Day 14
Delphi!
Amongst the Delphian stories, there's the one of a baby who was adopted by wealthy people, grew up into a respected young man, and journeyed through Greece. On his way to Delphi, he meets an old man begging for food on the road. The beggar insists a little bit too much for the taste of the young fellow, and the young fellow murders the old man.
A little bit further, as he is about to enter Delphi, he meets a funny talking creature – woman head, lion body, eagle forelegs, wings – who kills people who can't answer its riddle: What goes on four legs in the morning, on two at midday, and on three at night? The young man answers, and the creature kills itself. As a result, he is hailed as the king of the city, and must marry an old woman in the process.
So far so good, until the story tells us that:
- the old beggar was the biological father of the young man,
- the old woman his biological mother,
- the biological parents were told of the incest and murder on the birth of the young man by professional fortune tellers well known to be pot heads.
- When learning all of that, the young brat gouges his eyes out and falls into oblivion.
You can see a representation of the mythical creature – the Sphinx – in the museum of Delphi, among many other superb artefacts from several thousands years ago, when a much larger part of this Earth's population knew how to do things with their hands, and have done things with their hands which have survived earthquakes, fires, and greed.
I didn't find the archeological site as impressive as the content of the museum. I wish the conservators would have put copies of the statues where they belonged in the site, that they found a way to give the visitor a perspective on the volumes of the buildings, that they had tried to restitute the way of life in this site starting from getting the water running in the aqueducts still in existence in the site... At the time of writing Delphi is the second most visited archeological site in Greece, and I believe some of the amounts of money poured into the site by the buses of tourists could be dedicated to provide them another kind of accessibility than the concrete paths that scar the site permanently: accessibility in the shape of bridges to our roots.
The archeologists have a fairly good idea of what the whole site looked like.
As you journey through the ruins from the bottom to to the stadium, you are witness of the effect of an earthquake that destroyed the site around 500 B.C., and its reconstruction under the Roman Empire around 200 B.C. (if I got the gist of it correctly) and the subsequent decay over 2,000 years.
Everything up to the part that leads to the stadium must have been impressive and majestic. I have tried to capture this impression as I was progressing through the ruins, while imagining how the surrounding landscape – the slopes of the mountains around – might have enhanced the volumes of the buildings.
Being at the centre of the world, where lived a creature that Pacific cultures would have treated as a gateway between the Worlds, I have asked the Universe and the Gods to take care of dear friends.
I'll conclude this day with the puzzling surprising carvings that can be found in many facade stones. They are surprising by their size. Twice. First, the surface that is being carved is roughly 60cm by 40cm. Two, the carvings are very small when considering their depth and how much there's packed into such a small surface. See by yourself.
The puzzle remained until I found the following explanation in the museum: some of these engravings are the oldest (128 BC) written notation of a melody: hymns to Apollo! Between the verses, there are notes for a large choir and up to three instruments (cithara, lyre, flute), written in combinations of characters and punctuation.
I am not sure that the stone I pictured was on the walls where musical scores were engraved, but I trust this gives you an idea.