Nov 2nd, 2019 : Griffin Warrior

[xoxoxoBruce]

University of Cincinnati's Sharon Stocker and Jack Davis have been grubbing in the soil of Greece for 25 years, teasing history
out of bits and pieces they find. In 2016 they hit the jackpot, the grave of an important warrior not disturbed for 3500 years.

The tomb revealed a remarkably intact skeleton, which UC researchers dubbed the “Griffin Warrior” for the discovery of an ivory plaque adorned with a griffin — a mythical beast with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle — buried with him.

How do they know the grave was undisturbed?



I don't know if they got that picture from his chariot licence or his war college yearbook.

The 3,500-year-old shaft grave also revealed more than 3,000 objects arrayed on and around the warrior’s body, including four
solid gold rings, silver cups, precious stone beads, fine-toothed ivory combs and an intricately built sword, among other weapons.
Every piece must be cataloged and conserved and of course they go to the most obviously important pieces first, so it took a
couple years to get to this piece only 3.6 centimeters (1.4 inches) long and caked with limestone.



You can’t see it on that small black stone but it turns out to be probably one of the most important pieces ever found in Greece.

Davis and Stocker say the Pylos Combat Agate’s craftsmanship and exquisite detail make it the finest discovered work of glyptic art produced in the Aegean Bronze Age.
“What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later,” explained Davis. “It’s a spectacular find.”

Even more extraordinary, the husband-and-wife team point out, is that the meticulously carved combat scene was painstakingly etched on a piece of hard stone measuring just 3.6 centimeters, or just over 1.4 inches, in length. Indeed, many of the seal’s details, such as the intricate weaponry ornamentation and jewelry decoration, become clear only when viewed with a powerful camera lens and photomicroscopy.
“Some of the details on this are only a half-millimeter big,” said Davis. “They’re incomprehensibly small.”

Hard to believe that was made in hard black stone during the bronze age.

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