Levels Taken on the Nike Bastion

Abstract

T HE SCHOLARSHIP on the Akropolis of Athens is the most extensive, intricate, and potentially confusing of that for any site in Greece. This is owing partly to the intricacies of the site itself, whose stages extend from the Bronze Age through the Classical period to the Turkish occupation. Just as daunting, however, is a long and varied history of excavation. Much of the site was excavated in the 19th century, when scientific archaeology was in its infancy, and a good portion of more recent work has remained partly or wholly unpublished. My recent study of the Sanctuary of Athena Nike brought me face to face with these problems. ' The encounter makes me all the more appreciative of how James Wright negotiates similar obstacles in his article on the Mycenaean entrance at the west side of the Akropolis, published in the 1994 volume of this journal.2 Wright and I have shared an interest in the Nike Bastion for many years and have talked back and forth on a number of points as work progressed. On one knotty problem we have long disagreed: the original height of the Mycenaean bastion. My study follows Iakovidis and Travlos in positing a gate wall northeast of the Mycenaean Nike Bastion; the original height of the bastion thus comes to 144.0 m. or more above sea level.