Read a review of Joan Breton Connelly’s new book, The Parthenon Enigma.
Professor M. Och
ARTH 114 and ARTH 115: Introduction to Western Art, University of Mary Washington
Read a review of Joan Breton Connelly’s new book, The Parthenon Enigma.
very interesting, i was surprising to find out that it depicts human sacrifice, rather than a celebration.
It is always an eye opening experience to learn something new about a culture one thought they understood. An obsession with appeasing the Gods is not a surprise, especially in a society where voodoo-like rituals were common place and people believed they would work. The gods demanded a lot of death according to the Athens origin myth so it is no surprise the people wanted to keep up with this trend.
The article mentions that the mummy clue was like something out of a detective story, but the whole thing is, really. The story of Connelly and the Parthenon highlights that to understand anything from the distant past, one must dig around a bit. Incomplete texts, outdated consensuses, and disagreements abound and one must find their way through that to come to any conclusion. I liked the exploration into how dark some of the rituals that the ancient greeks practiced were; however, I think it would be a mistake to say those practices made them foreign to modern people. That view overlooks how dark some of the actions of the modern world are.