Spectacular Find in Crete: Unlooted 7th Century BCE Tomb

From The Canadian Press as reported at Google:

Archaeologists on Crete find skeleton covered with gold foil in 2,700-year-old grave
By Nicholas Paphitis (CP) – 8 hours ago

ATHENS, Greece — Greek archaeologists have found an ancient skeleton covered with gold foil in a grave on the island of Crete, officials said Tuesday.

Excavator Nicholas Stampolidis said his team discovered more than 3,000 pieces of gold foil in the 7th-century B.C. twin grave near the ancient town of Eleutherna.

Cemeteries there have produced a wealth of outstanding artifacts in recent years.

The tiny gold ornaments, from 1 to 4 centimetres (0.4 to 1.5 inches) long, had been sewn onto a lavish robe or shroud that initially wrapped the body of a woman and has almost completely rotted away but for a few off-white threads.

"The whole length of the (grave) was covered with small pieces of gold foil — square, circular and lozenge-shaped," Stampolidis told The Associated Press. "We were literally digging up gold interspersed with earth, not earth with some gold in it."

The woman, who presumably had a high social or religious status, was buried with a second skeleton in a large jar sealed with a stone slab weighing more than half a ton. It was hidden behind a false wall, to confuse grave robbers.

Experts are trying to determine the other skeleton's sex.

The grave also contained a copper bowl; pottery; perfume bottles imported from Egypt or Syria and Palestine; hundreds of amber, rock crystal and faience beads; as well as a gold pendant in the form of a bee goddess that probably was part of a rock crystal and gold necklace.

"If you look at it one way up, it's shaped like a lily," said Stampolidis, a professor of archaeology at the University of Crete who has worked at Eleutherna for the 25 years. "Turned upside down, you see a female figure holding her breasts, whose lower body is shaped as a bee with wings. The workmanship is exquisite."

The ruins of Eleutherna stand on the northern foothills of Mount Ida — the mythical birthplace of Zeus, chief of the ancient Greek gods. Past excavations have discovered a citadel, homes and an important cemetery with lavish female burials.

The town flourished from the 9th century B.C. — the dark ages of Greek archaeology that followed the fall of Crete's great Minoan palatial culture — and endured until the Middle Ages.

Copyright © 2010 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

A Dynasty of Priestesses

From Archaeology Magazine Online - this is the main article.  For more, including videos and interviews with specialists working on the dig, please click on the article title to follow the link back.

Dynasty of Priestesses
March 1, 2010 By Eti Bonn-Muller

Evidence of a powerful female bloodline emerges from the Iron Age necropolis of Orthi Petra at Eleutherna on Crete

For a quarter century, Greek excavation director Nicholas Stampolidis and his dedicated team have been unearthing the untold stories of the people buried some 2,800 years ago in the necropolis of Orthi Petra at Eleutherna on Crete. Until now, the site has perhaps been best known for the tomb its excavators dubbed "A1K1," an assemblage of 141 cremated individuals, all but two of whom were aristocratic men who likely fell in battle in foreign lands. Excavated between 1992 and 1996, this elaborate rock-cut tomb was brimming with fantastic burial goods that date from the ninth to the seventh century B.C., including bronze vessels, gold and silver jewelry, and military regalia, as literally befits the burial of Homeric war heroes. Now, two unprecedented discoveries since 2007--three lavish jar burials that contained the remains of a dozen related female individuals and a monumental funerary building where a high priestess and her protégés, also all related, were laid to rest--are adding to our knowledge of Eleutherna's women, and forcing the scholarly community to reevaluate their importance and role in the so-called "Dark Ages" of Greece (see "Top 10 Discoveries of 2009").

History and Excavations

The site of Eleutherna includes an acropolis, a polis, and a necropolis. Excavations in each area by various teams over the years have shown that the people who lived here--descendants of the Bronze Age civilizations of both the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, as well as the Dorians, warriors from the Greek mainland who settled on Crete between 1100 and 900 B.C.--controlled a vast territory, beginning around the ninth century B.C. The surrounding landscape, rich in stone, lumber, honey, and plant resources, may have played a large part in Eleutherna's economic success. The site is also strategically located, nestled in the olive-tree-dotted foothills of the sacred Mount Ida, some six miles from the sea and 10 miles from the so-called "cave of Zeus," where the head of the Greek pantheon was raised.

The Dorians wove Minoan culture into the tapestry of this cosmopolitan city. They expanded Minoan trade routes and communications with far-flung corners of the Mediterranean world, such as Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa, and Sicily. As the economy boomed, the landowning aristocracy grew even more powerful through taxes, its success driven yet further by the proliferation of imported luxury goods and exotic raw materials, including gold, silver, ivory, glass, and semiprecious stones, as reflected in spectacular finds from the necropolis. (See Sacred Adornments for more on the most recent discoveries.)

Stampolidis's team has unearthed three types of Iron Age burials at Orthi Petra--or "Standing Stone" (see "Introduction to Orthi Petra" video for more on the site's name)--dating from the ninth to the seventh century B.C.: pithos (large ceramic jar) burials, cremations, and basic inhumations. Over the years, stunning finds have come to light, ranging from exquisite bronze vessels to the fragile skeleton of a dog that accompanied its master to the other side. The team has also discovered funerary buildings and activity areas for cremations, including pyres straight out of verses from the Iliad.

Despite the excavation's extraordinary success, Professor Stampolidis is greatly humbled. "If you are going to do this work, you are becoming a philosopher," he says, "and you try, at least, to understand that you are just a small part of a speck of dust in oblivion."

Eti Bonn-Muller is the AIA online senior editor.

One of the 2009 Archaeological Top Ten Discoveries

I visited Archaeology magazine online the other day and checked out its list of the top ten archaeological discoveries in 2009 (stretched to 15, which is great because that means it was a fabulous year for significant finds). (Image of necklace slide courtesy of Prof. N. Ch. Stampolidis - presumably from the noted burial. Are these females? What is it they are wearing on their heads? Are those headdresses of some sort [they remind me of a fool's cap!], or braids in some sort of serpentine hair style? The workmanship of the piece is exquisite.) One of the top ten was something I missed - not sure how that happened but it's a significant find: Iron Age Priestesses - Eleutherna, Crete Volume 63 Number 1, January/February 2010 by Eti Bonn-Muller The discovery of a powerful female bloodline--uninterrupted for nearly 200 years--in the Iron Age necropolis of Orthi Petra at Eleutherna is illuminating the role of women in the so-called "Dark Ages" of Greece. Last summer, the remains of four females, ranging in age from about seven to seventy, were excavated in an eighth-century b.c. monumental funerary building. Its floor was covered with thin strips of gold, once affixed to burial garments, and the women were surrounded by bronze vessels and figurines, and jewelry made of gold, silver, glass, ivory, and semiprecious stones imported from Asia Minor, the Near East, and North Africa. Other artifacts from the tomb--including a possible stone altar, ritual bronze saws and knives, and a rare glass phiale for pouring libations--suggest these women played an important role in Eleutherna's religious life. Dig director Nicholas Stampolidis of the University of Crete believes the oldest one was a high priestess interred with her protégés. Adelphi University forensic anthropologist Anagnostis Agelarakis has found all four women shared a genetic dental trait. Further research is expected to confirm they were related to a dozen women unearthed nearby last year, each of whom also had the trait. The other women were buried in three connected pithoi (large ceramic jars) containing equally luxurious grave goods, though without ritual implements. "This time period is erroneously called the Dark Ages," says Agelarakis. "The finds show that these women were aristocratic. Their social standing was superlative. I mean, the phiale alone--it must have been sent from a 'prince' of Mesopotamia! And their matrilineage was not ruptured for two centuries. I don't think it was dark at all." © 2009 by the Archaeological Institute of America www.archaeology.org/1001/topten/crete.html

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The article didn't say - were the four females buried at different times, or where they buried together all at once? If they were buried all at once, is there evidence from which to determine they all died in some common disaster or possibly from an epidemic? Or, is this grim evidence of human sacrifice? I searched online under several different topics and could only locate one article which I believe to be about the same discovery, but it is confusing, because it only mentions three women - actually one woman and "two adolescents:" From the Straits Time (Singapore) Aug 29, 2009 Rare ancient jewels found ATHENS - ARCHAEOLOGISTS on the Greek island of Crete have unearthed the 2,900-year-old tomb of three women buried with jewels of surprisingly advanced skill, culture officials said on Friday. The tomb in the ancient town of Eleutherna, near the modern city of Rethymno in northern Crete, held gold necklaces and medallions decorated with lion heads and the forms of ancient gods, excavation supervisor Nikos Stambolidis said. 'The jewels are of a style that appeared in the Hellenistic Era (many centuries later),' said Stambolidis, director of the Cycladic Museum in Athens. 'We had no knowledge that this level of craft existed earlier,' he told AFP. The elaborate nature of the tomb indicates that its three occupants, two of whom were adolescents, were likely priestesses or princesses. A number of offerings including scarabs, amber seals and earthenware were also found in the burial chamber which was two metres high. The town of Eleutherna is believed to have reached its peak in the Geometric Era around 3,000 years ago. Excavation in the last 25 years has so far yielded over 500 items of clay, metal and ivory including sculptures, tools and weapons. One of the most prized sculptures of the Louvre Museum in Paris, a limestone female statue called the Lady of Auxerre, is believed to have come from Eleutherna. -- AFP

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In reading this account, I get the impression that the three (four?) were all buried together, but that doesn't preclude the possibility that bodies were added to the original tomb over time. So - I was curious. Who is the Lady of Auxerre housed in the Lourve? I didn't recall hearing about her before. And how the heck did she end up in the Lourve as "one of its most prized sculptures?" Some background information on the Lady of Auxerre statue: (From the Archaeological Institute of America, article on Site Preservation): [T]he Dame d’Auxerre [was]was purchased in 1895 by a theater manager from the northern French town that gives this female image its name. No sure information about its provenance was known, though the piece was quickly recognized as a masterwork of the seventh century B.C. style of Greek art known as Daedalic. But where is this statue from? The bottom line is that the specific findspot is lost and irrecoverable. Comparisons with Cretan sculpture have long been recognized, such as with the seated goddess discovered at Prinias, now in the Herakleion museum. More recently, excavations at the Cretan site of Eleutherna have produced fragments of similar sculptures and the Louvre, where the Dame d’Auxerre has its permanent home, has suggested that the statue was removed from that site in the late 19th century. If the figure is from Crete, then it stands in a long line of sculptural development on the island that is likewise spectacularly illustrated by the three bronze statues – possibly depicting Apollo, Leto and Artemis – excavated at Dreros and also on display in the Herakleion Museum. Further consideration of the Auxerre figure within the long-term history of representations of the human body calls to mind the Neolithic statues scientifically excavated at 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan. It is through comparison with such examples of well-documented ancient sculpture that we can more fully understand both the artistic and cultural significance of an unprovenanced work such as the Dame d’Auxerre. Here is information from the Lourve Museum: Known as the "Lady of Auxerre" Second half of the seventh century BC Eleutherna, Crete(?), Greece Limestone, sculpted in the round and painted H. 75 cm Exchange with the Auxerre Municipal Museum, 1909 Ma 3098Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities Statue of a woman, known as the "Lady of Auxerre" The circumstances surrounding the discovery of this statuette, which was found in the storeroom of the Auxerre museum in 1907, remain unknown. However, it is the finest example of the Daedalic style, which marked the renewal of stone sculpting in the Greek world in the seventh century BC. The U-shaped face, the heavy, stepped hair, and the strict frontality are hallmarks of this style, which takes its name from Daedalus, who is said to have created the first statues in antiquity. Description The Lady of Auxerre, masterpiece of the Daedalic style The circumstances surrounding the discovery of this statuette, which was found in the storeroom of the Auxerre museum in 1907, remain unknown. However, it is the finest example of the Daedalic style, which marked the renewal of stone sculpting in the Greek world in the seventh century BC. The U-shaped face, the heavy, stepped hair, and the strict frontality are hallmarks of this style, which takes its name from Daedalus, who is said to have created the first statues in antiquity. An uncertain identification Since we know nothing about the context in which the statuette was discovered, it is difficult to identify the person depicted or to determine the meaning of the gesture of the right hand. Some think that this is the image of a goddess, considering the many terracotta figurines of Middle Eastern divinities (Astarte in particular) that highlight their sexual attributes. Others see this statue as a simple mortal, the servant of some fertility cult or perhaps the dedicator herself making a gesture of prayer. The revival of stone sculpture in Crete in the Orientalizing period This work is a testament to the intense artistic activity that took place in the eastern regions of the Mediterranean basin during the Orientalizing period. Techniques and decorative motifs originating in Egypt and the Near East were spread by Greek artisans who blended these models with their own traditions. The Auxerre statuette was created in Crete in the seventh century, around 640–620 BC. The work is assigned to Crete because of the type of limestone used as well as similarities of the young woman's costume, gesture, and face with works in bronze, limestone, and clay that have been discovered on the island. Comparison with funerary material excavated at Eleutherna, in northern Crete, suggests that the Lady of Auxerre was found in this necropolis in the late nineteenth century.