The Iconography of Athena in Attic Vase-painting from 440–370 BC

As divine patron of the city of Athens, the goddess Athena plays a prominent role in Athenian art. The present study examines her representations in Attic vase-painting during the Classical period. In particular it traces the development of several distinctive Athena types, defined primarily by pose/action and attributes – fighting, standing, leaning, and seated – on the basis of a catalogue of some 200 selected representations. It considers their meaning and usage, their changing popularity, and their possible relationship with sculptural types. Particular attention is also paid to the considerable changes in the iconography of Athena’s dress and attributes, visible especially when charting the typology of her aegis and her helmet. It emerges that many earlier types of Athena continue through the Classical period, but some new types are also developed, such as the Leaning Athena, probably inspired by sculpture. Otherwise, however, only few clear and specific allusions to sculptural types, such as the Athena Parthenos, are in evidence. There is a general development towards a less active and more relaxed Athena, though coupled with an increased presence of attributes, emphasizing her character as a mighty goddess, protectress of heroes, particularly Herakles, and of her city. Her position as city goddess also explains why she often takes a more central position than would have been required by the particular episode represented. Her representations on vases clearly reflect the public and popular perception of the gods, rather than complex new philosophical ideas of divinity. The study was conceived as an M.Phil. thesis and is published here as it was submitted and accepted in 1992, with only minor, mostly typographical, corrections. The only major change from the original version is the reduction of the once extensive plates section to a small number of photographs representative of the figural types discussed

Design and development of a gait training system for Parkinson’s disease

Background. Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation (RAS) is an effective technique to improve gait and reduce freezing episodes for Persons with Parkinson’s Disease (PwPD). The BeatHealth system, which comprises a mobile application, gait sensors, and a website, exploits the potential of the RAS technique. This paper describes the tools used for co-designing and evaluating the system and discusses the results and conclusions. Methods. Personas, interviews, use cases, and ethnographic observations were used to define the functional requirements of the system. Low fidelity prototypes were created for iterative and incremental evaluation with end-users. Field trials were also performed with the final system. The process followed a user centered design methodology defined for this project with the aim of building a useful, usable, and easy-to-use system. Results. Functional requirements of the system were produced as a result of the initial exploration phase. Building upon these, mock-ups for the BeatHealth system were created. The mobile application was iterated twice, with the second version of it achieving a rating of 75 when assessed by participants through the System Usability Scale (SUS). After another iteration field trials were performed and the mobile application was rated with an average 78.6 using SUS. Participants rated two website mock-ups, one for health professionals and another for end-users, as good except from minor issues related to visual design (e.g. font size), which were resolved in the final version. Conclusion. The high ratings obtained in the evaluation of the BeatHealth system demonstrate the benefit of applying a user centered design methodology which involves stakeholders from the very beginning. Other important lessons were learned through the process of design and development of the system, such as the importance of motivational aspects, the techniques which work best, and the extra care that has to be taken when evaluating non-functional mock-ups with end users.This work was supported by the BeatHealth project within the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union – Personalised health, active ageing, and independent living, contract Number FP7-610633. See also: http://www.euromov.eu/beathealth/homepage. This work has been also partially supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government and by the European Regional Development Fund (projects TIN2014-52665-C2-1-R and TIN2017-85409-P), and by the Department of Education, Universities and Research of the Basque Government under grant IT980-16

Discerning differences: Ion beam analysis of ancient faience from Naukratis and Rhodes

Faience technology was known in Egypt since the Predynastic Period and practiced for a period also in Bronze Age Greece, but, having been lost, was reintroduced to the Greek world only in the first half of the first millennium BC. The Greek island of Rhodes and the Greek-Egyptian trade harbour of Naukratis in the Nile Delta are suspected to be key centres of early Greek-style faience production, exporting amulets and vessels across the Mediterranean region. Yet the nature and scale of their production and their role in technology transfer, vis-à-vis Egyptian and Levantine/Phoenician production, remain little understood. The main aim of this study was to discover whether it is possible to define chemical characteristics for the faience produced and found at Naukratis, and to use this data to differentiate between artefacts produced here and elsewhere.A programme of ion beam (PIXE and PIGE) analysis was conducted under the CHARISMA transnational access scheme, known to be a suitable tool for studying ancient vitreous artefacts as it provides a non-destructive means of obtaining precise and accurate quantitative compositional data. Both the internal body of damaged objects as well as the outer glaze layer were analysed, of which only the latter are discussed here. The results of this study indicate that the faience found at both Naukratis and on Rhodes is compositionally similar. However, some small differences were found in the raw materials used in its production which may help us to better characterise the production of different faience manufacturing centres.La technique de la faïence, connue en Égypte depuis la période prédynastique et utilisée également pendant un certain temps en Grèce à l’âge du Bronze, s’est perdue ensuite. Elle ne fut réintroduite dans le monde grec que vers la première moitié du Ier millénaire av. J.-C. On pense que l’île grecque de Rhodes et le port marchand gréco-égyptien de Naucratis dans le delta du Nil furent de grands foyers de production de faïences, exportant des amulettes et des vases dans tout le pourtour méditerranéen. Cependant, la nature et l’ampleur de leur production restent mal connues, de même que leur rôle dans la diffusion des techniques de fabrication en Égypte et au Levant/Phénicie. Cette recherche avait pour principal objectif de savoir s’il était possible de déterminer les caractéristiques chimiques des faïences fabriquées et découvertes à Naucratis, afin de mieux discerner les différences entre les objets produits sur ce site et ailleurs.Nous avons pu conduire des analyses par faisceaux d’ions (méthodes PIXE et PIGE) dans le cadre du programme européen CHARISMA d’accès transnational, offrant un outil adapté à l’étude des objets antiques vitrifiés, car c’est un moyen non-destructeur de recueillir des données quantitatives précises et fiables sur la composition des matériaux. Nous avons analysé aussi bien la pâte, à l’intérieur d’objets abîmés, que la glaçure extérieure, et c’est cette dernière qui est décrite ici. Les résultats de notre étude font apparaître une composition similaire pour les faïences découvertes à Naucratis et à Rhodes. Quelques petites variations découvertes dans les matières premières employées pourraient faciliter la caractérisation des faïences fabriquées dans les différents foyers de production

Greece and Egypt: reconsidering early contact and exchange

Scholarship has long recognized the vital significance of cross-cultural interaction to the development of the Mediterranean world of the early first millennium BC. Relations between Greece and Egypt, however, are often little considered in this context. Recent archaeological discoveries and the critical restudy of earlier fieldwork enable a fresh perspective on the topic, beyond the distorting prism of 19th century scholarship and the traditional focus on Greek texts, and fuzzy notions of influence based on the distribution of objects. Looking at places of direct encounter and tracing agents of contact, the article asks the question of what Greeks and Egyptians actually knew and understood of each other, and what processes underpinned their interaction, and tries to situate Egyptian-Greek contact within a broader picture of exchange between the Greek and Middle Eastern world in the crucial period of the 8th-6th centuries BC. Two cases studies, one on Egyptian bronzes found in the Samian Heraion and other Greek sanctuaries, and the other on the archaeology of the Egyptian-Greek trading post of Naukratis, suggest that over time, changes in networks and agents of trade and diplomacy fundamentally transformed the nature of contact and impact. In an earlier phase, exchange between Greece and Egypt was channelled primarily through Phoenician and Levantine networks; prestige objects moved as booty or gifts and amulets as commercial goods with the appeal of magical efficacy as much as of ‘exotic’ social currency, while traders were presumably the main agents to transfer knowledge of Egyptian culture to the elites of mainland and East Greek centres. In a later phase, the Nile Delta in particular became a key intercultural contact zone, home to Greeks, Carians and other foreigners who came to Egypt as traders and mercenaries. It was only in this phase, from the late 7th century BC onwards, that direct exposure to ideas and practices and shared, lived experience set in motion processes of exchange that were to have more profound resonances on all cultures involved

Egyptian-Greek exchange in the Late Period: the view from Nokradj-Naukratis

This volume in which this chapter appears presents 16 papers that explore aspects of the economic and religious life of the northwestern Nile Delta in the first millennium BC. The papers concentrate on presenting new research on a range of material culture—ceramics, coins, weights, statuettes, statues, royal decrees and abandoned ships—from the on-going excavations of Thonis-Heracleion, a now submerged port-city on the edge of the ‘Sea of the Greeks’. This research is put into its local context through number of additional papers, including this one on Naukratis, the river-port upstream of Thonis-Heracleion

Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg? Some thoughts on bird sacrifices in Ancient Greece

Sokrates’ famous last words, ‘Krito, I owe a cock to Asklepios; will you remember to pay the debt?’, as reported in Plato’s Phaidon (117e–18a), have long occupied scholars trying to understand the reason for the ‘debt’, but the choice of sacrificial animal has equally surprised. Cattle, sheep, goats and pigs are well known as the main animals offered in Greek sacrificial rites – but why a bird? Sokrates’ rooster, however, is not altogether unique. Other famous figures of antiquity, too, sacrificed birds: when in the second century ad Aelius Aristeides in search of a cure for his ailments comes to Smyrna and visits the warm baths, the goddess Isis herself intervenes and orders him to sacrifice two geese to her (Sacred Tales 3.45). What do we know about birds as sacrificial animals? A hundred years ago, Stengel in his 1910 publication on the sacrificial customs of the Greeks devoted a fair number of pages to the discussion of birds, game and fish as sacrificial animals, but the modern scholarly discourse of ancient Greek sacrifice rarely mentions, let alone engages with, sacrificial animals beyond the ‘traditional’ quartet of domesticated cloven-hoofed mammals. This is even though not just written sources but also recent osteological evidence confirm that Greek sacrificial customs and feasting were more colourful and wide-ranging. This menagerie on the fringes of ‘typical’ Greek sacrifice is neglected at peril: it is here that light is shed on areas beyond large-scale civic ritual of the landed polis, that the dichotomy of domesticated and wild, ‘Greek’ and ‘foreign’, and the relationship between sacrificer, animal and deity can be interrogated from a fresh perspective in a broader social and economic context

Mediterranean encounters: Greeks, Carians and Egyptians in the first millennium BC

The first millennium BC was a crucial period in the history of contact between Egypt and Greece. Three case studies examine the processes and people behind and the impact of this contact. They will take us from sixth century BC cosmopolitan Memphis, with its international population including Greeks and Carians, down the Nile to the Egyptian-Greek trading port of Naukratis, and further to Alexandria, on the Mediterranean shore, newly founded at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, discussing the splendid polychrome decoration of a Carian grave marker, grave goods related to the cult of Adonis, and votive statues of cats offered to the goddess Bubastis. Drawing on new insights from recently uncovered or reevaluated archaeological evidence, all three case studies focus on the agents and contexts of cultural contact—that is, people, their actions, and their motivation

Between Apollo and Osiris: Egyptianising East Greek Pottery, Translating Gods and Cross-Cultural Interaction in the 6th Century B.C.

Relatively few Greek fine ware vessels have been uncovered in Egyptian contexts of the late 7th and 6th centuries B.C., the majority of East Greek production. Remarkably, though, the shape and imagery of a good number of them seem to reference local Egyptian customs and ideas, notably Osirian religion and regional sacred geographies, either representing them directly, or translating them into a Greek idiom. The vessels were probably commissioned by Greeks in Egypt from craftsmen in their homelands to be offered as bespoke containers to Egyptian sanctuaries and/or (religious) dignitaries. Their origins and distribution indicate two main networks of contact and exchange: one linking North Ionian Teos and Klazomenai with Thebes in the Nile valley, the other Rhodes with Daphnai and Memphis in the Nile Delta. Together with other evidence they suggest that Greeks from a wide social spectrum were acquiring a high level of intimacy with Egyptian culture. Ritual practice in particular emerges as a vital arena for Greek-Egyptian interaction and as a main conduit for elements of Egyptian culture to enter the wider Greek sphere

Rhodes and Kos: East Dorian pottery production of the Archaic period

To date, the pottery production of Rhodes, Kos and other ‘East Dorian’ islands and coastal areas remains little understood. This article presents and discusses new neutron activation analysis (NAA) of eighth–sixth-century vessels found on Rhodes and in related areas, placing them in the wider context of past and present archaeometric research. The results highlight the role of Kos as a leading regional centre of painted pottery production and export in the seventh–sixth centuries , notably of ‘East Dorian’ plates. This includes the famous ‘Euphorbos plate’, which can now be attributed to Koan production. Contemporary Archaic pottery workshops on Rhodes, in contrast, had a less ambitious, if diverse, output, ranging from vessels in a Sub-Geometric tradition, imitation Corinthian wares and modest local versions of Koan- and Ionian-style plates to finely potted and richly decorated ‘Vroulian’ cups and black-figured situlae. It was imported mainland and East Greek wares, however, that dominated the island's consumption of Archaic painted wares. This represents a departure from the preceding Geometric period, which was characterised by a local pottery production of considerable scale and quality, although receptivity to external influences remained a consistent feature throughout later periods. As patterns of demand were changing, the island's craft production appears to have concentrated on a different range of goods in which high-quality figured finewares played a lesser role

The mystery of Naukratis: revealing Egypt’s international gateway

An article on the lost port of Naukratis, once Egypt’s great international gateway. Despite pioneering late 19th-century archaeological research at the site, Naukratis has since languished in the shadows. Who really lived there, how did the port work, and what salacious secrets were hidden away by the Victorians? Its mysteries are finally being solved by a new British Museum project outlined in this article