ANCIENT GREECE: Pocket Museum

A Thames & Hudson quality publication, beautifully designed with plenty of white paper space around hundreds of colour images of exquisite artifacts like golden cygnet rings, a belly-handled amphora from 760 BCE, terracotta chariot model pulled by two horses, a sealstone Cretan hieroglyphic script made of green jasper from c1850 BCE, to the more primitive items like a long dagger or a slotted spearhead, a tripod cauldron and the Fat Lady of Saliagos, a Neolithic figurine. Votive plaques, the Stone of Bybon which preserves an inscription written in the boustrophedon format, a black-figure amphora, the Great Code of Gortyn made of marble to beautifully decorated ceramics like the red figure Kylix, the Bluebeard Pediment, the Chigi vase, golden and ivory figures of Artemis and Apollo. Innovation and adaptation leads us to more decorative intricate work such as pillars, sculptures, name vases, huge intricate marble sarcophagi. If all the portable artifacts of Ancient Greece were in a single location, it is here, nearly 200 objects currently housed in public collections from around the world. From the Lower Palaeolithic 300,000 years ago to the Hellenistic Great Altar of Pergamon in the 2nd century BCE, the artifacts reflect the cyclical ups and downs of prosperity and poverty and the changing cultural and social norms of Greece, a culture that has exerted an unparalleled influence on Western civilisation. Without having to travel to any gallery, a bargain price for 288 pages, colour plus map.