THE BURIED STATUES
uring a period
of six months
prior to the German invasion of Greece a group of workers and archaeologists was digging the floors of the National Archaeological Museum to bury Athens’ most valuable treasures its kouroi and Lekythoi.
On Sunday 27th April the German Troops occupied Athens. Early the next morning when the German Officers hurried up the marble steps of the National Archaeological Museum they were surprised to discover that they were over an empty building.
6 months before occupation
They could not find a trace of the thousands of valuable exhibits that were housed in the country’s largest museum for the past sixty years of its existence. Instead of statues they saw before them the few frozen and expressionless archaeologists and guards who were on duty at the time. To the officers’ persistent questions, the later answer enigmatically that antiquities are always where everybody knows they are: under the GROUND. And it was true. The antiquities had in fact returned underground- to the only ark in the world where they would be safe.
D