62 Facts About Kyriakos Pittakis

Kyriakos Pittakis was the first Greek to serve as Ephor General of Antiquities, the head of the Greek Archaeological Service, in which capacity he carried out the conservation and restoration of several monuments on the Acropolis of Athens.

Kyriakos Pittakis has been described as a "dominant figure in Greek archaeology for 27 years", and as "one of the most important epigraphers of the nineteenth century".

Kyriakos Pittakis played an influential role in the early years of the Greek Archaeological Service and was a founding member of the Archaeological Society of Athens, a private body which undertook the excavation, conservation and publication of archaeological finds.

Kyriakos Pittakis was responsible for much of the early excavation and restoration of the Acropolis, including efforts to restore the Erechtheion, the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaia.

Kyriakos Pittakis has been described as the last representative of the "heroic period" of Greek archaeologists.

Kyriakos Pittakis was prolific both as an excavator and as an archaeological writer, publishing by his own estimation more than 4,000 inscriptions.

Kyriakos Pittakis has been praised for his extensive efforts to uncover and protect Greece's classical heritage, particularly in Athens and the adjacent islands, but criticised for his unsystematic and incautious approach.

Kyriakos Pittakis has been accused of allowing his strong nationalist beliefs to influence his reconstruction of ancient monuments, and of distorting the archaeological record to suit his own beliefs.

Kyriakos Pittakis seems to have been largely self-taught in archaeology, but became apprenticed around the age of sixteen to the French vice-consul Louis-Francois-Sebastien Fauvel, sometimes called the "father of archaeology in Greece".

Kyriakos Pittakis was supported in his early archaeological work by the, a learned society with a particular interest in antiquities and the education of the Greek population: in 1817, he was listed as receiving support from the society for his studies.

Kyriakos Pittakis is said to have met and befriended the English aristocrat, poet and philhellene Lord Byron.

At the age of eighteen, Kyriakos Pittakis was inducted into the, a nationalist secret society formed to oppose Ottoman rule in Greece.

Kyriakos Pittakis may have witnessed, or participated in, the massacre of several hundred Turkish prisoners from the siege in June 1822: his mentor Fauvel, the French vice-consul, sheltered some of the survivors in his own home until the arrival of two French warships allowed their evacuation.

Shortly after the expulsion of the main body of the Ottoman forces from Athens in 1822, Kyriakos Pittakis began to gather archaeological artefacts from around the city into the Church of the Megali Panagia, which was built on the former site of Hadrian's Library, creating one of Greece's first archaeological museums.

Kyriakos Pittakis excavated on Salamis and Aegina in early 1829, and sent several objects to Andreas Moustoxydis, the director of Greece's national archaeological museum, for display.

Kyriakos Pittakis was part of a delegation sent from Athens to welcome him.

Kyriakos Pittakis was one of only three native Greeks employed by the archaeological service.

Kyriakos Pittakis began to collect together some of the scattered antiquities from the Acropolis, many of which were the remains of bombardments during the site's two recent sieges.

Kyriakos Pittakis established a temporary museum for these objects in a former barracks.

Kyriakos Pittakis requested the money for the restoration of other ancient monuments, and later claimed to have written about the matter to Pulteney Malcolm, the commander-in-chief of Britain's Mediterranean Fleet.

Kyriakos Pittakis cleared the temple's surroundings of medieval and early modern buildings, and recovered artefacts including three fragments of its north frieze, a metope and various inscriptions.

In 1835, Kyriakos Pittakis published a monograph in French on the topography and ruins of Athens.

Kyriakos Pittakis had a long-running feud with Ross, Greece's Ephor General of Antiquities from 1834, which reflected wider tensions between native Greek archaeologists and the mostly-Bavarian scholars who, on the invitation of King Otto, dominated Greek archaeology in the early years of Otto's reign.

The Greek authorities asserted that Ross's actions were illegal: Kyriakos Pittakis attacked Ross in the press, which largely sided with him, thanks to his service in the War of Independence and xenophobia towards Ross as an ethnic German.

Eleven days later, Ross attempted to return to the Acropolis to study the inscriptions unearthed during his excavations there, but Kyriakos Pittakis denied him entry.

Kyriakos Pittakis continued to write hostile articles against Ross until 1838, accusing him of allowing foreign journals privileged access to Greek inscriptions, of improperly giving antiquities to the German nobleman Hermann von Puckler-Muskau, and of plotting to flee the country with antiquities in his possession.

Kyriakos Pittakis was instead given the title of "Ephor of the Central Public Museum for Antiquities", referring to the collection of antiquities that he had assembled, first in the Church of the Megali Panagia and since 1835 in the Temple of Hephaestus.

Where Rangavis, Neroulos and Bellios were wealthy Phanariots, Kyriakos Pittakis was unusual in the new society in being both Athenian and of a humble background, a factor which created tension between him and the other elites of the society.

From 1837, Kyriakos Pittakis, assisted by the Swiss sculptor Heinrich Max Imhof and Ross's former collaborators Schaubert and Laurent, carried out restoration work in the Archaeological Society's name on the Acropolis.

Kyriakos Pittakis extended the height of some collapsed columns and rearranged surviving fragments of the building to emphasise the best preserved.

Kyriakos Pittakis excavated the building, down to the floor level of its phase as a Christian church, uncovering tombs in the southern part and a cistern in the western area.

Kyriakos Pittakis ordered casts from the British Museum to replace the Parthenon sculptures taken by Elgin, placing them directly onto the temple itself.

Kyriakos Pittakis intended to rebuild the entire north colonnade, but was prevented from doing so by lack of funds.

In 1842, Kyriakos Pittakis was placed in charge of all excavation on the Acropolis of Athens.

The situation exacerbated the Archaeological Society's financial troubles so greatly that it effectively ceased to exist until 1858, though Kyriakos Pittakis continued writing and publishing the Archaeological Journal.

Between 1851 and 1858, in the judgement of Petrakos, Kyriakos Pittakis was effectively the sole figure in both the Archaeological Society and Greek archaeology.

When Kyriakos Pittakis wrote to the Ministry of Education in October 1855, informing them of Gennadios' death and requesting approval to call a meeting to reconstitute the society, he received no response.

In 1843, Kyriakos Pittakis was appointed to the post of Ephor General of Antiquities, which had been unfilled since Ross's resignation in 1836.

Kyriakos Pittakis continued to curate Athens's archaeological collections, writing an 1843 guidebook in which he claimed that around 400 of the 615 objects exhibited in the Temple of Hephaestus had been collected "as a result of [his] endeavour and passion".

One of Kyriakos Pittakis's priorities was to protect the antiquities on the Acropolis, which he had previously described as an "archaeological garden", from looting and damage.

Kyriakos Pittakis hired watchmen to ensure that none of the site's scattered, fragmentary remains were picked up by visitors.

Kyriakos Pittakis established additional collections of antiquities in the major monuments of the site, as well as in cisterns and cellars, most of which were in locked storerooms to which only he had keys, and to which nobody was permitted access except in his presence.

From 1850, Kyriakos Pittakis undertook large-scale restoration work in and around the Propylaia.

Kyriakos Pittakis enlisted Charles Ernest Beule, an archaeologist of the French School at Athens, to assist with the removal of medieval and modern structures from the remaining parts of the Propylaia in 1852.

Kyriakos Pittakis secured Pittakis's blessing as well as support from Alexandre de Forth-Rouen, the French ambassador to Greece, to investigate his hypothesis.

Kyriakos Pittakis, who had been watching the operation, was almost struck by a fragment of the debris which pierced his hat: reports circulated in the aftermath that he had been killed.

Kyriakos Pittakis advocated for the demolition of the Frankish Tower, a medieval fortification built into the Propylaia, which would eventually be demolished in 1874.

Parts of this final letter are illegible owing to Kyriakos Pittakis's increasing weakness and deteriorating handwriting.

Kyriakos Pittakis was succeeded as Ephor General by Efstratiadis, with whom he had worked on the excavation of the Psoma House and on the committee reporting on the Erechtheion.

Kyriakos Pittakis described his activities in excavating and conserving ancient Greek monuments as "sacred work".

Kyriakos Pittakis characterised the modern Greek population as the descendants of these migrants, and argued that the Greek language had only persisted as a result of outsiders learning Greek from the local Byzantine rulers, and had consequently become "Slavicised".

Kyriakos Pittakis has been widely accused of forging a spurious manuscript, known as the Anargyroi Chronicle, which appeared to support Fallmerayer's hypothesis and which Kyriakos Pittakis showed to him: when Fallmerayer included it in his publication of his ideas, he was ridiculed by the scholarly community and his theory largely rejected.

In 1852, Kyriakos Pittakis published a series of articles entitled "Materials to Be Used to Prove that the Current Inhabitants of Greece are Descendants of the Ancient Greeks".

Kyriakos Pittakis has been praised as the first Greek scholar to make substantial use of epigraphy in reconstructing the classical past, for his efforts in preserving objects and the texts of inscriptions which would otherwise have been lost, and for his energetic approach to the excavation and conservation of Greece's ancient monuments.

Kyriakos Pittakis's published work remains an important source for the study of Athenian history and epigraphy.

Kyriakos Pittakis's appointment has been identified as a major factor in placing control the field of Greek archaeology into the hands of Greeks, rather than the northern-European scholars who had dominated it before 1836.

In November 2013, a colloquium in Kyriakos Pittakis's memory was held at the Epigraphical Museum in Athens, entitled "Upon a White Stone".

Kyriakos Pittakis's work has been described as "empirical" rather than systematic, and was often characterised by a failure to keep records of what he had removed, particularly of remains later than the classical period.

Kyriakos Pittakis was further criticised in the contemporary press for his practice of building by setting various antiquities into plaster, which often broke up ensembles or presented artefacts of different periods and provenances together, and by British contemporaries for his practice of storing antiquities away from public view, denying most scholars access to them.

Kyriakos Pittakis has been criticised for undertaking restoration work with little prior study or documentation of the buildings, and for reconstructing both the Parthenon and the Erechtheion to place better-preserved items of masonry in more prominent positions, regardless of the original construction.

Many of Kyriakos Pittakis's restorations were reverted during subsequent phases of conservation on the site.

Rangavis accused him of hiding inscriptions so that he could not study them; Kyriakos Pittakis, meanwhile, accused Rangavis of failing to acknowledge his role in the discovery of inscriptions that the latter had published.