Kerameikos Cemetery

You could spend hours, no - days, in all the musea of Athens! However, our group also had plans for outside to get the blood flowing ... we went to see the Kerameikos, cemetery of Athens' ancient noble families.

The geometric structure of the Classical Period is evident here ... the columns are broken, but you must imagine halls and temples covering the field. (As an archeologist or classicist, you always need lots of imagination where other people only see dead stones and empty fields. Job life, haha :D Anyway, in the background you can see a Byzantine church replacing the Kerameikos as site of mourning.

The relief stones on high columns show lifelike portraits of the deceased, here two couples of two brothers talking as if alive.

This gravestone salutes a young warrior (rider), son of Kallios, from Argos. XAIPE is the word of greeting and farewell, literally meaning "rejoice" or "be well".

The hulking statue of a bull is also found in the museum of the cemetery, symbolising power and wealth (see the bull in front of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany).

Small gravestones as columns are huddled together for the poorer people who could not afford such elaborated crafts as the nobles ... still, the inscriptions tell us bits and pieces about them. But let us leave the dead and turn to pieces of art!

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