The Grandeur of Hellenistic Art O N S H O W A T T H E M E T
Three centuries between Alexander and Cleopatra captured in metal and stone.
Marble statue of a youth, Greek, early first century B.C., from the Antikythera shipwreck.
By Kati Vereshaka | Epoch Times Staff
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EW YORK—The ancient city of Pergamon was discovered in the 1860s by German engineer Carl Humann. He was doing land surveys for railroad construction, when he noticed that residents were burning fragments of an ancient marble sculpture to make lime. It was the birth of an archaeological project that, over the past 138 years, has unearthed the remains of the city’s most important architectural components.
Some of the most evocative works in show are copies of Greek works made in the early Roman Imperial period.
Now known as Bergama in Turkey, Pergamon was the capital of the Attalid Dynasty (281–133 B.C.) that ruled over large parts of Asia Minor. Perched on a hill, the city’s ruins stand as a testament to a great kingdom and culture—just one among the many Hellenistic kingdoms left behind by Alexander the Great’s conquests. But its treasures, or at least some of them, are now displayed in all their glory at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a new exhibition titled Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World. It is the first major international loan exhibition in the United States that spans the entire Hellenistic period, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C., to the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C.
See Hellenistic Art on C4
KATI VERESHAKA/EPOCH TIMES
C1 April 29–May 5, 2016