In: Robert Laffineur, Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier (ed.): Politeia. Society and State in the Aegean Bronze Age (=  Aegaeum . No. 12 ). tape 2 . University of Liège, Liège 1995, p. 249–264 (English, digital version [PDF; 4.3 MB ]).
  • Alexander MacGillivray, Jan Driessen, Hugh Sackett: The Palaikastro Kouros: A Minoan Chryselephantine Statuette and Its Aegean Bronze Age Context . In: British School at Athens Studies . tape 6 , 2000, ISBN 978-0-904887-35-8 , JSTOR : i40041143 (English).

Individual evidence

Rear view of the kouros
Front view of the Kouros
  1. ↑ Alexander MacGillivray, Hugh Sackett: Palaikastro . In: Eric H. Cline (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-987360-9 , pp. 571 (English, digitized in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ Alexander MacGillivray, Hugh Sackett: Palaikastro . In: Wilson Myers, Eleanor Emlen Myers, Gerald Cadogan, John A. Gifford (Eds.): The Aerial Atlas of Ancient Crete . University of California Press, Berkeley 1992, ISBN 978-0-520-07382-1 , pp. 226 (English, digitized in the Google book search).
  3. ↑ Mark Moak: The Palaikastro Kouros . In: British School at Athens Studies . tape 6 , 2000, ISBN 978-0-904887-35-8 , pp. 65 , JSTOR : 40916617 (English).
  4. ^ A b Neville Postlethwaite: The Classical Review of The Palaikastro Kouros. A Minoan Chryselephantine Statuette and its Aegean Bronze Age Context. Classical Association, 2001, accessed March 4, 2017 .
  5. ^ The Palaikastro Kouros. Permanent Collection of the Archaeological Museum of Siteia. Ministry of Culture and Sport (Greece), accessed March 4, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Kate Cooper: The ROM 'Minoan' Goddess: The Minoan Relations. Ivory Figurines from Palaikastro (Roussolakkos), East Crete. Royal Ontario Museum, April 8, 2014, accessed March 4, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Tim Cunningham: Havoc: The Destruction of Power and the Power of Destruction in Minoan Crete . In: Joachim Bretschneider, Jan Driessen, Karel van Lerberghe (eds.): Power and Architecture: Monumental Public Architecture in the Bronze Age Near East and Aegean (=  Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta . Volume 156 ). Peeters, Leuven 2007, ISBN 978-90-429-1831-3 , pp. 33–35 (English, digitized in the Google book search).
  8. ↑ a b Alexander MacGillivray, Jan Driessen, Hugh Sackett: The Palaikastro Kouros: A Minoan Chryselephantine Statuette and Its Aegean Bronze Age Context . In: British School at Athens Studies . tape 6 , 2000, ISBN 978-0-904887-35-8 , pp. 21 , JSTOR : 40916612 (English).
  9. ↑ a b Alexander MacGillivray: Labyrinths and Bull-Leapers . In: Archeology . tape 53 , 2000, pp. 54 (English, digitized ).
  10. ↑ Christian Bauer: Goddess Twilight: The End of a Myth: Even among the Minoans, women did not rule - this is indicated by the discovery of a noble Zeus figure. Focus Online , September 3, 2007, accessed March 4, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Balbina Bäbler: Zeus. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 12/2, Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01487-8 , Col. 782-791, here Col. 788.
  12. ↑ Martin Persson Nilsson: History of the Greek religion: The Hellenistic and Roman times (=  handbook of ancient science . Volume 5,2,2 ). CH Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-01430-5 , pp. 61 ( digitized in Google book search).
  13. ↑ Mark Alonge: The Palaikastro Hymn and the Modern Myth of the Cretan Zeus . In: Princeton / Stanford Working Papers in Classics . Stanford 2005, p. 2 (English, digitized version [PDF; 167 kB ]).
  14. ↑ Alexander MacGillivray: The Diktaian Hymn to Zeus: a Paean to Peace. www.terzakis.com, August 17, 2010, accessed March 4, 2017 (English).

Web links

Commons : Kouros by Palaikastro  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 35 ° 12 ′ 16.4 ″  N , 26 ° 6 ′ 18.6 ″  E