The Marble Treasures Of Knidos

Knidos, also known as Cnidus, is currently one of western Turkey’s most picturesque and popular tourist jaunts, located just down the road from the village of Tekir on the Datca peninsular. Yet it is also one of the most intriguing Anatolian outposts for understanding ancient Greek culture and sculpture, and became one of the empire’s most important military and trading posts during its renaissance in the 4th century BC. For a relatively tiny port with a select population, Knidos became internationally renowned for its many great marbles – many of which are now scattered across the world’s premier museums (but London’s British Museum in particular) – and for its huge wealth accrued through both centuries of shrewd business and its vital strategic position overlooking almost all traffic via the Med.

For a small and relatively inaccessible town, Knidos’ star rose quickly with a successful era of trade with the powerful Egyptians in the 6th century BC. Its perfect location soon earned it the title of being one of its regions most wealthy cities, and was soon able to build itself a marble treasury at the famous Greek city of Delphi. The city’s illustrious position never looked like abating, and had soon become a bustling metropolis – replete with theatres, an odeon and agora (marketplace). It was arguably at this time that Knidos’ famous marbles – both magnificent and risqué – were made.

Larger Than Life

Thus Knidos grew and grew, cementing its place as one of the empire’s premier artistic venues – rather like a Greek Padua (or Shoreditch – actually not Shoreditch). Its azure skies, enormous wealth and perfect location attracted some of the empire’s greatest personalities, including the astronomer Ctesias, and Sostratus, a famous architect and mathematical scholar of Plato who was alleged to have built the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was also the location for one of the most famous pieces of sculpture by the pre-eminent 4th century BC Athenian sculptor Praxiteles. His Aphrodite of Cnidus – also known as the Venus Pudica (modest Venus, so called because of her apparent attempt to be covering her genitals with her right hand) – has become one of the most recognisable portrayals of the goddess of love and beauty. It was originally meant for Kos, but the racy depiction was too much for them, so Praxiteles instead sold it to his native Knidos. Though lost over time, its image has been recovered on coinage from the time, and has since been replicated in famous works such as the Venus de’ Medici and the Capitoline Venus. It was also the inspiration for a sex cult for sailors, which enveloped the city for much of its ancient Greek history.

The Aphrodite of Cnidus was famed throughout Greece, and may well have been the first fully nude marble statue. A later copy can still be seen today in the Vatican Museums. Yet Aphrodite was not enough for the burgeoning culture of Knidos, and the goddess of fertility, Demeter, was also enshrined in marble. Demeter was supposedly the model of Greek womanhood – serene, mature, motherly and modestly veiled, and she was worshipped across the region alongside her daughter Persephone. She governed the cycle of the seasons and the growing of grain, and was also associated with the Underworld.

I am Knidos, hear me roar

Yet there was more to Knidos to a friendly, pious village with a few quid in the bank. 394 BC saw the belligerent Spartan nation go to war with Athens; Knidos an important vantage point from where the Spartans could attempt their conquest of the empire. Yet the city’s allegiance was set in stone, and the intense naval Battle of Cnidus saw the Spartan fleet razed by Conon’s Athens before Knidos’ rolling hills. Not only was Knidos home to theatres, temples and statues, but it also comprised a potent military harbour on its west side, from where the Athenian ships could wage war with attackers. And from the bloody ashes of the battle was built a vast monument which still poses a fearsome sight to this day – the Lion of Knidos (allegedly, some believe it to have been built in 175 BC).

The Lion is a work of staggering scale and effort. Its 7-ton frame is carved from a single piece of Pentelic marble, and placed upon a huge funerary base. Ten feet long and six feet high, the lion has hollow eyes – which it is thought glass eyes were set. These would have shone brightly onto the Med from the lion’s 200ft-high position at the summit of a cliff. Thus the epic sculpture would have acted both as a lighthouse, and as a fearsome reminder of Knidos’ immense wealth, power and militaristic might. It certainly would have been a poignant reminder to any would-be attackers.

Taken

However, for all Knidos’ ancient power and respect, it could not prevent the most zealous of all modern excavating nations – Britain – from tearing its most valued treasures from the sandy banks and hills of its limits. For between 1857 and 1859, the marbles of Knidos would meet their match in explorer and antiquarian Charles Newton. Newton and his band of merry men gleefully filled their ships with Anatolian booty while the Ottoman rulers of the region sat back in apathy, much as they had done half a century earlier at the Athenian Acropolis. And just as Lord Elgin returned to London with some of the Greek capital’s most treasured artefacts, so Newton plundered Knidos of its famous artworks – including both the statue of Demeter and the city’s legendary Lion – and took them to London’s British Museum.

To this day both are held captive within the streets of Bloomsbury, the Lion taking pride of place in the museum’s Great Court. To this day the Turkish government have maintained their right to repatriate Knidos’ marbles, a stance which has been met with derision from the BM’s officials. It seems that just as the ancient Knidians could afford to corner the ancient Greek sculpture market through their wealth and militaristic potency, so the colonial British felt their power earned them the right to drag these treasures away from their home. Will the Turks ever get their marbles back? It appears doubtful, to say the least.

Images by John Irving Dillon, Bazylek100 and Jon Himoff.
 

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About The Author

Sean Williams

Last three pieces by this author:

Join Heritage Key Live from Stonehenge Spring Equinox | Celebrate St. Patrick's by Visiting Loughcrew for Spring Equinox | What can you Expect from Stonehenge Spring Equinox 2010?

Sean is an English Literature graduate, who currently works as a writer and journalist in London. He enjoys ancient history, theatre and sport. He does not enjoy Big Brother.