Monday, January 23, 2023

The Animals of The Paean God

 


I`ve visited Epidaurus many times in the past. But last week another road lead me there for one more (and definitely not the last!) time. Apart from the breath-taking ancient theatre that Epidaurus is known worldwide, there you can also find the sanctuary of Asclepius. A son of Apollo which is known in the ancient world as the God of medicine. And as a God, amongst the many epithets he bears, one is "Paean" (The Healer) and he shares it with Apollo. Thats the reason I choose it as a title of this thread so to somehow honour both the father and son.

In Epidaurus most of the ancient findings are diplayed outdoors but there is also a small museum inside this area. What I noticed this time is that amongst the saved pieces of the sanctuary there is many marble animal decorations. Mostly lionheads but also dogheads and boarheads. So I thought to take photo of them one by one as as far I remember its rare to see so many of them in one plac alone. Here I present them to you below in a series of photos. Some of them might look that its the same, but its not. All photos are from different pieces. Some of them are not really clear and thats because it was a cloudy day outside (so not a lot of sunlight) and also the light in the museum halls was a bit low at some areas. But still you can get a good picture of how they looked like. Majestic!












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