HomeboyMediaNews

The looting of ancient sites is the biggest threat faced today by archaeology. It is also the subject of a travelling exhibition at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

‘You have been robbed,’ reads a large banner outside The Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

Why? I have to ask, slightly bewildered. The answer is rather dire, throughout the country, over 100 archaeological sights have been looted. The destruction of Cyprus’ cultural heritage begun in the 19th century and intensified after the Turkish invasion as the antiquities trade spiralled out of control in the occupied part of the island.

It is estimated that 15,000-20,000 Byzantine icons, mosaics and wall paintings in total have been stolen. “In the northern occupied parts of Cyprus there is a particular problem as illegal trade prospers and more and more archaeological sights are continually being damaged to this day,” said Andreas Apostolides, Greek director and writer on the illicit trade of antiquities around the world. “Thousands of icons from churches in northern occupied Cyprus have been sent all around the world, with Munich standing as the main illegal centre where there are connections with the Turkish mafia”.

This is not just a problem for Cyprus however, as the looting of ancient sites for commercial gain has become the most serious threat to the world’s cultural heritage as a whole. In fact, the majority of antiquities that appear for sale on the art market have been illegally dug and smuggled out of the country of origin. As the admiration of ancient civilization grows in the west, the theft and destruction of archaeological sites around the world intensifies. The steadily increasing number of museums in the US and the rising demand for antiquities by private collectors in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia have exhausted the supply of legal antiquities.

As trade relies mainly on trafficking, theft and pillage, we will never know why certain items were created, and what they have to say about our past. Taken out of context, they have completely lost their historical value. “The main problem is the complete loss of knowledge. If a specific site is looted, you cannot trace the exact context and background which surrounds them,” said Apostolides.

In general, the international trafficking of antiquities flourishes in countries where political instability or war prevails. The illicit excavation and theft of antiquities has been especially severe in Lebanon, Somalia, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq. “Every country that is rich in archaeological sights faces the problem of looting, but political instability simply makes the problem far worse as it has done in Cyprus,” Apostolides explained.

The escalating plunder of the world’s archaeological heritage has not gone unnoticed by the international community. In 1972 UNESCO adopted a convention for prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property. Today, 109 countries, including the US and the UK, have signed the convention. After the UNESCO Convention however, museums, collectors and dealers still trading in antiquities of unknown provenance began to use forged documents to cover their actions. As it was becoming increasingly difficult for Western museums to buy antiquities, new large museums were formed containing previously unseen antiquities of unknown provenance. These collections in turn, were exhibited, borrowed, or bought by important museums in the West.

‘History Lost’, the current exhibition at The Cyprus Museum, transports the visitor from the looting of the Baghdad archaeological museum and the destruction of statues in Cambodia, to the illegal sale of Cypriot and Greek antiquities in US auction houses.
A visit to the museum also provides a historical overview of the birth and evolution of the antiquities trade from the 18th century and the creation of the first large antiquity collections of the Louvre, the British Museum and of European aristocrats with a passion for classical antiquity.

Extracts of documentaries on the trade of antiquities from all over the world are screened continuously throughout the day. Two interactive games and a touch screen with a world map can also be used. Photos accompanied by small texts provide an insight into the history of Cyprus and of other countries across the globe. “The problem of extensive looting is so far not very well known among the general public,” said Apostolides. “It’s an awkward problem that many governments don’t acknowledge and is often hidden from public knowledge. This exhibition should fill you in on things you may have never realised”.

History Lost
A multi-media travelling exhibition about the illicit trade of antiquities in Greece, Cyprus and the world. Until August 25. The Cyprus Museum, Nicosia. Monday-Saturday 9am-5pm. Sundays: 10am-1pm. Tel: 22-865801

For a trip with a difference, how about a submarine cruise out of Larnaca marina to the shipwrecked Zenobia?

Interested in joining us on a submarine trip? Yes, a submarine in Cyprus.

Behind one of the men sitting on Larnaca marina haranguing passers-by to take a trip on their boat is a small, hand-written sign that advertises submarine trips. Closer inspection of the posters he sits next to reveals pictures of a brightly coloured submarine (yellow in part). It was from here that our trip started.

The MV Pirate is one of the nicer boats in Larnaca marina – complete with seat belts – and offered such a smooth ride I didn’t even feel seasick. It also had a pirate flag, a touch I was impressed with. As we sped out to sea and the hotels of Larnaca faded into the distance we turned around to spot the submarine bobbing in front of us.

We slowly drifted up next to it and a bridge was lowered for us to walk on to the sub’s flat, upper surface. No time for second thoughts, it was down a step ladder into the depths of the sub, essentially a collection of portholes in front of which chairs were lined up, but instead of facing forward as they would on a coach, they were turned outwards.

I sat down and was faced with a pale blue window. It was impossible to tell what it was. A blind? A blue window? It was also impossible to gauge how far away the blue was, as it was so uniform (a bit like trying to touch the sky). Then it dawned on me. I peered closer to the window and looked up – it was the sea and I could see the surface from underneath – weird. The blue of the sea also gave everything inside the sub a strange hue, we looked a bit blue round the gills and my red top came out navy on a photograph.

At this point, the photographer and I reached for our mobile phones and, impressed that 3m below the surface there was a signal, proceeded to call our friends to tell them where we were. (more…)

Sexual attitudes have changed dramatically since the Victorian era.

When couples get married today they may have had up to 10 sexual partners. Back then the majority of women were probably virgins. Even when they did get married a lot of women still didn’t have a clue what to do on the first night of their honeymoon. Britain’s oldest virgin Clare Smith was 95 when she recalled her wedding night.

She said: “We were so innocent my husband and I didn’t even know what having sex was. We both wore thick pyjamas and he played the mouth organ in bed all the time. I married twice and I never had sex. It didn’t bother me, what you don’t know, you don’t miss.”

It was really the introduction of the pill in the Sixties that brought the sexual revolution by breaking the link between sex and pregnancy.

Sex could be enjoyed just for the fun of it. But Scots are not so liberal on sex as we might like to think.

One academic study found that 85 per cent of Scotsmen viewed adultery as wrong and 70 per cent viewed homosexual sex as wrong. When gay sex was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967, the age of consent was set at 21. But it wasn’t until 1980 that gay sex was decriminalised in Scotland after an amendment to the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill was passed.

In 17th century Spain, it was illegal for anyone other than a woman’s husband to see her bare feet. A woman could freely expose her breasts, but feet were considered sexual and had to be covered in the presence of men other than her husband.

Queen Victoria, Britain’s longest serving monarch is reputed to have been unable to comprehend the notion of lesbianism, thus allowing it to remain legal while prohibiting male homosexuality.

The Greeks are the sexiest nation on the globe. They have sex 138 times a year - well above the global average of 103.

The vow of a Roman vestal virgin lasted 30 years. If she engaged in sex before then, she was punished by being buried alive.

The availabilty of contraception for women broke the link between sex and pregnancy - sex was all for fun now.

Haunted by high school memories, I started to hum when I learned that “Beotia” would be the opening song for Gay Games VII currently hosted by the City of Chicago, which got under way this weekend at Soldier Field.

It’s a hymn of praise to the ancient Greeks, who would have been stumped by the assumption I grew up with in the 1950s: that homosexuals and sports heroes are separate species. Far from finding homosexuality and athleticism mutually exclusive, they considered gay sex an excellent training regimen and an inspiration for military valor.

The song “Beotia,” which was composed for the start of this year’s Gay Games, celebrates one of the most famous Greek military units, the Sacred Band, 150 pairs of warriors who were lovers.

“If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made of lovers,” the philosopher Plato had speculated, “they would overcome the world.”

Somewhere between the days of the Sacred Band and my school days, Plato’s idea was lost. As freshmen, we were lined up in gym class. A few assistant coaches went down the line, motioning the biggest boys to step forward. They became the guards and tackles of the junior-varsity team.

They weren’t asked if they wanted to play football. It was assumed any normal, red-blooded boy would. Turning down the opportunity would have been tantamount to proclaiming yourself gay, and that meant immediate ostracism at Lane Technical High School, where athletes were worshiped as gods in a pantheon that recognized only macho deities.

Consider, for a moment, the possibility of some sort of biological basis for homosexuality. By what logic should we assume it is linked to a gene for not being able to hit a baseball or slam-dunk a basketball?

Yet an axiom of high school culture 50 years ago was that athletic ability and heterosexuality were bound intrinsically. One was considered prima facie proof of the other. You didn’t want to be vulnerable to the reverse of that proposition, by looking dorky or uncoordinated.

One of the terrible side effects of prejudice is that it doesn’t just put people down. It places blinders on their ambitions, telling them what they can and cannot be.

Statistically, some of my classmates had to be gay; the student body numbered 5,000. How many of them never realized potential athletic abilities because the adolescent culture told them gays and athletes are twains, predestined never to meet?

You couldn’t sell modern homophobia to the ancient Spartans, who had the finest army in Greece. Like today’s opponents of gay marriage, they thought the marital bond between a man and a woman was one of the pillars upon which society rested.

Yet they also saw a virtue in men having male bed partners. Spartan boys were raised with the single-minded focus of making them fierce warriors. As part of their training, they were paired with older warriors. As the ancient writer Plutarch put it, “They were favored with society of lovers from among the reputable young men.”

Those gay unions were intended to foster a spirit that, in every generation, on every battlefield, the foremost thought in a Spartan’s mind must be never to let down their city. “The boys’ lovers also shared with them in their honor or disgrace,” Plutarch explained.

The Spartans’ military success made them the envy and role model of other Greeks. The city of Thebes formed the Sacred Band celebrated in “Beotia.” Beotia or Voiotia (in Greek) is a region of northern Greece of which Thebes is the principal city.

The Gay Games are expected to draw athletes from 70 countries for eight days of competition in 30 sports.

The reasoning underlying the Sacred Band long outlived it. During World War II, the U.S. produced a series of propaganda movies titled “Why We Fight.” They were designed to remind troops of family members whom they were struggling to protect.

The Thebeans anticipated that equation of bravery with feelings for loved ones. Members of the Sacred Band didn’t have to conjure up images of a loved one they had left at home. On a field of battle, they stood side by side, warriors who were lovers.

It is said that the Sacred Band was never defeated until its last battle, when Greece lost its independence to King Philip II of Macedonia. Even then, the Sacred Band’s final exploit moved Philip, father of Alexander the Great, to utter a sentiment that ought to serve as a dirge for all forms of prejudice.

Again Plutarch: “When after the battle, Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the 300 were lying … and learned that this was a band of lovers and beloved, burst into tears and said: `Perish miserably they who think that these men did or suffered anything disgraceful.”

Editor’s Note > Article by By Ron Grossman, Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune.

A long Greek drama came closer to its end last week when the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed to return to Greece two ancient artifacts: a 2,400-year-old tombstone and a 6th century B.C. marble relief of women offering gifts to a goddess.

For decades, Greece has noisily lobbied for the return of relics–especially the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles, which were stripped from Athens’ Parthenon in the early 1800s.

Its efforts got a big boost last year, when Italian authorities put former Getty antiquities curator Marion True on trial for trafficking in looted works. Then in February, New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art agreed to return to Italy the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old vase.

The Greek government is negotiating with the Getty for two other artifacts. And it won’t stop there. An internal Culture Ministry memo lists 10 more wanted works. They include a grave marker from 340 B.C., housed at Harvard’s Sackler Museum; icons of St. Paul and St. Procopius allegedly stolen from a 14th century church in Greece and now at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington; and Byzantine frescoes of the prophet Elijah and St. Andrew, which, according to the memo, the Odigia Foundation Icon-Institute in the Hague says it bought from a London gallery in 1996.

The Greeks are certain that more relics will return. “This is just the beginning,” says Culture Minister George Voulgarakis. “We will scour the globe and recover them one by one.” 

The concept of State and Statecraft are rooted in history and they have a great meaning for the present age too.

The word ‘State’ was first used by Greeks as ‘Polis’.

The Romans used the word ‘Civitas’ which also meant the state. The Tautens used the term ‘Status’ from which the modern word ‘State’ has been derived. But the credit for employing the Word ‘State’ in political science goes to Niceolo Machiavelli (1462-1527).

Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950 by Mark Mazower (Vintage, 544 pages, $22.95)

For over half a millennium, Salonika, a port city in northern Greece, was a place where Europe met the Middle East.

Mazower, a professor of history at Columbia University, sets the history of Salonika and its Orthodox Greeks, Egyptian merchants, and Spanish Jews within a “single encompassing historical narrative.”

He reconstructs this once vibrant city as it thrived under the Ottoman Empire (1430-1912), reverted to Greek control after the First World War, and saw its Jewish population deported en masse by the Nazis in 1943.