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<< Our Photo Pages >> National Archaeological Museum Athens - Museum in Greece in Central Greece

Submitted by Antonios on Tuesday, 08 February 2022  Page Views: 21594

MuseumsSite Name: National Archaeological Museum Athens
Country: Greece
NOTE: This site is 5.172 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: Central Greece Type: Museum
Nearest Town: Athens  Nearest Village: Athens
Latitude: 37.989020N  Longitude: 23.732074E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
4 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
3 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
5 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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I have visited· I would like to visit

bat400 visited on 19th May 2011 - their rating: Cond: 4 Amb: 4 Access: 5 An amazing museum and well worth the price. I do note that due to funding reductions some galleries have been closed, I believe on a rotating basis. On the day of my visit, much of the ceramics collections, the Vase and Minor Objects Collection, were not accessible.

davidmorgan Kuba have visited here

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by dodomad : The Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, has challenged researchers since its discovery in 1901. Now split into 82 fragments, only a third of the original survives, including 30 corroded bronze gearwheels. Microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography (X-ray CT) in 2005 decoded the structure of the rear of the machine but the front remained largely unresolved. X-ray CT also reve... (Vote or comment on this photo)
National Archaeological Museum near Omonoia in Athens. The largest archaeological museum in Greece and home to an astounding Prehistoric Collection, including "works of the great civilizations that developed in the Aegean from the sixth millennium BC to 1050 BC (Neolithic, Cycladic, Mycenaean), and finds from the prehistoric settlement at Thera."

Museum website.
Article and pictures recently sent to us from Antonios about the Antikythera computer:

More than 2000 years the most sophisticated scientific instrument was resting in the bottom of Aegean Sea. A Roman ship with an official loot from Rhodes of more than 100 statues and the mechanism has sunk near Antikythera Island. Found by sponge divers the artifact first was labeled a child's-toy. British historian Derek J.de Solla Price in 1951 cleaned the device and undertook systematic investigation. It took many years for the scientists to demystify it with radiographies-rays, gamma rays and other analysis. It appears to be a clock-like machine consisting of 37 precise hand cut bronze gears, wheels, dials and scales fitted in to a wooden box. The box has decayed. Thirty other gears are missing.The instrument was a mechanical analog computer used to calculate the astronomical positions of the moon, planets and stars on the zodiac cycle. The design of the epicyclical gearing present in the calculator indicates knowledge of heliocentric theory. A model proposed by the great astronomer Aristarchus of Samios (310-230 BC).It is possible the theory of Aristarchus was adopted by his followers as opposed to the geocentric theory of Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemeus.Copernicus in 1543 used the heliocentric model of Aristarchus.Actually the heliocentric theory appears 800 years earlier in the Sacred Orphic texts. Machine of such complex technology would not appear until the 18th century. There are literary quotes about Archimedes having similar mechanisms.

In 2005 scientists from high technology companies, Hewlett Packard (US) and X-Tek Systems (UK) came to Athens with the eight tones “Bladerunner”, a very powerful new X-ray machine. The detailed examination of the faded and worn out inscriptions revealed more information.

Kharalambos Kritzas, archaeologist and former director of Epigraphic Museum Athens, studied the letters that are engraved in the mechanism and it pronounced that was manufactured by 150to 100 BCE.It was the time where in Rhodes lived the father of Astronomy and leading intellectual Hipparchus.He had calculated the diameter of the moon and her oscillating distance from the earth..Moroever he had calculated the variable corner speed of the moon. Which is represented with precision in the Antikythera computer. This practically means if Hipparchus made the mechanism, then he had found the second law of Kepler 1700 years earlier. On 3 Nov 2000 the science journal Nature published a new reconstruction of the mechanism based on high resolution X-ray tomography. This provided new translation .The inscription contains a manual with an astronomical, mechanical and geographic section. The name Ispania (Spain in Greek) appeared in the mechanism, this is the oldest reference to this country under this form as opposed to Iberia. Greeks were familiar with Iberia as they established colonies since the Bronze Age. Based on the inscriptions, which mention the stationary points of the planets, the motions of the planets have been indicated. On the front face were graduations for the solar scale and the zodiac together with pointers that indicated the position of the sun, moon, the lunar phase and the planetary motion. The moon mechanism using an ingenious train of gears, two of them linked with a slightly offset axis and pin in a slot, shows the position and phase of the moon during the month, the velocity of the moon varies according to the theory of Hipparchus and follows Kepler’s second law for the angular velocity, Being faster near the perigee and slower at the apogee.

Photo of the reconstructed Byzantine Astrolabe made by Kriaris Dionysios. Was exhibited at Ancient Technological Museum, Greece.The astrolabe was used for the measurement of the angle between two objects as well as for the measurement of the sun's height and other stars, which determine the season, the duration of the day, the meridian of the place and other. The knowledge was passed on to Arabs. It is a modest descendant of the Antikythera Computer.

Note: The surviving fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism can be viewed here. It is very probable it was a mechanical computer of bronze gears made to make astronomical predictions, by mechanizing astronomical cycles and theories. (As published in Nature in 2021) More in the comments on our page
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National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by Antonios : The Antikythera computer reconstructed (2 comments - Vote or comment on this photo)

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by Antonios : Part of the Antikythera mechanism (Vote or comment on this photo)

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by Antonios : The Antikythera computer instrument as displayed at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. (Vote or comment on this photo)

 National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by TheDruid-3X3 : Picture of the Antikythera Shipwreck from where the Famed Antikythera Mechanism was found. Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia (Vote or comment on this photo)

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by TheDruid-3X3 : Picture of the Antikythera Mechanism Pieces. Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by davidmorgan : A panel of beautifully carved Cycladic figures.

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by Antonios : Graphic representation of the Antikythera mechanism gears.

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by Antonios : Other part of the Antikythera computer instrument

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by TheDruid-3X3 : A Bust of a Greek Philosopher taken from the Antikythera Shipwreck. Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by TheDruid-3X3 : Statue taken from the Antikythera Mechanism Wreck. Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by durhamnature : The Lady Takushit, a beautiful bronze in the museum, image from "History of Egypt" via archive.org Site in Attica/Central Greece Greece

National Archaeological Museum Athens
National Archaeological Museum Athens submitted by AlexHunger : Site in Athens, Greece: The museum has been renovated in recent years and is now well organized and pleasantly decoarated. The major Greek treasures are on display here.

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 1.7km SSE 148° Cycladic Museum at Athens* Museum
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"National Archaeological Museum Athens" | Login/Create an Account | 11 News and Comments
  
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Re: National Archaeological Museum Athens by morgannwg on Saturday, 12 February 2022
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Terrific posting for detail and clarity. Look forward to giving it some time to sink in. The implications for early knowledge of the cosmos are exciting. Features like this one by Antonius bring the past right back in our faces.
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Re: National Archaeological Museum Athens by Boreades on Saturday, 12 February 2022
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How to make your own Antikythera Mechanism!

A truly wonderful series of videos by ClickSpring. The skills (without exaggeration) are awe-inspiring.

Episode 1 (of 10) - Greeks, Clocks and Rockets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE
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A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism by Andy B on Tuesday, 08 February 2022
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The Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, has challenged researchers since its discovery in 1901. Now split into 82 fragments, only a third of the original survives, including 30 corroded bronze gearwheels. Microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography (X-ray CT) in 2005 decoded the structure of the rear of the machine but the front remained largely unresolved. X-ray CT also revealed inscriptions describing the motions of the Sun, Moon and all five planets known in antiquity and how they were displayed at the front as an ancient Greek Cosmos. Inscriptions specifying complex planetary periods forced new thinking on the mechanization of this Cosmos, but no previous reconstruction has come close to matching the data. Our discoveries lead to a new model, satisfying and explaining the evidence. Solving this complex 3D puzzle reveals a creation of genius—combining cycles from Babylonian astronomy, mathematics from Plato’s Academy and ancient Greek astronomical theories.

The paper is Open Access in Nature

Freeth, T., Higgon, D., Dacanalis, A. et al. A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism. Sci Rep 11, 5821 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84310-w
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The Antikythera mechanism by Andy B on Tuesday, 08 February 2022
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Around Easter 1900, Captain Dimitrios Kondos and his crew of sponge divers from Symi sailed through the Aegean en route to fishing grounds off North Africa. They stopped at the Greek island of Antikythera to wait for favorable winds. During the layover, they began diving off the island's coast wearing the standard diving dress of the time – canvas suits and copper helmets.

Diver Elias Stadiatis descended to 45 meters depth, then quickly signaled to be pulled to the surface. He described a heap of rotting corpses and horses strewn among the rocks on the seafloor. Thinking the diver was drunk from the nitrogen in his breathing mix at that depth, Kondos donned diving gear and descended to the site. He soon returned to the surface with the arm of a bronze statue. Shortly thereafter, the men departed as planned to fish for sponges, but at the end of the season they returned to Antikythera and retrieved several artifacts from the wreck. Kondos reported the finds to authorities in Athens, and quickly Hellenic Navy vessels were sent to support the salvage effort from November 1900 through 1901.

The Antikythera Youth or Ephebe
Together with the Greek Education Ministry and the Royal Hellenic Navy, the sponge divers salvaged numerous artifacts from the waters. By the middle of 1901, divers had recovered bronze statues, one named "The Philosopher", the Youth of Antikythera (Ephebe) of c. 340 BC, and thirty-six marble sculptures including Hercules, Ulysses, Diomedes, Hermes, Apollo, three marble statues of horses (a fourth was dropped during recovery and was lost on the sea floor), a bronze lyre, and several pieces of glasswork. Recovered ship's equipment included lead scupper pipes and hull sheeting, and a set of lead sounding weights weighing 6 and 14 kg. These are the only sounding weights ever discovered on an ancient shipwreck in the Aegean, although comparable examples have been recovered along the Levantine coast. Many other small and common artifacts also were found, and the entire assemblage was taken to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The death of diver Giorgos Kritikos and the paralysis of two others due to decompression sickness put an end to work at the site during the summer of 1901.

On 17 May 1902, archaeologist Valerios Stais made the most celebrated find while studying the artefacts at the National Archaeological Museum. He noticed that a severely corroded piece of bronze had a gear wheel embedded in it and legible inscriptions in Greek. The object would come to be known as the Antikythera mechanism. Originally thought to be one of the first forms of a mechanised clock or an astrolabe, it is at times referred to as the world’s oldest known analog computer.

The wreck remained untouched until 1953, when French naval officer and explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau visited briefly to relocate the site. Cousteau returned with a full team in the summer and autumn of 1976 at the invitation of the Greek government. Under the direction of archaeologist Dr. Lazaros Kolonas, the team recovered nearly 300 artifacts, including four hull planks, ceramic jars, bronze and silver coins, pieces of bronze and marble sculptures, bronze statuettes, several pieces of gold jewelry, and even human remains of the crew and passengers.

Source: Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

With many thanks to Druid3x3 for the information. The shipwreck site is Latitude: 35.955833, Longitude: 23.277222 near Skariana Island and Pori Island.
Centred here on our map: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/le_megalith_map.html#9/35.9558/23.2772
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Archaeologists return to ancient Greek 'computer' wreck site by davidmorgan on Friday, 26 October 2012
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A new search has begun at a Greek island where an ancient device known as the world's "oldest computer" was found over a century ago, an official said Thursday, adding that other discoveries were possible.

Archaeologists this week returned to Antikythera, the Aegean Sea island where sponge divers in 1900-1901 found the so-called Antikythera Mechanism, a remarkable 2nd-century BCE device that tracked the cycles of the solar system. "These are unexplored sea depths beneath a trade route known since antiquity," said Angeliki Simosi, head of Greece's ephorate of underwater antiquities. "This is virgin territory," she told AFP. Believed to operate by crank and containing inter-meshing gears, the mechanism could be used to calculate eclipses and moon cycles. The technology was comparable to astronomical clocks that only appeared some 1,600 years later. It was found in the wreck of a cargo ship apparently carrying booty to Rome. The Greek team is assisted by Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution at Massachusetts, who has helped in past outings to identify ancient shipwrecks over the last five years.

Foley is contributing autonomous underwater vehicles to map the seabed and rebreather equipment that partially recycles a diver's oxygen and will enable the researchers to probe previously inaccessible depths, the senior archaeologist said. Simosi said she had visited Antikythera in 1985 during construction work to widen the local port of Potamos and the bay was "full of antiquities". "I believe we could find something equivalent to the Antikythera Mechanism," Simosi said. "If we do, the entire department will likely need to be sent out," she said. The operation, jointly funded by the Greek state and Woods Hole, will continue until October 22.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-archaeologists-ancient-greek-site.html
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Ancient calculator on display at Athens Archaeological Museum by davidmorgan on Monday, 12 March 2012
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An exhibition entitled "The wreck of Antikythera - The ship, the treasures, the Mechanism", will open at the Archaeological Museum in Athens on April 5 and will run for a year.

This is the first time that all the findings from the Antikythera wreck, dated between 60-50 BC, will be displayed together, while some of the items have never been displayed before.

Sometime before Easter 1900, Elias Stadiatis, a Greek sponge diver, discovered the wreck of an ancient cargo ship off Antikythera Island at a depth of 42 m (138 ft). Sponge divers retrieved several statues and other artifacts from the site.

The Mechanism itself was discovered on May 17, 1901, when archaeologist Valerios Stais noticed that a piece of rock recovered from the site had a gear wheel embedded in it. Examination revealed that the "rock" was in fact a heavily encrusted and corroded mechanism that had survived the shipwreck in three main parts and dozens of smaller fragments.

The device itself was surprisingly thin, about 33 cm (13 in) high, 17 cm (6.7 in) wide, and 9 cm (3.5 in) thick, made of bronze and originally mounted in a wooden frame. It was inscribed with a text of over 2,000 characters, many of which have only just recently been deciphered.

The Antikythera Mechanism is believed to be an ancient mechanical calculator (also described as a "mechanical computer") designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to about 150-100 BC. Technological artifacts of similar complexity appeared a thousand years later. (ΑΜΝΑ)
http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/9/53865

Submitted by coldrum.
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Greek cutbacks leave cultural treasures locked out of sight by Andy B on Tuesday, 14 June 2011
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IMF-dictated austerity measures blamed for partial closure of National Archaeological Museum in Athens

The greatest repository of ancient Greek art – the National Archaeological Museum of Athens – has become the latest victim of the economic crisis engulfing Greece, with visitors getting only a peek at its renowned collections.

As the long-awaited tourist season begins, the debt-choked country's top attraction is in the news for all the wrong reasons: closed exhibition halls, neglect and exasperated holidaymakers.

More in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/03/greece-cutbacks-cultural-treasures
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    Re: Greek cutbacks leave cultural treasures locked out of sight by bat400 on Saturday, 18 June 2011
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    The reductions in opening hours at sites and museums, as well as the closing of some galleries of the National Museum was evident in late May. The reductions and closings appear to have become more wide spread this month. If you are visiting Greece to visit ancient sites, your best bet this year is to call (if there is an associated phone number) and check times. From our limited experiance, the trend seemed to be for sites and museums opening at the normal time and closing early.
    Many websites listing hours are now incorrect.
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Scientists give a face to ancient Greek girl by bat400 on Monday, 25 October 2010
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Submitted by coldrum --

Greek scientists and archaeologists have given an ancient Athenian girl from the 5th century BC a face by using her skeleton, found in an ancient grave. 'Myrtis' has been brought back to life through facial reconstruction from her intact skull and teeth.

The 11-year-old Athenian girl died of typhoid fever in 430 BC during a plague, and her bones were found in a mass grave near the ancient Athenian cemetery of Keramikos when the Athens subway was being dug up in 1995. The mass grave was full of 150 men, women and children.

Professor and orthodontist from the University of Athens Manolis Papagrigorakis, with a team of one Swedish and 19 Greek scientists, said Myrtis was chosen because of the good condition of her skull and teeth that gave them a lot to work with.

"We had all of the skull, the jaw, and the teeth, and something very rare - the milk teeth on the skull. These all helped us to be accurate with the final product, and we are very close - 95 percent close to reality with the final product," said Papagrigorakis during a presentation at the National Archaeological Museum.

Papagrigorakis took DNA from the teeth of the other skulls in the grave to prove that they had died of typhoid fever. DNA was not taken from Myrtis herself because the team did not want to damage her intact teeth.

"The first part of the research was an analysis of the ancient DNA in order find out what the Athenians of the period had died of in Athens. This study took place in 2006 and it was found to be typhoid fever," Papagrigorakis explained.

Greek archaeologist Efi Baziotopoulou, who excavated the Keramikos site, contributed historical information for the colour of Myrtis hair, eyes, and dress, and gave her her name, said Papagrigorakis.

Myrtis has been placed near funerary steles from the cemetery of the same period in the museum.

The exhibition at the museum has been called "Face to Face with the Past", and Papagrigorakis says they will also attempt the same reconstruction on another man and woman.

For more, see http://www.3news.co.nz.
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Re: National Archaeological Museum Athens by ulmus on Thursday, 31 July 2008
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if this is factual did iccarus indeed fly too close to the sun we do tend to underestimate our ancestors, c....
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