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| My Favourite Planet > English > Europe > Greece > Northern Aegean > Samothraki > gallery |
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| Samothraki, Greece |
Samothraki gallery |
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Approaching Samothraki from Alexandroupolis on the Thracian Sea. |
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The archaeologist Haris Tsougaris once referred to Samothraki as "a floating mountain", which seems a perfect description of this enormous mass of rock which appears to rise suddenly out of the Thracian Sea as one approaches it. The French linguist and archaeologist Gustave Deville, sailing to the island in the summer of 1866 was deeply impressed by the sight:
"The indescribable calm and seriousness of its form gives it a majesty that had struck ancient navigators with a kind of religious impression, and perhaps even determined the place to be a sanctuary." [1]
Although "high Samothrace" is often clearly visible from the coasts of Thrace, Gallipoli, the neighbouring islands Lemnos and Gökçeada (formerly Imbros), and from as far as the part of northwestern Anatolia south of the Dardanelles (Propontis). it is often veiled by haze, especially in summer. Sometimes the island disappears completely, and reveals itself only when you get quite close.
Likewise, the spectacular views from the island itself, especially from the top of Mount Fengari, can be totally obscured by haze, leaving the viewer to imagine that the island is lost in space.
When stormy clouds cover the sky, Samothraki can take on quite different appearance. The bulk of the darkened island appears moody, broody, and in the ancient imagination the mysterious home of primitive but powerful deities, the Great Gods (Μεγάλοι Θεοί, Megali Thei).
The violent storms of autumn, winter and spring make crossing the stretch of Thracian Sea a perilous expedition for sailors in smaller vessels. As in the rest of northern Greece, there are sudden rainstorms even in summer. It is not surprising that seafarers prayed to these gods for safety. |
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photo:
© David John |
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| Samothraki |
Notes, references and links |
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1. Gustave Deville and Georges-Ernest Coquart on Samothraki, 1866
Gustave Deville, Rapport sur une mission sans l'Ile de Samothrace (pages 254-265), and E. Coquart, Note explicative accompagnée des plans et dessins et faisant suite au rapport de M. Gustave Deville (pages 267-278). In Archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires. Choix de rapports et instructions. Publié sous les auspices du Ministère de l'Instruction Publique. Deuxième série, Tome IV, pages 254-278. Impremerie Impériale, Paris. 1867.
Gustave Deville (1835-1867) was a linguist and classicist from Paris who became a member of l’École française d’Athènes in 1859. Apart from his doctoral thesis, his report on his visit to Samothraki and some other writings, there is not much information to be found about his life. Following his Samothraki excursion he returned to Paris, became a founder member of l’Association pour l’encouragement des études grecques in 1867 and died the same year.
The brilliant young architect and watercolourist Georges-Ernest Coquart (1831-1902). A student of the l'École des beaux-arts, Coquart won the Prix de Rome in 1858, and was a pensionnaire (pensioner = scholar) at l'Académie de France à Rome (French Academy in Rome) 1859-1863. Returning to France in 1867 his career was more successful, though affected by ill-health and his perfectionism. He worked as an architect on several government projects, was appointed Professor of Architecture at l'École des beaux-arts in 1883 and made a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur.
In Summer 1866 Deville and Coquart travelled from Athens to Ioannina in Epirus to consult the French vice consul Charles-François-Noël Champoiseau, who had explored Samothraki in 1863 and discovered the famous Winged Victory of Samothrace (see gallery page 8). After a brief visit to the site of ancient Nicopolis they proceeeded to Ainos (Αίνος; today Enez, Turkey) at the mouth of the Thracian river Evros (ancient Hebros), where they visited the site of the ancient port. From there they sailed to Samothrace.
Their stay on the island marks the first attempt at systematic archaeological exploration of the site of ancient Samothraki and the Sanctuary of the Great Gods. In their brief reports they complain of the difficulties of their endeavour (the state of the site, the heat ...) but fail to mention the length of their stay or many details of the methods they employed, although Deville made a brief remark about the people of Chora:
"This population is gentle and peaceful; it provides us with intelligent and industrious workers for our excavations."
Both Deville and Coquart appear to have been rather disparaged by their efforts and were far from impressed by the site. Of the Nike Monument Deville commented:
"These marbles are poorly executed; the Victory is itself a mediocre decorative figure. The whole [monument] seems to be of a late [or inferior] period."
Coquart concurred: "At H, excavated monument where the Louvre Victory, a decorative figure of a rather late date, was discovered."
Coquart concludes his description of the monument site by commenting that several large marble blocks "decorated with mouldings of a brutal taste", "small debris of red and blue stucco, some small insignificant fragments of terracotta are all the information we could obtain on this monument, also without interest."
The impression of lack of interest seems to characterize the mood of their reports, perhaps because they were unable to unearth any object they considered to be of historical, architectural or artistic significance, and certainly nothing which could compare with Champoiseau's sensantional discovery of the Winged Victory or similarly impressive finds at other ancient Greek sites such as Athens.
In their defence it must be added that later archaeologists have also commented on the great difficulties of excavating the site because of the depth of earth and large boulders which covered the remains of monuments severely damaged by eathquakes and other natural disasters, as well as destruction by humans: Deville mentions two large lime kilns (one at the Propylon of Ptolemy II) still used to reduce the marble of the monuments to lime.
They deserve praise as two young, relatively inexperienced pioneers of the new science of archaeology, working under difficult circumstances in a remote area. In contrast to other sites such as Athens or Olympia, they had very few clues provided by ancient authors to help them identify the various ruins they encountered and a paucity of indicative evidence such as inscriptions or coins.
Following on from the excavations of the Austrian mission under the more experienced Alexander Conze in 1873 and 1875, it is only due to decades of patient and painstaking work by American archaeologists under Karl Lehmann, Phyllis Williams Lehmann, James R. McCredie and their successors since 1938 that the mysterious history of Samothraki is slowly being revealed.
Deville and Coquart appear not to have published any further information or conclusions concerning their work on Samothraki. Deville died a year after their visit, and despite Coquart's great skill as a draughtsman and watercolourist, the two maps and two drawings attached to the report seem to be the only of his pictorial records of the island yet published. |
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Photos, maps and articles: © David John,
except where otherwise specified.
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Some of the information and photos in this guide to Samothraki
originally appeared in 2004 on davidjohnberlin.de.
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