CULTURE

Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in 60 milestones

One of Greece’s top cultural institutions celebrates its anniversary with a grand exhibition on its numerous significant achievements

Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in 60 milestones

Renowned professor Manolis Andronikos had once called it the “national archaeological museum of northern Greece.” He wasn’t far wrong either, because the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (AMTH) is where the treasures from the incredible excavations that were carried out last century in Komotini, Olynthos, Derveni, Sindos, Akanthos and Katerini ended up. Its safe held the incredibly valuable discoveries made at the royal tombs of Aigai (Vergina), like the gold larnaca (a funerary casket) containing the bones and gold wreath of King Philip II, which Andronikos transported in a secret mission on the night of November 10, 1977. Museum employees had camped out in the courtyard to protect the antiquities and fix the damage from a major earthquake on June 20, 1978, and to prepare for the grand exhibition “Masterpieces of Ancient Macedonian Metalwork,” which starred the Vergina treasures.

Birthday show

These and much more are part of a retrospective on the museum’s 60-year anniversary since moving into the building designed by architect Patroklos Karantinos (though its history began much earlier, in 1925, at the Yeni Mosque, where it was headquartered until 1962). Bringing all the different strands of a story together into one comprehensive tapestry is no easy feat, but the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum’s anniversary exhibition, “60 Years/60 Moments,” is a tour de force.

Arranging it across two halls in the form of a timeline comprising 60 milestones, the show’s organizers have managed to present the dense narrative in a fresh and fascinating way, through visual and audial material, texts, photographs and 274 objects. They inform viewers of some of the museum’s biggest adventures and how they tie in with historical events, showcase landmark archaeological digs and exhibitions (such as those on Prehistoric Macedonia, Alexander the Great, Nikolaos Gyzis and Yiannis Tsarouchis), take us into the museum’s basement storage rooms and introduce the institution to the digital world.

The basement area contains some 47,000 of the museum’s collection of 50,000 artifacts. The task of identifying and documenting this wealth of archaeological material began in 1973 and major technological advances made in the field since have allowed the process to become much more sophisticated. Modern conservation and dating labs, environmental control systems and efficient storage units have accelerated the pace and made it easier for the museum to bring up its treasures and show them to the public in a series of temporary exhibitions.

Of the 274 exhibits being displayed in the anniversary show, 255 have been brought up from storage, according to AMTH Director Angeliki Koukouvou, who gave Kathimerini a tour of the exhibition and shared some of its stories.

The show’s organizers have managed to present the dense narrative in a fresh and fascinating way, through visual and audial material, texts and objects

One section sheds light on the heroic efforts of the Antiquities Ephorate to hide 7,510 artifacts at the start of the Greco-Italian War in 1940. Vases and sculptures (248 of them) were packed into wooden boxes and buried in the old archaeological museum’s courtyard, while clay and metal objects (4,602) were hidden under the building’s floorboards. Valuables (126 gold and silver pieces) and more than 2,500 coins were transported in a secret operation by antiquities ephor Nikolaos Kotzias to Athens and put in safekeeping at the Bank of Greece mint and treasury. The pieces that were buried were dug back up in 1947-51, while those brought to Athens returned to Thessaloniki in 1967.

The book of Europe

Another display contains pieces of coal from the funeral pyre for a rich Macedonian nobleman discovered in Derveni in 1962. The dark lumps may not be as glamorous as the gold of the Macedons, but it was the pyre it fired that helped preserve the Derveni papyrus, the oldest surviving manuscript in Europe, fragments of which were carbonized by the blaze and preserved. The pieces of coal are displayed between the two columns on which the pyre was mounted.

AMTH’s conservation lab also held the world’s oldest known “poster,” which was discovered at Thessaloniki’s Roman Agora. It is an illustrated public invitation to an animal fight, a popular form of entertainment for special occasions. The marble signs also advertised the program, the patrons and the amounts they had donated. Four such “posters” were discovered at the Roman Agora, with three mentioning fights in Thessaloniki and the fourth a similar event in Veria.

The bird-shaped glass vessels discovered in Thessaloniki’s eastern cemetery and dated to the 1st century AD are similar to dozens more that are still in the museum’s basement. The tail, however, is not intact on any of them. These vessels were used in ancient times for perfumes and other cosmetic preparations made of liquid or powder and had to be broken open to get to the contents, which were held in the body of the bird.

Storage boxes containing handwritten notes have been arranged like an art installation that demonstrates ancient organizational techniques, while at the same time, digital technology applications help us envision the future of museums. “CultureID will revolutionize how we manage our collections. It is one of the projects we are carrying out at the museum, which is co-funded by the European Union and will be completed in 2025,” says Koukouvou.

The project incorporates technology like the internet of things, AI and big data. “Using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, which will be attached to every single piece, we will be able to locate, track and document the course of every find, thus contributing to its safekeeping and protection, while allowing user access and the development of innovative programs like virtual tours and educational activities,” adds Koukouvou.

“60 Years/60 Moments” is on at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (amth.gr) through October 31, 2023.

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One of the many interesting parts of the show concerns the use of digital technology to identify, catalogue and present archaeological discoveries. [Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum/Ministry of Culture]
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The archaeologists even hid gold coins in cigarette packets at the outbreak of the Greco-Italian War in 1940 to protect them from being looted. [Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum/Ministry of Culture]

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