ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΝΑ 40+1: Μια αναδυόμενη αρχαία πόλη - Athens

In this Megaron Plus lecture, Nikos Stampolidis, Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology at the University of Crete and Director of the Acropolis Museum, looks back on 40+1 years of excavating Eleutherna, the ancient city at the heart of Crete. He describes how the site grew from a cluster of villages served by a bus twice a week in the 1980s into today's archaeological site and museum, known around the world. Eleutherna was an archaic society open to the whole eastern Mediterranean, linked to Crete's other cities, the Peloponnese, Attica, the Cyclades, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Phoenicia, Egypt and Etruria. Thousands of finds in clay, stone, gold, silver, bronze, iron, ivory and glass trace its life from Minoan to medieval times, with a peak in the Early Iron Age, and connect it to the Homeric epics, including the cremation of a warrior prince that recalls the funeral of Patroclus in the Iliad. The lecture is in Greek and lasts about two hours without an interval.