Month: July 2014

Mosaic from Sweida … Seriously?

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

A very strange, brief item (to me, anyway) from Syrian TV:

 Sweida Antiquities Department said that parts of mosaic representing geometric shapes and dating back to the end of the Roman era and the beginning of the Byzantine era were discovered at a house in Shahba city in Sweida.

Head of Sweida Antiquities Department Hussein Zaineddin told said that the unearthed parts are 6 meters long and 4,5 meters wide.

Zaineddin added that the unearthed parts will be joined to the picture which was discovered in 1970. The previously discovered picture is 3,5 meters long and 4,5 meters wide .

He pointed out that the picture to be displayed later at Sweida or Shahba museums after restoring it.

The original article is accompanied by a less-than-useful photo which doesn’t really add any veracity to the report. Apparently — given all that’s going on in Syria right now — that archaeology is proceeding normally. I’m not really sure what “discovered in a house” means (was the mosaic removed from a site? was it in situ?)  and find it strange that we aren’t told where the “picture” portion is. I’m not sure we can lend any credence at all to this report.

Plans to Rebury “Parthenon of Thessaloniki”

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 2 Comments

From Greek Reporter (I’m not sure this is news; I could have sworn we’d heard about this before):

Local residents of Thessaloniki in northern Greece are outraged by a decision to build an apartment block on top of a recently discovered ancient Greek temple in the heart of the city. The temple of goddess Aphrodite, which was brought to Thessaloniki from the city of Aenea in the 6th century B.C., is said to be priceless in value thus the locals named it “Parthenon of Thessaloniki.”

The temple lies in an area now called Dioikitirio (administrative centre). In Roman times the area was known as the Square of the Sacred Ones, as most of the city’s temples were concentrated there.

The ancient Greek temple was brought to light in 2000 after the demolition of a two-storey building. The archaeologists found the eastern part of the temple’s krepis, statues of Greek and Roman times, and numerous fragments of architectural parts.

While most of the temple remains in Dioikitirio, some parts including the columns of the temple, as well as many of the other remains, are currently being exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.

According to the school of Architecture of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Antigonidon square can be reformed in two levels, so that the temple would be rebuilt and become visible in its entirety.