ANTIKYTHERA - THE SHINING AEGEAN ISLAND

Written by Giuditta Andrei 

ANTIKYTHERA

THE SHINING AEGEAN ISLAND

Antikythera or Kythera, in Greek Ἀντικύθηρα, is an island that lies on the shores of the Aegean Sea between Crete and the Peloponnese.
With an area of just 20 square kilometres and just 3000 inhabitants, Antikythera is best known for its rich flora, wild beauty and crystal-clear waters.

Its landscape is typical of a small Mediterranean island; it has open countryside, low shrubs and hills, steep limestone cliffs and ancient paths that criss-cross its entire surface.
The main port town is Potamos, a large and verdant village on the north side of the island. Although it is the commercial hub of the island itself, it retains a very traditional and picturesque appearance. From Potamos runs a network of paved roads connecting the small local villages, infrastructure and a heliport.

Today, life on Antikythera, while enjoying all the modern comforts such as electricity and plumbing, flows slowly. And it is mainly because of its leisurely pace that tourists or the Greeks themselves choose it as an ideal destination to get away from the hectic city bustle.
Antikythera is a fusion of sea and land, a union of history and mythology, a compromise of synesthesia between the sound of the waves and the brilliance of the Mediterranean sun.

The history of Khythera spans the annals of time and existence.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the oldest settlement on the island was founded between 4000 and 3000 BC.

Although it has always been a key crossroads of Mediterranean cultures and a favoured location for pirates, settlers and ascetics, it is attested that one of the earliest colonies on Khythera was founded already before the 20th century B.C. by the Minoans, near Kastri, present-day Palaiopolis, with Skandia as its port. 

The first proven inhabitants of Khythera, however, were the Phoenicians, a people of traders who settled on the island and built ancient workshops called 'porfireia' specifically involved in the production of murex, or purple, a red pigment used to colour clothes. At this time, ancient Khytera was also known for this as Porphyris or Porphyrousa. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, when the Phoenicians settled on the island they brought with them the cult of a new goddess, possibly Aphrodite.

After the Mycenaeans had dominated the island in the 14th century BC, came the occupation by the Spartans and Athenians during the Peloponnesian Wars (431-404 BC). It is recorded that both divided up the island: the Spartans settled in the north, while the Cretans settled in the south. In this classical era, the island of Khythera gave birth to, among others, the poet Senodamus, the famous eulogist Philoxenus, the mathematician and astronomer Eratosthenes and the sculptor Hermogenes.

A classical historical source that mentions Khythera is Plutarch, when, in his Parallel Lives, he recounts the defeat of the king of Sparta Cleomenes III (260-219 BC) by Antigonus III, king of Macedonian, at the Battle of Sellasia in 222 BC.                                                          Plutarch writes that Cleomenes III, once defeated, reached Kythera and then Aegilia - south of Athens - before going into exile in Egypt:

As for Cleomenes, he sailed from Kythera to Aegialia, another island, and called there. As he was about to pass from there to Cyrene, one of his friends, named Tericion, a man who bore great spirit in the conduct of affairs and was always a little haughty in speech and magniloquent, came to him privately and said: 'The noblest death, O king, death in battle, we have banished.

(Cleomenes, chapter 31 section 1)

Khythera is also the place where, as reported by Hesiod in his Theogony, the mythical Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, love and desire, was born. The goddess had many epithets and was also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) or Cypris (Lady of Cyprus), in fact according to an alternative current of thought, it was the island of Cyprus that gave birth to her.

Historical evidence, although limited, attests to the presence of Cretan, Arab and Norman pirates during the same time period, as Khythera was an island easily vulnerable to pirate raids. The lack of more in-depth historical evidence could be attributed to the island's geographical position per se and the role it assumed essentially as a transit area.
Lacking a good harbour and known for its aridity, the exploitation of Khythera's territories to support an agricultural economy was considered impractical; in fact, its only importance lay in its strategic position controlling the Aegean.

In antiquity, maritime navigation, whether for purely commercial or other purposes, involved many risks for both crew and cargo. Various factors, such as bad weather, shipwrecks or piracy, contributed to the hiding of many artefacts on the seabed that would better help to reconstruct the historical picture of an ancient reality such as Khythera.

The seas of this area, which are notoriously rough, have been vital players for most of the ships that have plied the waters over the millennia. It is well known that the phenomenon of shipwrecks by merchant ships in the Aegean-Mediterranean basin was largely concentrated between the 1st and 2nd centuries; this has allowed the identification and dating of thousands of wrecks found at different depths.
One of these occurred during the Roman campaigns, or shortly before, when the cargo of a ship carrying stone and bronze sculptures, amphorae and other artefacts, sank off the north-east coast of the island. An episode known as the 'Antikythera Shipwreck' whose remains were discovered in 1900.

According to the most widespread sources, another official reference to Kythera dates back to 530 B.C. during the Byzantine era, where the island is mentioned among the regions under Constantinople's authority. At that time, the Byzantine capital of Khytera was Agios Dimitrios (today Paleochora). This historical period, characterised by a strong Christian religious element, is noticeable in parts of Greece by the presence of at least 300 Christian monuments and churches.
One of these is the church of Agiod Ioannis (St John), one of the seven churches of Potamos dating from the early 6th century, where fragments of the mosaic floor of early Christian origin can be found.

For many years after the year 1000, the island remained deserted and returned to the scene some time later with the most influential family of Greek origin of the time, the Evdemonogiannis of Monemvasia. They built the settlement of Agios Dimitrios in Paleochora, which is said to have had 365 churches, one for each day of the year.

During the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) called by Pope Innocent III, the island served as a strategic outpost. At the same time, the powerful Venetian Republic led by the Venieri family conquered and ruled the island of Khytera and other regions of Greece for years to follow. Through the marriage between Nicholas Evdemonogiannis, the Venetian feudal lord of Crete, and the daughter of the Venetian lord Marco Venier, Khythera fell to all intents and purposes under the sovereignty of the Serenissima.

The embarkation for Kythera by Jean-AntoineWatteau

Around the 16th century, Ottoman rule expanded and Khythera fell into territorial dispute between the Turks and the Venetians. In 1537, the janissary Hayreddin Barbarossa (1478-1546 A.D.), one of the most fearsome privateers and Ottoman admirals in the Mediterranean, destroyed and sacked Paleochora, one of the main defensive castles, massacring its inhabitants. In 1540, the Turks took control of Monemvasia, one of the most impregnable medieval fortresses, and drove many of its inhabitants to settle in Khythera. Back in Venetian hands again, in the last years of the rule, the population of Khythera fell from almost 4000 to 7500, remaining under Venetian rule until the fall of the republic in 1797.

THE TREASURE OF KHYTHERA

Imagining the ancient sea that surrounds our globe often causes us to abandon the traditional, pre-established academic thread of the events of history in order to innovate our beliefs and assumptions; especially when unexplored realities re-emerge from its waters.

We can only imagine, indeed, how many branch and sail boats of different types and sizes have crossed each other and sailed the length and breadth of the Mediterranean Sea. Its coasts, stretching 46,000 kilometres and three continents, were dotted with thousands of islands and islets, and voyages, risky or not, short or long, took place. This implied for a sailor knowing how to chart a course, knowing sea currents, tidal flows, weather conditions and its dangers.

Undoubtedly, one of the finds for which Khythera is undoubtedly known is the 'Antikythera mechanism', an ancient and sophisticated gearing device initially kept in a wooden box the size of a shoebox in the wreckage of a 2,000-year-old ship. 

The Antikythera mechanism is now housed in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

The mechanism, found by a pair of divers in 1901 off the Aegean Sea, is made of bronze. It is now divided into 82 fragments of which only a third survive and includes 30 gear wheels. After careful cleaning that took many years, an X-ray scan carried out on the artefact revealed inscriptions describing the movements of the Sun, Moon and all five planets known in antiquity and how they were viewed as a whole as an ancient cosmos. The engraved inscriptions specify complex planetary periods that combine the cycles of Babylonian astronomy, the mathematics of Plato's Academy and the well-known astronomical theories of ancient Greece.
Whirlwinds, raids, plundering, shipwrecks, discoveries, but also prosperity and desolation, this is Antikythera.