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Discovering Aegean Antiquities With A Dilettante In The 1760S Part 1 & 2


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#1 Abi

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Posted 02 March 2012 - 05:47 PM

In June 1764 a 16-gun sailing ship, the Anglicana, departed the southern English port of Gravesend. Aboard was one Richard Chandler, an Oxford-educated gentleman scholar, and a couple of companions, architect Nicholas Revett and painter William Parrs.

The ship was bound for the Aegean port of Smyrna (today’s İzmir), the city the trio were to use as a base for their mission “to make excursions to the several remains of antiquities in that neighborhood... procure the exactest plans and measures possible of the buildings... make accurate drawings of the bas-reliefs and ornaments... copy all the inscriptions you shall meet with... and keep a very minute journal.”

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“Travels in Asia Minor and Greece Volume 1,” by Richard Chandler, is reprinted by Elibron Classics (www.elibron.com.), based on an original, published in 1825 by Clarendon Press, Oxford.

#2 sunny

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Posted 02 March 2012 - 06:57 PM

It would be really interesting to be able to back for a day to see what it was like then first handed. Certainly very different from today.

Erethrae is called Ildir today and most of the stones from the ruins have been used to build the village houses but in ancient times it was a city of about 100,000 people. Parts were excavated in 1964 but it has again reverted to nature.

#3 Abi

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Posted 27 March 2012 - 04:57 PM

Part 2


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Athene temple, Priene



6 March 2012 / TERRY RICHARDSON , ANTALYA


At the end of part one we left gentleman scholar Richard Chandler, architect Nicholas Revett and artist William Parrs, along with their entourage of Armenian, Turkish and (bizarrely) Swiss servants, guides, guards and translators, gazing in awe at the splendid Roman-era theater of Miletus.

The year was 1765. Their mission was to explore the ancient sites of the Aegean coast and its hinterland, a region now part of Turkey, and record their findings. Although this sun and antiquity blessed area may not have been the Ottoman Empire’s most remote or dangerous, plague, banditry and other assorted trials and tribulations made travel here a daunting prospect -- at least for Western Europeans.......


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