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Aristocratic warriors and ladies, overbearing priestesses
and grapes dating back 2,700 years, Pharaonic eyes, bees
and shields, but mostly, funerary customs and practices
of war, such as those described in Book XXIII of The
Iliad, reveal the Homeric traditions that run through the
Aegean. Ancient Eleutherna, 30 km south of the city of
Rethymnon, literally came to the surface piece by piece,
thanks to the persistence and vision of the University
of Crete and the Professor of Archaeology and Director
of the Museum of Cycladic Art Nicholas Stampolidis,
with excavations only getting started in 1985. Just a few
centimetres under the surface, a city inhabited from 3000
BC to the 14th century was waiting to be discovered. The
unearthing in 2009 of the domed chamber tombs and the
remains of four aristocratic priestesses from the 8th cen-
tury BC had been listed as one of the 10 most important
archaeological discoveries of the year by US Archaeology
magazine. Great archaeological interest was also generated
by the discovery of other findings at the Orthi Petra site
(Upright Stones), one of the necropoles of Eleutherna.
In 2016, the Museum of Ancient Eleutherna was inaugu-
rated. The findings contained in three halls of the museum
officially named “Homer in Crete” will impress visitors,
as they always do wherever they have been exhibited.
In the first hall, gold masterpieces from Eleutherna and
other city states reveal the life, ritual and relationships of humans in this part of the
world during the Greek Dark Ages (11th-8th centuries BC). Aspects of religious life
and worship are presented in the second hall, which also houses a monument to
the “unknown soldier”, the first in European history and one of the oldest in the
world. In the same room visitors will admire the Eleutherna Kore (circa 650 BC),
built of the same local limestone from the Peristere quarry as the Lady of Auxerre,
the famous Deadalic Cretan sculpture housed in the Louvre. The third hall is
dedicated to the necropoles of Eleutherna. Among the exhibits, the funeral pyre of a
young aristocrat warrior stands out, with funeral offerings preserved in front of the
remains. On the northwest edge the remains of a headless, unburned male skeleton
came to light, which brings to mind the Homeric description of Patroclus’ funeral
pyre and the twelve aristocratic Trojan warriors who were executed in retaliation of
his death by Achilles and the Achaeans.
The symbols of the museum are a bee and a shield. A gold bee-goddess was depicted
on the jewellery found in an unplundered tomb dating from the 8th century BC in
Orthi Petra. It was placed around the neck of a young woman, whose bones were
found in an urn with the bones of two other women and the unburned bones of a
Info: mature man. In Crete, this is the first instance of the worship of Melissa in the form
of a bust of a woman holding her breasts, with flowers depicted on the wings of the
Open: Tuesday-Sunday, 10.00-18.00 insect. According to one version of the myth, Melissa was the sister of Amalthea, the
Mondays closed wet nurse of Zeus in the Idaean Cave, where he has been hidden by Rhea –his moth-
Τρίτη-Κυριακή, 10.00-18.00 er– to save him from his child-eating father, Cronus. Yet the bee was also chosen for
∆ευτέρα κλειστά this role due to its symbolism: the tough yet productive work that tastes sweet.
Tickets - Εισιτήρια: The shield, on the other hand, protects the values and ideas of this entire venture,
Full - Κανονικό: 4€ and of course, the museum houses an artifact to represent this choice: a bronze shield
Reduced - Μειωµένο: 2€ from the 9th-8th century BC, which sealed the funeral urn of an aristocratic warrior,
Tel. & Fax: 28340 9250 protecting him through eternity. The shield depicts the head of a lion, with sphinxes
Eleytherna, Mylopotamos, Rethymno on either side. Again, the myth of Zeus tells of the Kourites, the good-natured myth-
Μυλοπόταµος Ρεθύµνου ical creatures and also the first inhabitants of Crete, who would strike their bronze
mae.com.gr shields so that Cronus would not hear baby Zeus crying. It is this shield, together with

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