The Battle of Chaeronea, 2 August 338 BC: A day that changed the world
Photo gallery, Then and NowBy Pierre Kosmidis
Text by the Museum of Cycladic Art
Photos © www.ww2wrecks.com
The permanent exhibitions of the Museum of Cycladic Art house objects that tell the stories of people from the Prehistoric to the early Byzantine period.
The Exhibition of Cycladic Art inextricably linked to the Museum since its formation, is one of the most complete private collections of Cycladic Art in the world. Marble figurines, vases made of marble and clay, and bronze tools shed light on the civilization that flourished in the 3rd millennium BC, inviting every visitor to look back in time and see what defined and inspired him/her.
The Museum’s Exhibition of Ancient Greek Art traces a journey through time focusing on the indelible socio-political developments, such as the emergence of the first palatial structures of Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece, the birth of the ancient city, the emergence of democracy and the creation of the first Mediterranean empires, while the Exhibition of Cypriot Antiquities of Thanos N. Zintilis, one of the largest and most important collections in the world, tells through its numerous objects the story of an island civilization that combined Aegean, Egyptian and the Near Eastern influences in its art.
The tour of the Museum is completed with the collection of objects that revive everyday life in a city of Classical times, using Athens as a guide, combining explanatory texts with audiovisual presentations and 3D illustrations.
Τhe new exhibition ‘Chaeronea, 2 August, 338 BC: A day that changed the world’ organized by the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, in collaboration with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, is part of the new series of archaeological exhibitions ‘Human Histories’ and is presented at the Stathatos Mansion and the Neophytou Douka Wing, under the supervision of the Scientific Directors of the Museum Dr. Panagiotis Iossif, Professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, and Dr. Ioannis Fappas, Assistant Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
The exhibition highlights the importance the Battle of Chaeronea had in ancient times, at the transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period. The latter became an era in which Greek civilization was dominant for centuries and laid the foundations of what we call the Western world. The theme is the battle that opposed the Macedonian army of Philip II against that of the allied Greek cities of southern Greece – and in particular the Sacred Band of Thebes and the army of Athens – a conflict that for the first time brought the eighteen-year-old Alexander to the front line of history: Alexander who was soon to conquer the world with his great campaigns in Asia.
In addition to introducing the two worlds that collided, the exhibition presents the burial practices of the two armies: the Polyandrion (mass grave) of the 254 Theban members of the Sacred Band with their guardian monument of the Lion of Chaeronea, and the Tumulus of the Macedonians. Special emphasis is placed on the archaeological recovery of the aftermath of battle, highlighting the work of two pioneers of Greek archaeology at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th, namely Panagiotis Stamatakis and Georgios Sotiriadis.
The exhibition ‘Chaeronea, 2 August, 338 BC: A day that changed the world’ is the first of a new series of exhibitions of the Museum of Cycladic Art with the title ‘Human Histories. Stories, that is, about the life, manners and works of mortals, which influenced the life, perceptions and thinking of later generations. This exhibition is going to tell such a story, based on the testimonies of the ancient sources, and the remains left by its protagonists.
