Athens Museum of Archaeology

As it happened, we visited Athen's Archaeololgical Museum three times: first time, we found it closed by a strike; second time, arriving after lunch, we learned it closes at 3PM; third time was the charm. But it would have been worth four tries or even five.

Museum entrance

Notice of closure on our first visit; when we returned from Mykonos, public 
transit workers were on strike; railway workers went on strike the day we left 
Athens (we got out just in time); and there was a national strike all day

December 15th; all recession/EU bail-out/austerity related

The museum is arranged chronologically but also has special galleries for bronze, 
vases, etc; here we are in the Cyclades gallery (mid-Bronze Age, out in the 
islands), admiring the very distinctive Cycladian figurine work 

And now in the Mycenaean galleries; this is the famous 
Agamemnon death mask Schliemann found; of course 
it could have been any of scores of kings/princes/rulers,

but since Schliemann was looking for the most famous 
Mycenaean, it had to be Agamemnon

Schliemann's famous communication to the king of Greece

The golden cups...



Moving right along, the very famous Zeus/Poseidon (scholars 
are divided) throwing a spear/trident/whatever

The Jockey

Jumping back a little in time, the "boxers" fresco from 
Akrotiri/Santorini, 16th century BCE

There is so much at which to marvel...but the Antikythera Mechanism, another 
find of marine archaeology, is a knock-out; it is a complicated brass system of 
gears for calculating astronomical phenomena

It took many years and much high tech to figure out what this 
thing was and to reconstruct it, as above; no one was expecting 
a 2000 year-old computer



Interior side view of all the gears, etc.

The Hellenistic Gaul pleading for his life

Incredibly realistic bronze bust, showing how eyes were 
represented in such things

Aphrodite and Eros fighting off Pan

Head-smashed-in bronze

It's an incredible museum, worthy of many posts...but I'll leave it at this.