"Certainly, Dr Andreas Vlachopoulos, a specialist in prehistoric archaeology, didn’t think so when h
"Certainly, Dr Andreas Vlachopoulos, a specialist in prehistoric archaeology, didn’t think so when he began fieldwork on the Aegean island four years ago. Until he chanced upon a couple of racy inscriptions and large phalluses carved into Astypalaia’s rocky peninsula at Vathy. The inscriptions, both dating to the fifth and sixth centuries BC, were “so monumental in scale” – and so tantalisingly clear – he was left in no doubt of the motivation behind the artworks."
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"Chiselled into the outcrops of dolomite limestone that dot the cape, the inscriptions have provided invaluable insight into the private lives of those who inhabited archaic and classical Greece. One, believed to have been carved in the mid-sixth century BC, proclaimed: “Nikasitimos was here mounting Timiona (?????ί????? ?ἶ?? ???ί???
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“We know that in ancient Greece sexual desire between men was not a taboo,” added Dr Vlachopoulos, who returned to the far-flung island last week to resume work with a team of topographers, photographers, conservationists and students. “But this graffiti … is not just among the earliest ever discovered. By using the verb in the past continuous [tense], it clearly says that these two men were making love over a long period of time, emphasising the sexual act in a way that is highly unusual in erotic artwork. ”"
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"The epigrapher, Angelos Matthaiou, said the graffiti had not only shed light on the very personal lives of the ancients but highlighted the extent of literacy at a time when the Acropolis in Athens had yet to be built. “Whoever wrote the erotic inscription referring to Timiona was very well trained in writing,” said Matthaiou, for more than 25 years the general secretary at the Greek Epigraphic Society. “The letters have been very skillfully inscribed on the face of the rock, evidence that it was not just philosophers, scholars and historians who were trained in the art of writing but ordinary people living on islands too.”"
The title grabbed my attention both for the great find and about sex.
However, I was intrigued about the subject of gay sex (I wonder what it was called back then) and how long the etchings will last before some homophobic asshat defaces them (because he didn't want the rock to 'tumble over' and hurt some child.
When I heard of the Taliban toppling huge statues of Buddha I wondered what new destruction carried out in religious fervor might be next and this might be next.
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