Reference / Paper · 2016

The Inscriptions of the Antikythera Mechanism, 2: Historical Background and General Observations

Almagest 7(1). Letterforms, dating and the general character of the texts.

Author: A. Jones
Year: 2016
Type: Reference / Paper
Credit: Almagest / AMRP

antikythera
inscriptions
dating

2 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations Historical Background and General Observations 36 DOI 10.1484/J.ALMAGEST.5.110733 Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York, USA E-mail: [email protected] 37 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations A. Jones Abstract This paper presents a detailed account of the history of the fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism preserved in the National Archeological Museum, Athens, with particular attention to previous transcriptions and paleographical appraisals of the inscriptions in the fragments. The paper concludes with general observations about the technique and paleography of the inscriptions. This is an open access chapter distributed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International License. 2.1 Modern history of the fragments The initial discovery and first interpretations of fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism were reported on a day-to-day basis in several Athenian newspapers (Table 2.1).1 These reports appear generally to have been published the day after they were written or, in the case of evening newspapers, sometimes on the same day. Notwithstanding a few obscurities and inconsistencies, they allow us to reconstruct the story of those days in some detail. YEAR 1901/7/24 1902/5/21 1902/5/22 1902/5/23 1902/5/24 1902/5/25 1902/5/29 1902/5/30 1902/5/31 1902/6/1 1902/6/4 1902/6/23 1902/6/24 1902/12/13 1902/12/14 1902/12/18 MORNING To Asty Skrip 1? 1 1? 1 1 1 1 1 1 EVENING Embros UNKNOWN Akropolis Neon Asty Estia 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 Eleutheros Typos Sphaira 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations Table 2.1: Articles in Greek newspapers relating to the discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism’s fragments 38 1 Partial lists of the reports in Svoronos 1903a, 15-17, note 1 (from second column of p. 15) translated into German = Sovronos 1903b, 15-17, note 1 (from second column of p. 15); Price 1974, 9-10; Fragkou 2010a, 28-35, translated into English = Fragkou 2010b, 2733. Scans of many newspapers of the time are currently accessible through the websites of the Library of the Parliament of Greece, http://catalog.parliament.gr, and the Greek National Library, http://efimeris.nlg.gr/ns/main.html. Additionally, the database “Archaeological events in Greek press (1832-1932)” of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (http://invenio.lib.auth.gr) contains transcriptions of numerous articles relating to the Antikythera wreck and the Mechanism. Some articles are reproduced in Fragkou 2010a, 65-71 = Fragkou 2010b, 62-67, and in Nikoli 2012, 16-87. Among those cited below, Νέον Ἄστυ and Ἑστία were evening newspapers. The available collections of the newspapers have occasional gaps, and I may have overlooked some pertinent articles. Descriptions of the fragments in less ephemeral and more scholarly Greek publications 2 The Julian calendar was employed in Greece until 1923. Dates cited here from Greek sources before 1923 are therefore Julian unless otherwise indicated. Their Gregorian equivalents are thirteen days later; e.g. June 1 (Julian) is June 14 (Gregorian). 3 Biography in Μεγάλη Ἑλληνικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια 22, 269-270. The contemporary reports are consistent in their identification of the discoverer, typically qualified as “the former Minister of Education” or the like. 4 The first and most circumstantial reports are in Σκρίπ no. 2428, May 21, 1902, p. 4 (“Σπουδαία ἀνακάλυψις διὰ τὰς ἀρχαιοτήτας τῶν Κυθήρων”), and Tὸ Ἄστυ no. 4139, May 21, 1902, p. 1 (“Σπουδαία ἀνακάλυψις ἐν τῷ Ἐθνικῷ Ἀρχειολογικῷ Μουσείῳ”). In both, the discovery is said to have occurred “yesterday” (i.e. Monday, May 20), and “the day before yesterday” in a report published on May 22 (“Δύο ἐνεπίγραφα τεμάχια ἀπὸ τὰ Ἀντικύθηρα”, Νέον Ἄστυ no. 162, 2). On the other hand, Ἑστία year 9 no. 82, May 22, 1902, p. 4 (“ Ἡ πλὰξ τοῦ Μουσείου μας”) and Tὸ Ἄστυ no. 4141, May 23, 1902, p. 1 (“ Ἡ ἐνεπίγραφος πλὰξ τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”) date the discovery to “last Saturday” (i.e. May 18), which may reflect a correction of the information provided to the first reporters. 5 Fragment A is the only one bearing a complex of gears matching the descriptions in the reports in Σκρίπ and Τὸ Ἄστυ. Parts of the mirror-writing inscription are found on both Fragments A and B, but the part on A was almost entirely concealed by other material as late as 1903, and no one except Rehm seems to have been aware of its existence at this time, or indeed until the time of Price and Stamires in the 1950s. According to the report in Τὸ Ἄστυ Stais discovered three fragments (while Σκρίπ is vague about the number). If correct, these would presumably have been A, B, and C; but this is hard to reconcile with the subsequent report (see immediately below) that a third fragment, apparently C, was found only on May 21. 39 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations The newspapers credit the discovery of the fragments in the National Archaeological Museum to Spyridon Stais (1859-1932), a representative of the island of Kythera in the Greek parliament who had served from May 27, 1900 to November 25, 1901 (Julian calendar)2 as Minister of Education in the government of Georgios Theotokis. Stais was not an archeologist; he had studied mathematics and physics and taught mathematics in schools before his political career.3 As minister, however, he had negotiated the Greek government’s support of the salvage of the Antikythera wreck in 1900-1901, and continuing interest in the outcome of this project suffices to explain his visit to the Museum, apparently on Saturday, May 18, 1902 (but possibly on Monday, May 20), together with his wife and sister-in-law, a Miss Vouya.4 Stais was shown a room where unidentified bronze fragments from the wreck were stored in the hope that they might yield pieces of the so-called “Youth of Antikythera” statue, and among them he noticed two or three objects, described in the reports as “slabs” or “plates” (πλάκες), on the surfaces of which one could see toothed gears and an inscription in mirrored writing. The fragment bearing the gears must have been the one now called Fragment A, while the one with the mirror inscription was surely the present Fragment B.5 Little or nothing of this inscription was read on that day. A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations from 1902 through 1910 (after which the Mechanism fell into neglect for almost two decades) did not mention the circumstances under which they came to notice. Later accounts introduced elements of confusion that continue to infect the secondary literature on the Mechanism. Ioannis Theofanidis (1877-1939),6 who studied the Mechanism in the 1920s and 1930s, was probably relying on recollections (his own or that of people he consulted) when he wrote in the late 1920s that “the then [sic] minister of education, Mr. Sp. Stais [...] by complete chance saw it cast down outside the door of the Archaeological Museum, among many other fragments found there, where the useless bits were put that had been separated from the works of art while they were being cleaned”.7 Price, on the other hand, got the right setting but the wrong protagonist when he wrote in 1959 that “Valerios Stais, an archaeologist at the National Museum, [recognized the fragments of a mechanism while] examining some calcified lumps of corroded bronze that had been set aside as possible pieces of broken statuary”.8 Throckmorton subsequently repeated this story with the additional false details that Valerios Stais was a young man and Spyridon’s nephew;9 they were in fact first cousins, and Valerios (1857-1923) was about 45 years old (two years older than Spyridon) and the director of the Museum. Price’s 1974 account of the discovery, based on a selection of newspaper reports from May 23, 1902 onwards, was in most respects correct.10 Nevertheless, Valerios Stais continues to receive spurious credit for first noticing the fragments.11 40 6 Biography in Μεγάλη Ἑλληνικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια 12, 542 and suppl. 3, 78. 7 Theofanidis [1927-1930], “97” [correct pagination: 89] with note 3. More recent assertions (e.g. Marchant 2008, 37) that the unassigned fragments from the wreck among which the Mechanism was discovered were stored in the open air appear on the face of it implausible. Theofanidis dates Stais’s discovery to just a few days after the fragments had been recovered from the wreck site; in reality the interval must have been the better part of a year. 8 Price 1959, 61. Despite the slip, his version shows that he must already have had access to some newspaper accounts. 9 Throckmorton 1970, 153. Biographies of Valerios Stais in Μεγάλη Ἑλληνικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια 22, 269; Oikonomos 1922; Petrocheilos 1992. Valerios Stais’s father Nikolaos and Spyridon’s father Emmanuel (1817-1895) were sons of Valerios Stais, representative of Kythera in the 1817 Assembly of the Ionian Islands established under Maitland’s British administration (information courtesy of Marina Papadimitriou). 10 Price 1974, 9. Price’s history of the events of 1900-1905 is not quite free of errors. Not realizing that the Greek calendar of the time was the Julian, Price assigned incorrect weekdays to the newspaper issues and dated the Saturday when Stais was reported to have made the discovery as May 17, one day too early. He also followed Throckmorton in identifying Spyridon Stais as a “prominent archaeologist” (p. 8), and makes him the author of Valerios Stais’s 1905 monograph on the wreck (p. 11) — in fact by 1974 Price seems to have forgotten that Valerios existed! 11 Marchant 2008, 37-38, offers a new variation, according to which an “unnamed “a single inscribed slab [πλὰξ] was found, the letters on which, however, could not be copied. Besides this were found vases, fragments of statues, and other ancient objects”. Σκρίπ reported the finding of a “marble slab bearing a difficult-to-read inscription”.16 No inscription on stone has been identified among the objects from the Antikythera wreck in the Museum; the only things that could be described as an inscribed “slab” (as in fact they were, repeatedly, in the newspapers in 1902) were the fragments of the Mechanism.17 It seems likely that the reporter for Σκρίπ simply assumed that an inscribed slab ought to be marble! museum worker noticed the significance of the decaying, fractured lump” and notified Valerios about it. In case any doubt lingers concerning the identity of the discoverer, we have Valerios’s own testimony (“Αἱ ἀρχαιότητες τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4343, December 13, 1902, 1-2) that they were found by “the former minister, Mr. Stais.” 12 Price 1974, 9. 13 Stais 1905, 18. The salvage was terminated on September 30, 1901 (Svoronos 1903a, 15 = 1903b, 14); a letter of Stais to Kavvadias dated November 24 of an unstated year, adduced by Petrakos 1991 as evidence of a revival of the campaign in November, 1901, actually must date to a later, now largely forgotten unsuccessful attempt to revisit the wreck site in the winter of 1905-1906 that was extensively reported in the Athenian newspapers of the time. 14 Throckmorton 1970, 151, supported by newspaper reports listing the objects found. In particular Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 3835, July 13, 1901, summarizes a report to Spyridon Stais from his representative at the site, according to which the divers were working slowly but systematically to recover all objects down to a depth 1 meter below the surface of the sea bottom and as far down as 35-40 fathoms (64-73 meters), the limit of their diving range. 15 Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 3846, July 24, 1901, p. 2. 16 Σκρίπ no. 2132 [misprinted 2142], July 24, 1901, p. 2. 17 I am indebted to John Seiradakis and Magdalini Nikoli for directing me to the newspaper articles from July 24, 1901. 41 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations Price expressed surprise that “such exciting pieces” could have gone unnoticed for so many months until Spyridon Stais’s chance visit to the Museum.12 In fact it is highly probable that they were noticed immediately upon their having been brought out of the sea. Valerios Stais wrote in 1905 that the Mechanism was recovered “around the end of the period of salvage of the antiquities of Antikythera,” which would mean the summer of 1901.13 By this stage it appears that the divers were attempting a systematic clearing of all the antiquities, now chiefly smaller and more mundane objects that they were able to reach.14 On July 24, two newspapers reported a telegram received by the Ministry of Education from the work site. Τὸ Ἄστυ —in general the most thorough and reliable of the Athenian newspapers in its archeological coverage— stated that:15 In connection with these contemporary reports, it deserves mention that Theofanidis also wrote of a “first” discovery of the Mechanism preceding Stais’s.18 The discoverer, according to Theofanidis, was his fellow naval officer, Perikis Rediadis (1875-1938),19 who at the time held the rank of sublieutenant (ἀνθυποπλοίαρχος) and was assigned to the troopship Mykali, the vessel that was put into service on several occasions during the period of salvage transporting antiquities from Antikythera to Athens and carrying archeologists and representatives of the Ministry of Education back and forth.20 According to Theofanidis, the Mechanism was so encrusted with marine accretions that the petty officer who was loading the antiquities on the deck of the Mykali nearly tossed it overboard as worthless, but was prevented from doing so by Rediadis, who had noticed a piece of metal projecting from a broken face of it. Theofanidis must have heard this story directly from Rediadis, and it may have undergone some distortion in the quarter century since the events it describes.21 Rediadis was later to publish several articles on the Mechanism, and none of them mention this incident.22 In any case, it could not have occurred on the date shortly before July 24 when the Mechanism seems to have been brought to the surface, because the Mykali was not at Antikythera at that time, and only arrived there at the beginning of August with Spyridon Stais aboard, to collect the salvaged objects that had accumulated over the summer. This assemblage, including the Mechanism, arrived at Piraeus to be taken to the Museum on August 3.23 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations Taking into consideration, with all due caution, the newspaper reports from July 24, 1901, 42 18 Theofanidis [1927-1930], 83 with note 6. 19 Biography in Μεγάλη Ἑλληνικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια 21, 84, and [Anonymous] [1939?]. 20 According to Svoronos (1903a, 44 note 2 = 1903b, 43 note 1), Rediadis went to Antikythera five times on board the Mykali. 21 Theofanidis commits errors that reveal that he did not extensively consult contemporary published sources; thus he writes that the wreck was salvaged by sponge divers from Kalymnos in 1902, getting both the island and the year wrong. 22 Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4171, June 23, 1902, p. 2 and no. 4172, June 24, 1902, p. 2; “ Ὁ ἐξ Ἀντικυθήρων ἀστρολάβος”, in Svoronos 1903a, 44-52 (= “Der Astrolabos von Antikythera,” in Svoronos 1903b, 43-51); Rediadis 1903; Rediadis 1910. 23 Among the objects that arrived in Athens with Stais on August 3, the one that got the most attention was a well preserved bronze statuette of a youth missing its right arm (now National Archaeological Museum X 13399, with the arm restored from the 1974 Cousteau excavations, X 18960); see Ἐστία year 8 no. 149, August 3, 1901, p. 3, Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 3857, August 4, 1901, p. 1, Νεολόγος no. 1430, August 4, 1901, p. 1, Καιροί no. 4510, June 23, 1901, p. 2, and Ἐμπρὸς no. 1712, August 4, 1901, p. 2. The discovery of the statuette had been reported already by telegram six weeks earlier (Ἐμπρός no. 1670, June 23, 1901, p. 2, and Ἀκρόπολις no. 6938, June 23, 1901, p. 3), which shows that this was the first delivery of finds from Antikythera since the beginning of the summer. Oddly, the majority of the newspaper reports identify the lost arm as the left one. Let us return to the story of the fragments immediately following Stais’s visit to the Museum. On Tuesday, May 21, several archeologists including Gavriel Vyzantinos (1868-1910),26 an Ephor (i.e. superintendent) of Antiquities who had been involved in the salvage of the wreck, inspected the fragments, and a further fragment —presumably the present Fragment C— equal in size to the smaller of the other two —presumably B— was reportedly found.27 Vyzantinos informed reporters of a few letters that had been read on the fragments; these can be identified as parts of a direct-writing inscription on Fragment A and of the mirror-writing inscription on Fragment B. 28 On Wednesday, Adolf Wilhelm (1864-1950), 24 Price 1974, 10. On the other hand, Theofanidis ([1927-1930], “97” [correct pagination: 89] with note 3) alleges, we do not know on what authority, that the sponge divers who salvaged the wreck deliberately shattered unidentified objects to determine whether they were antiquities or mere “fossils.” 25 Svoronos 1903b, 46. The illegible letters mentioned by Rediadis were probably part of the inscription on the present Fragment G, which was separated from C after 1903. 26 Vyzantinos was the assistant of the General (i.e. chief) Ephor of Antiquities, P. Kavvadias, cf. Petrakos 2011, 20, where he is characterized as “undistinguished and [...] without accomplishment”. Biographical information about Vyzantinos is scarce. He was appointed Ephor in 1898, having previously been director of the National Lyceum (Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 2883, November 22, 1898, p. 2), briefly succeded Kavvadias as General Ephor in 1910, but died (by suicide) in that year (Petrakos 2013, v. 1, 256-257). He had supervised the earlier stages of the salvage at Antikythera in late 1900 and early 1901, and wrote a valuable short account of them (Vyzantinos 1901a, translated into English: Vyzantinos 1901b). 27 “Αἱ χαλκαὶ πλάκες τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Νέον Ἄστυ no. 163, May 23, 1902, p. 2. 28 “Αἱ ἀρχαιότητες τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Σκρίπ no. 2429, May 22, 1902, p. 3; “Δύο ἐνεπίγραφα τεμάχια ἀπὸ τὰ Ἀντικύθηρα”, Νέον Ἄστυ no. 162, May 22, 1902, p. 2. 43 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations Theofanidis’s story, and the general character of the salvage operations during the summer of 1901, there is good reason to believe that the separate fragments A, B, and C (and possibly also D, E, and F which were found in the Museum subsequently) came into being through the breaking up of a single “slab” after it had come out of the sea, as Price hypothesized.24 Such a composite would have borne on one face the hard-to-read mirror-writing inscription that Stais later noticed on Fragment B, while the other face would have been almost entirely featureless except perhaps for some illegible traces of direct inscription that Rediadis later reported on Fragment C.25 The gears and other mechanical elements that were so conspicuous on Fragments A and C in 1902 would have been concealed inside the composite slab. It is difficult to believe that these mechanical elements would have escaped notice in the summer of 1901 if they had been exposed. Price supposed that the gradual drying out of the object could have caused stresses that led to its fragmentation, but given the fragility of the calcified materials that compose the present fragments, one could just as well suppose that it broke apart as a result of a casual impact. an epigrapher and the secretary of the Austrian Institute in Athens, and the numismatist Ioannis Svoronos (1863-1922)29 spent several hours attempting to read and estimate the date of the mirror-writing inscription on Fragment B. 30 On Thursday, Konstantinos Rados (1862-1931, a naval historian), 31 Valerios Stais, Panagiotis Kastriotis (1859-1931, another Ephor of Antiquities), and Wilhelm inspected the fragments.32 Photographs were made on May 28.33 On June 23, the newspaper Τὸ Ἄστυ published an article by Rediadis containing the first detailed description of the fragments, which leaves no doubt that the only fragments known at this stage were the present Fragments A, B, and C.34 The last issue of the 1902 volume of the journal Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, published on February 15, 1903, contains a long anonymous report of the finds from the Antikythera wreck. It includes a rather cursory description of the fragments (not even specifying how many there were), but stating that, at the date of writing, they had undergone no conservation (“it still remains as it was removed from the sea”). 35 A photograph shows the face of Fragment B bearing the mirror-writing inscription. A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations About June 1903, the first fascicle (plates and text) of volume 1 of Svoronos’ illustrated 44 29 Biography in Μεγάλη Ἑλληνικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια 22, 605. 30 “Δύο ἐνεπίγραφα τεμάχια ἀπὸ τὰ Ἀντικύθηρα”, Νέον Ἄστυ no. 162, May 22, 1902, p. 2; “ Ἡ πλὰξ τοῦ μουσείου μας”, Ἑστία year 9 no. 83, May 22, 1902, p. 4; “ Ἡ χάλκινη πλὰξ τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Σκρίπ no. 2430, May 23, 1902, p. 2; “ Ἡ ἐνεπίγραφος πλὰξ τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4141, May 23, 1902, p. 1; “Αἱ χαλκαὶ πλάκες τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων” (a very circumstantial report) and “ Τὸ ἀστρολάβον τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Νέον Ἄστυ no. 163, May 23, 1902, p. 2. 31 Biography in Μεγάλη Ἑλληνικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια 21, 23. 32 “Τὸ περίεργον εὕρημα τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4142, May 24, 1902, p. 1; “Αἱ χαλκαὶ πλάκες τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Νέον Ἄστυ no. 165, May 25, 1902, pp. 1-2. 33 “ Τὸ ἀνεξήγητον μηχάνημα τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4147, May 29, 1902, p. 1. It is not known whether the photographs subsequently published in [Anonymous] 1902 and Svoronos 1903a/1903b were from this session. 34 “Ὁ ἀστρολάβος τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4171, June 23, 1902, p. 2. A continuation of this article, under the same headline, appeared in no. 4172, June 24, 1902, p. 2. 35 [Anonymous] 1902; the description of the Mechanism is cols. 170-172 with the photograph as text figure 14 on cols. 165-166. Svoronos (1903a, 16 = 1903b, 16) tells us that the article was a collaboration of several of the leading Greek archeologists of the time, Valerios Stais, Christos Tsoundas (1857-1934), and Konstantinos Kourouniotis (1872-1945), under the direction of Panagis Kavvadias (1850-1928). Kavvadias was also the source of information for one of the earliest published mentions of the Mechanism in a language other than Greek, Vicars 1903, 562. (Its discovery in the Museum had already been briefly reported in the London newspaper, The Standard, Saturday, June 7, 1902, p. 7 — the corresponding Julian calendar date in Greece was May 25). The conservation had been entrusted to the chemist Othon Rousopoulos (1855-1922),38 who was responsible also for the conservation of other bronze artifacts in the Museum at that time.39 There were two elements involved in the conservation of the Mechanism’s fragments: 36 Svoronos 1903a, 44-52, and 1903b, 43-51. The chronology of these publications (self-described not as a catalogue but as a series of plates with explanatory text) has been a matter of confusion in scholarship on the Mechanism since Price’s time. The title pages of both the Greek and German editions of the Antikythera fascicle bear the date 1903. An announcement of the Greek edition in the biweekly periodical Παναθήναια, issue of June 30, 1903, 573-574, confirms that this edition was published by the middle of 1903, while the German edition was advertised on the back pages of the Mitteilungen des Kaiserlichen deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 28 (1903), published soon after February 24, 1904. The relative order of publication of the two editions is indicated by an error in the account of the inscriptions of the Mechanism’s fragments in the Greek edition (p. 46, an inscription said to be on Fragment C that is in fact on Fragment A) that is corrected in the German. The title page provided for the text section of the German edition when volume 1 was completed bears the date 1908, and many bound copies lack the original 1903 title page; the title page of the Greek edition of the completed volume 1 has no date. 37 The principal fragments were never designated in print by Greek letters, as stated in Wright 2006, 322. 38 Biography in Μεγάλη Ἑλληνικὴ Ἐγκυκλοπαίδεια and Μέγα Ἑλληνικὸν Βιογραφικὸν Λεξικὸν 1, 85-103. 39 The fragments were placed for safekeeping in a glass cabinet and assigned to Rousopoulos immediately after they were photographed on May 28, 1902 (“ Τὸ ἀνεξήγητον μηχάνημα τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων”, Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4147, May 29, 1902, p. 1), and it was expected that the work would begin within a few days (“Ἀρχαιολογικά,” Τὸ Ἄστυ no. 4153, June 4, 1902, p. 2.). In fact, in the light of the remarks in the Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική report it appears 45 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations survey of the Museum’s antiquities, devoted to the Antikythera wreck, was published in Greek, with a German translation appearing soon after; this work incorporates a section by Rediadis on the Mechanism’s fragments.36 Rediadis describes four fragments, designated for the first time by the letters A, B, C, D (Fragment D is mentioned here for the first time), and Plate X presents photographs of both faces of all four fragments (specimens for A-2 and C-1 in supplementary Figs. S6 and S9), with a larger reproduction of B-1, the mirror-writing face of Fragment B, on Plate IX (supplementary Fig. S8).37 This photograph is not the same as the one in Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολογική, but the condition of the fragment is indistinguishable. Rediadis speaks of the extremely fragile state of the fragments, so that they break “on the application of the slightest force that the hand of the conservator can apply to it”, which perhaps is an indication that conservation had begun — though if so, it had certainly not progressed very far, if we may judge by the photographs and by the very limited amount of inscriptional text reported by Rediadis on the authority of Svoronos and Wilhelm. removal of extraneous matter and corrosion products from the surfaces to restore them to a semblance of their ancient appearance (καθαρισμός, Reinigung, literally “cleaning”), and separation of components that had become fused together. Since separation exposed new surfaces for cleaning, the process was iterative. In a presentation to the International Archeological Congress at Athens on March 29, 1905, Rousopoulos described his preferred technique for cleaning bronzes as a reduction by means of zinc and hydrochloric acid.40 But since this was not applicable in the case of objects such as the Mechanism’s fragments that were corroded to the point that little or no free metal survived, he reports that he subjected them instead to a treatment with potassium cyanide, a reagent widely used in the conservation of metal artifacts at that time.41 He speaks of the “difficulty and riskiness of the delicate task” of cleaning the Mechanism, “a real test of patience and endurance”. Once cleaned, the fragments were protected by an application of Zapon lacquer. The challenge that Rousopoulos faced in the case of the Mechanism was to remove obscuring layers of accreted matter mixed with corrosion products without also mutilating or destroying “original” surfaces that were themselves by now composed of corrosion products. In this he appears to have been largely successful. Some loss of surface detail would, however, have been unavoidable in any treatment by reduction, the more so as the treatment was prolonged. The indistinctness of the lettering on some of the inscribed fragments in their present condition is probably due in part to this chemical cleaning, and in part to bits of the inscribed surface coming off with the accretion layers when they were separated. A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations The state of Fragments A, B, C, and D in October 1905 is documented by a set of photographs made by Georg Karo (1872-1963), the second director of the Athenian branch of the German Archeological Institute, for the philologist and epigrapher Albert Rehm (1871-1949) in that month.42 (Supplementary Fig. S10 reproduces Karo’s photograph of C-1.) Another set made, 46 that the work was delayed for many months, perhaps because Rousopoulos was occupied with other work in the Museum, perhaps also because of fears such as those expressed by Svoronos (“ Τὸ ἀστρολάβον τῶν Ἀντικυθήρων,” Νέον Ἄστυ no. 163, May 23, 1902, p. 2) that the fragments might be destroyed in the process of cleaning. 40 Rousopoulos 1905. 41 Rousopoulos provides little detail. “Finkener’s method” of cleaning antique bronzes, as described in Rathgen 1898, 108-120 = Rathgen 1905, 125-139, was an electrolytic process in which the object was immersed in a bath of potassium cyanide. Rathgen, however, recommends this method only for objects in which a good core of free metal survives, which was not the case with the Mechanism’s fragments. Some surfaces of the fragments, e.g. the back face of Fragment C, show little evidence of cleaning in the early photographs, suggesting that Rousopoulos applied chemical cleaning only to certain areas of interest. 42 The set of prints that Karo sent to Rehm is preserved in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Rehmiana III/9. Karo’s letter accompanying the photographs, dated, October 14, 1905, is in Rehmiana IV D. Biography of Rehm: Haffter 1950. 43 Rehm’s prints of this set are also in Rehmiana III/9; they can be distinguished from Karo’s by the different rulers that were photographed with the fragments. There was apparently no photograph of Fragment D in the new set. We tentatively identify them with a set mentioned by Price (1974, 11) whose negatives, bearing the date “IX 13/18”, were preserved in the National Archeological Museum in his time, though unfortunately they cannot now be located. We base this identification on Price’s statement (p. 12) that two photographs of Fragments A and C in Zinner 1943, which are from Rehm’s prints, belong to the 1918 set. Since, however, Price mistakenly says that photographs from the 1918 set had previously appeared in Gunther 1932 (which actually reproduces part of Plate X of Svoronos 1903a/1903b) and Zinner 1931 (which has no photographs at all), caution is in order. Moreover, comparison of the 1905 set and the presumed 1918 set does not fully bear out Price’s remark that the 1918 photographs “show extra detail revealed after a new cleaning”; some of the later set are indeed sharper than their 1905 counterparts but others are poorer if not entirely spoiled by overexposure, and there is no sign of intervening conservation work. The most noticeable difference in the fragments between the two sets is that some bits of material had broken off the rear face of Fragment A by the second set. Price had photographs of Rehm’s full set of prints (negative strip in the Adler Planetarium collection), and in Price 1974, 23-26 he reproduced photographs of A-1 and C-1 from the Karo set and of A-2 and C-2 from the 1918 set. 44 Stais 1905, 18-23. The monograph is announced as a “new book” in the April 1905 issue of Παναθήναια, p. 64. Stais, incidentally, speaks of the conservation of the Mechanism’s fragments as being still in progress, and expresses the expectation that more fused pieces of plate would be removed in due course. 45 Rehm’s transcriptions of some of the detached fragments are in his 1906 Notizbuch in Rehmiana III/7; a copy (in another hand) of a somewhat more extensive version is in the file of Price’s notes on the Mechanism’s inscriptions at the Adler Planetarium. See also Theofanidis [1927-1930], “98”-”99” [correct pagination: 90-91]; 1934a, 144; and 1934b, 151. 47 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations reportedly, in 1918 shows fragments A, B, and C practically unchanged since 1905 (fragment D does not appear in this set), so we may conclude that Rousopoulos’s conservation had come to a halt about the end of 1905.43 (Supplementary Fig. S7, of A-2, is from this set.) The number of fragments had grown by this time through the separation of fused pieces of material. One such new fragment, a piece of inscribed plate now known as Fragment 19, was removed from Fragment A (leaving behind mirror-image impressions), and a photograph and transcription of it were published by Valerios Stais early in 1905 in a pamphlet on the finds from the Antikythera wreck.44 Fragments 19 and 67 (a smaller piece of the same inscribed plate, also removed from A) are also shown in one of Karo’s photographs. Transcriptions of text from other pieces detached from Fragments A and C, mostly identifiable among the present fragments, appear in Rehm’s notes and in Theofanidis’s publications.45 Some of the fragments (probably A, B, and C) were on public display from at least as early as 1907 to just before the Second World War in the Rotunda of the Museum among other bronze artifacts from the Antikythera wreck (cases 237-244).46 Ioannis Theofanidis studied them in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and his frustratingly inexact descriptions and line drawings, published in 1927 and 1934, are the only known evidence for their state at this period.47 During the Second World War the fragments were in underground storage along with the rest of the Museum’s collections.48 In 1953 Ioannis Bakoulis, the head technician of the Museum, carried out a new course of conservation on them, which likely involved both chemical cleaning and physical removal of accretion layers.49 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations The condition of Fragments A, B, and C after the 1953 conservation is documented in photographs provided by the Museum that year to Derek de Solla Price, which he published several times between 1956 and 1974.50 Compared to their 1905/1918 states, all three fragments have undergone visible alterations, some of which appear to be the result of accidental breakages (likely incurred during the wartime storage) rather than deliberate interventions by the conservator. Photographs taken by or for Price during his 1958 sojourn at the Museum show not only Fragments A, B, and C but also many other fragments; most of the larger ones among them can be identified among the present fragments by their shapes although the photographs are unfortunately not sharp enough to show much detail.51 Some 48 46 Stais 1907, 301-302 (= Stais 1910, 357); Baedeker 1908, 88; Theofanidis [1927-1930] “97” [correct pagination: 89]; Karo 1937, 133. 47 Theofanidis [1927-1930]; Theofanidis 1934a and 1934b. 48 Responding in a letter dated July 14, 1944 (Rehmiana IV A) to an application from Rehm to obtain casts of the fragments, Walther Wrede (1893-1990), first director of the German Archeological Institute in Athens, notified Rehm that all the Museum’s antiquities including the Mechanism had been inaccessibly stored in underground locations since 1940. The Mechanism had probably been deposited, with the ceramics and other small objects, in wooden crates in the basement of the new wing of the Museum (Petrakos 1994, 87-90). 49 The new conservation is mentioned in “ ΤΟ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΝ ΩΡΟΛΟΓΙΟΝ ΑΣΤΡΟΝΟΜΙΑΣ, ΜΙΑ ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΙΣ ΤΟΥ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΥ ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟΥ ”, Ἐλευθερία, Sunday, January 11, 1959, p. 11. A previous article by Athena Kalogeropoulou in the same newspaper, “ΟΙ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΙ ΕΓΝΩΡΙΖΑΝ ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΜΥΣΤΙΚΑ ΤΗΣ ΝΑΥΣΙΠΛΟΪΑΣ,” Ἐλευθερία, Friday, January 9, 1959, p. 3, states that the fragments had not yet been installed in the new exhibits of the Museum by the beginning of 1959. 50 Price 1974, 12. The photographs are reproduced there on pp. 23-26, figs. 12, 15, 17a, 17c, 18a, and 19a. 51 Price’s photograph collection is kept at the Adler Planetarium. Price worked on the fragments at the Museum in 1958, 1961, and 1972 (Price 1974, 12-13), but the first of these visits appears to have been the occasion of the great part of his physical examination of the fragments, including his collaboration with George Stamires on the inscriptions. The Fragment D, which had apparently gone missing after 1905, was found again around 19721974.53 Another substantial fragment not previously known, now called E, was discovered by Petros Kalligas in 1976 in the Museum’s basement pottery storeroom (Y15), along with fragments of pottery, glass, and other small objects from the Antikythera wreck, and transferred to the bronzes storeroom. 54 In advance of the 2005 data-gathering of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, the inventory of known fragments was brought up to 82, including another major new discovery (Fragment F). 55 E and F were not formerly parts of one or other of the four fragments known in 1903, as documented in the photographs published in that year. Among the smaller fragments now designated by numbers 1 through 75, Fragments 19 through 30 and 39 through 44 are mostly identifiable in Price’s 1958 photographs and appear to have been separated from one or another of the four “original” fragments (in particular A and C), while at least some of the rest may, like E and F, have lurked for decades among unidentified materials from the salvage of the wreck. photographs in question can be dated to this visit by the use of one of them as the cover image on the June 1959 issue of Scientific American in which Price 1959 appeared. Oddly, Price 1974, 47 speaks of the existence of only “some fifteen small fragments, most of them being scraps of inscribed plate…”, though his photographs show many more than that. We note here that a pair of negatives showing both sides of Fragments A, B, and C, photographed by Emile Séraf is now in the collection of the Athens Department of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut; these cannot be precisely dated but show the fragments in approximately the same state as Price’s photographs, while being of distinctly higher quality. 52 This box was the source of the samples used for the metallurgical analyses made shortly after Price’s 1958 visit, which are reported in Price 1974, 63-66; see also below, section 2.4. The fragments were still stored in the cigar boxes when they were seen by Arthur C. Clarke in 1965 (Clarke 1975, 115 = Clarke 1977, 190; Clarke 2001). 53 Price 1974, 13. 54 Personal communication from Mary Zafeiropoulou. 55 The discovery of Fragment F and several small fragments not known to Price in the Museum’s bronze storeroom is due to Mary Zafeiropoulou, who also assigned the now standard letters and numbers to all the fragments beyond A-E; see Zafeiropoulou 2012a and 2012b, 11. 49 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations of these fragments, like Fragment 19, are known to have been separated from A, B, or C during Rousopoulos’s conservation. Of particular importance among this group is Fragment G (Supplementary Fig. S5), an inscribed plate fragment assembled from numerous pieces that had been separated from C-1. Others among the “new” fragments certainly broke off or were removed from the principal fragments after 1918. The flat boxes (some of them are cigar boxes) in which the fragments were stored may be seen, including a box containing crumb-sized bits which appears no longer to exist.52 A. Jones: IAM 2. Historical Background and General Observations Despite Price’s dangerous wish, expressed in Gears from the Greeks, that the fragments should be subjected to yet another round of cleaning and separation,56 the principal fragments, A, B, and C have not experienced much alteration since 1955, and scarcely at all since 1990, in which year they were photographed by M. T. Wright.57 (Supplementary Figs. S1 - S4 show the inscription-bearing faces of A, B, and C as they were in 2005.) According to former conservators of the Museum, Fragments A, B, C, D, and G as well as some of the smaller inscribed f