A Bright New Home for Aigai’s Royal Splendors

Regal burial goods defy history’s tribulations

A large hall presents the “Remembrance” exhibition’s stirring culmination, with elite and royal funerary goods from the Aigai necropolis and its burial tumuli of “The Temenids” and “The Queens.” Here, Kottaridi and her team colorfully envision visitors “experiencing” a “nekyia” – an ancient rite in which spirits of the deceased were called up and questioned. One panel reads: “The objects – so full of meaning – truly shine as ‘beings’…, ready to share their truth in a[n]… environment that both respects and exalts them.” Thus, the treasures of Aigai are meant to “speak” to us, and they almost seem to do so. The abundance and the diversity of the ancient material on display are particularly impressive. Despite extensive looting and repeated sackings of Aigai (by Pyrrhus’ troops in 273 BC and the Romans in 148 BC), much has survived.

Magnificent Attic polychromatic white-ground lekythoi by known painters – along with black-figure, red-figure, and black-glazed banqueting vases in the previous room – attest to Athenian trade and influence in the 6th-4th c. BC. The Temenid kings are represented by objects from their funeral pyres and tombs and through written descriptions on an information panel. The “Queens” – in fact, pre-Temenid “noblewomen” (10th-8th c. BC) and the so-called “Lady of Aigai” (495 BC) identified as the Lydian wife of Amyntas I – have had their personal funerary adornments and other gifts arranged on or in front of standing, translucent, human-like forms, imparting the striking impression that these ladies have ethereally reappeared before us.

Six of the Iron Age figures are accompanied by tall, originally wooden rods – apparently scepters – topped with triple bronze double-axes. These noblewomen remind us that this site, even before it was Aigai, was already a regional center inhabited by well-to-do elites. The “Lady of Aigai’s” gold, silver, bronze and ivory grave goods are wondrous, and include a gilt-edged veil, pins, jewelry, a scepter, a distaff, a spindle, a phiale for offerings, a hydria (water jar), libation bowls, and golden-soled slippers.

As artistic, fresh and informative as the new Aigai Museum clearly is, it’s also still a work in progress. To fully understand the rich, innovative displays that the new Aigai Museum offers, visitors need to carefully read all the narrative panels, which are lengthy and dense (often over 2000 words of text). Eventually, they’ll be able to scan QR codes and take these texts with them to peruse later, or perhaps access internet resources on their mobile phones, but at the moment, neither the QR system nor reliable internet or mobile phone service are available in the main museum building. The café and bookshop, too, remain as yet unfinished.