Travel Photos IV: Delphi, Greece

I love Greece. Maybe it’s because when I was a kid I was really nuts about Greek mythology. Maybe it’s because I went on vacation there after months seeing nothing but Arabian and Egyptian deserts, so I was in desperate need of someplace a little cooler and greener. Maybe it’s because Greece was the first place I ever went on vacation with the nice lady who would, a while later, agree to marry me. Or maybe it’s a little of everything. Anyway, I love Greece.

These pictures are from Delphi, home of the world-famous Oracle where the priestess of Apollo was said to predict the future (after a nice donation, of course), and today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We were staying in Athens with no thought to leaving the city until our planned visit to the island of Santorini (Thira) later in our trip, but then I saw an ad for a bus tour to Delphi and we booked it the next day. Aside from the chance to walk in the ruins of a place that was once one of the focal points of Greek religion and culture, it turns out that Delphi is just really gorgeous. It was lightly raining the whole time we were there, but after you’ve spent enough time living around deserts you realize that rain is uncomfortable, but it’s also pretty irreplaceable as far as getting some damn plants to grow.  The site itself just hints at the grandeur that must have existed there once; earthquakes have taken their toll over the millenia. Also not helping preservation: in medieval times the village (known then as Kastri) was located right amidst the ruins, and residents reused the ruins and their materials to build and repair their houses. It wasn’t until the very end of the 19th century that residents were convinced to relocate to the modern town of Delphi, just west of the ruins, and then only after another earthquake had wrecked the town and they were offered free new homes if they agreed to move off of the site.

Anyway, on with the photos:

Delphi scenery

More Delphi scenery

Delphi: scenery and ruins

Still more lovely Delphi scenery

The main building on the site would have been the Temple of Apollo, where the oracle’s predictions were requested and received. Only the outline of the structure remains today, but you get a sense of its size at least:

Temple of Apollo, from the rear

Remaining columns of the Temple of Apollo

Delphi is also home to a stadium and an amphitheater; the stadium is estimated to have seated 6500 and the theater is set up so that the audience would have an amazing view of the whole temple complex as the backdrop to whatever performance was happening:

Delphi’s stadium

Delphi’s theater, from the top row of seats

Because of time considerations, or the weather, or a bad tour guide (I don’t know, and didn’t know enough to complain at the time), we did not get close to the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, but Wikipedia has a good picture of it here. Actually they might have been doing restoration or maintenance on the site; this was just before the 2004 Summer Olympics and a lot of stuff (including the national museum, ARGH) was unavailable because it was having work done in advance of the Games. This is why I also have no good photos of the Treasury of Athens, built after the Battle of Marathon and mostly restored to its former glory now, but surrounded by ugly (but necessary!) scaffolding when we were there. You can see the scaffolding (on the far left), as well as the Sybil Rock upon which the priestess sat as she offered her predictions, in this photo:

The Sybil Rock, that large natural boulder in the center-left with the ivy growing beneath it, amidst some other ruins (back part of the Temple of Apollo on the right).

How the Hell Does Something Like This Happen?

These are the images of what remains of a 2300 year old Mayan pyramid, at a site in the north of Belize called Nohmul, that has been destroyed in order to be reused as gravel by road paving crews.

A construction company in Belize has been scooping stone out of the major pyramid at the site of Nohmul (meaning Big Mound), one of only 15 ancient Maya sites important enough to be noted on the National Geographic World Atlas.

The National Institute of Culture and History of Belize had earlier noted that “the site continues to be destroyed by road construction crews who bulldoze the mounds for gravel.”

But now it appears that nearly the entire main pyramid, once standing over 60 feet tall, has been destroyed by road building crews, said John Morris, associate director of research at Belize’s Institute of Archaeology. The institute is a department of the Belize Ministry of Tourism and Culture.

This is simply unconscionable. I find this kind of destruction even more heinous than what has happened to Syria’s heritage during her ongoing civil war, or the ongoing destruction of Sufi shrines in North Africa by Salafi fighters. They’re all horrific as far as I’m concerned, but there’s at least an explanation for the latter cases that can be understood on some level. Wars happen, as much as we might wish they didn’t, and things are damaged and destroyed in war, as much as we might wish they weren’t; there is no justification for the destruction, but it is at least understandable. Salafi teaching, whatever one may think of its merits, tells its devotees that shrines are an affront to God and must be destroyed; again, there’s no justification for what they do, but it can be understood if seen in the proper context. But this? A road crew, or a series of road crews, either too lazy and/or greedy to find gravel that wasn’t part of a millenia-old, irreplaceable structure, or too ignorant to know what they were demolishing? A crime against cultural heritage that could have been avoided without breaking a sweat? Wars destroy things. Salafis are taught to attack Sufi shrines. But this? This was just pointless greed, laziness, and stupidity. It served no purpose, even a disagreeable one. It’s not even destruction for destruction’s sake; it’s just destruction because we’re too dumb to do anything else.

Belize’s deputy prime minister is calling for prosecutions; I’ll believe it when I see it, and anyway no amount of legal action is going to bring this incredible temple back. It survived 2300 years on this planet but couldn’t survive human greed and human stupidity. I hope the damn road they paved with these stones was really majestic.