Here at MENAM Archaeology we want to highlight the small museums that carry a big impact, and the museum of ancient Eleutherna is the first museum that is highlighted in this series.
The museum of ancient Eleutherna is the first on site archaeological museum in Crete. Although small in size, the collection it hosts, its exhibition and the visitor experience can rival that of much bigger museums. The museum was first created to host the objects that were found in the ancient city Eleutherna and the necropolis of Orthi Petra. In addition to the museum, the building also conducts research and public outreach.
Ancient Eleutherna was a city-state in Crete which flourished during the Dark Ages (ca 1050 - 750 BCE) through Byzantine times (ca 395 - 1453 CE). It lies to the north of Mount Ida, only about 25 km from Rethymno. The excavation at the site began in the mid 1980’s, led by the University of Crete, and is still on-going.
The plan for the museum is to update the permanent exhibition with newer as well as older finds to keep the public's interest as the excavations at the site continue. Not only does the museum host a number of ancient artefacts, but also original and modern audiovisual exhibits. The museum was opened in 2016, and it hosts artefacts from a period of three and a half millennia (ca 3000 BCE - 1300 CE). The objects in the museum include everything from art and jewellery, to coins, funerary objects and objects from everyday life.
One of the absolute highlights of this museum is how they have exhibited certain objects. The fact that it displays certain objects on spinning discs, allowing the visitor a full 360° view of some artefacts is something that is sorely lacking in most bigger museums. The static view that most museums seem to favour for their permanent exhibitions is probably not the best way to engage with visitors in today’s society where the videos on TikTok rule and the attention span of people have decreased. Most museums should replace the static with the dynamic, and if they do it is more likely to capture the interest of visitors.
The museum is divided into three areas named Hall A, B, and C. The first area, Hall A, displays imported artefacts as tools, weapons, jewellery, vases, statues and figurines, inscriptions, and coins from places such as Attica, Cyclades, the east Aegean island, Cyprus, Asia minor, Egypt and Peloponnesus.
The second area, Hall B, hosts religious life in Eleutherna. One of the highlights of Hall B is the Lady of Eleutherna, a sculpture that relates to the Lady of Auxerre which is displayed in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Even though the face is missing from the Lady of Eleutherna, the stylistic similarities between the body of the Lady of Eleutherna and the Lady of Auxerre as well as the date and find spot indicate that it is indeed a related statue. The discovery of the Lady of Eleutherna shed light on a number of questions researchers had about the Lady of Auxerre. In addition to stylistic similarities, macroscopic, microscopic, and petrological analysis showed that the sculptures were made of limestone from the Eleutherna quarry. The comparison with other limestone statues from Crete (Prinias, Gortyn) proves the Lady of Auxerre’s provenance from Eleutherna.
The third and final area is Hall C which is dedicated to the necropolis of Orthi Petra. It shows burial customs from Homeric Greece which included both cremations (almost exclusively for male warriors) and interments. When reading the ancient sources, a famous passage from Homer’s Iliad (Book XXIII) describes the funeral pyre for Patroclus which included the slaughter of twelve Trojan prisoners. There has been much debate (even between Plato and Aristotle) whether this was accurate or not. We now know that it likely was. The Bronze age funerary pyres discovered at Eleutherna actually mimics what was written in the ancient sources. In fact, the last display in Hall C is of a funerary pyre, with a headless body outside of the burnt area. Currently, the most widely accepted explanation for these remains are that the man was a prisoner-of-war executed in front of the deceased warrior’s funerary pyre. This find alone will certainly make it worth the trip to the museum.
If you ever find yourself on Crete and want to visit arguably one of the best laid out museums in the world, we highly recommend the small, but impressive, museum of ancient Eleutherna.
Important links:
https://mae.uoc.gr/the-museum/
Text: MENAM Archaeology. Copyright 2022. Images: Anna Sunneborn Gudnadottir. Copyright 2022.
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