Sculptures in the Cyclades Islands (3000 BC)


"You sleep, Achilles, and have forgotten me?
You loved me living, but now that I am dead you think for me no further.
Bury me with all speed that I may pass the gates of Hades; the ghosts, vain shadows of men that can labour no more, drive me away from them; they will not yet suffer me to join those that are beyond the river, and I wander all desolate by the wide gates of the house of Hades.
Give me now your hand I pray you, for when you have once given me my dues of fire, never shall I again come forth out of the house of Hades.
Nevermore shall we sit apart and take sweet counsel among the living; the cruel fate which was my birth-right has yawned its wide jaws around me."
Homer, The Iliad, book XXIII.

Patroclo's weeping will be soothed by his friend.
The old rituals will once again be carried out and the warrior's soul will find peace.

All of this was part of a deeply rooted culture of death in the Aegean sea and in particular in the Cyclades Islands, where more than two thousand tombs have been discovered with their burial goods.
This is not unusual in the rich culture of these islanders, skilled metal workers, good seamen, wealthy businessmen and experts in their geographical surroundings.

What still continues to surprise and amaze us today, are the figures that accompanied their burial goods: the beautiful and mysterious small, white marble sculptures.
Nowadays we know that the high quality marble on the island, with a compact and fine grain, provided their whiteness.
Their simplicity resulted from the technique of using polishing stone (crystalline carbon) in their production, which was used to polish the marble due to a lack of other copper instruments.
Artists had to avoid the most significant features, making their task easier and resulting in very pure lines and a marked simplicity.

These sculptures have been measured by experts (the majority are not bigger than 30cm, although some measure 1.5 metres and needed to be cut at the neck and the legs in order to fit in the tombs) and have been labelled according to their simplicity ("violin-case" type), or the representation of the female body ("realist" series).
The last category includes figures of musicians playing the flute or the lyre.

From here onwards begins the stage of speculation and admiration.
Why were they made so lovingly and for what reason?
Given that there are large numbers of female figures, it's inevitable that they are linked to the neolithical fertility goddesses, or compared with Egyptian burial goods; the "ushebtis" or figures of servants who would continue to carry out their tasks after death on their masters' orders.
Other theories consider them to be burial offerings to the Gods in place of human sacrifices or, continuing with the Egyptian theme, they'd protect the deceased in their journey to the next world by working as an amulet or would carry their soul to the other world.
This is something that Patroclo demands urgently of his friend Aquiles and which he seems to have forgotten.

Five thousand years have passed and it seems that we never tire of looking at them.
We, the people of today, are not the only ones to have done this.
Outside the Cyclades Islands and in particular in Crete in ancient times, they imitated the style of these sculptures and it seems that they had the same purpose of being placed in tombs.
Later on in the contemporary age, greedy treasure hunters desecrated the tombs and these small pieces of art ended up on the black market of the art world in the hands of those who could afford to buy them.

And why do we like them so much? What did the old avant-garde masters of the 20th century like Giacometti, Modigliani, Brancusi or Picasso see in them and why did they collect them if they could?
It's not hard to see traces of the pure lines of these "ancient ladies" in their drawings or in the polish of their sculptured forms.
We should also bear in mind Malevich's "peasants without faces" from 1930 as an example.

If our classic-modern artists were looking for an alternative to imagery and everything that belonged to the primitive, such as African, Polynesian or Cycladian offered them inspiration, now that there are so many options open to us, these works of art from the anonymous islanders seem to us to be even more beautiful due to their role as precursors and the fact that they are mysterious with a perfect finish.

May the soul of Patroclo rest in peace as he crosses the gates of Hades and welcome once again to every one of these sculptures discovered in the Cyclades islands!!

Teresa Lañarova
September 2005

jemenuno@epersonas.net