Today in Piraeus, we forego the Acropolis crowds and head to the cool rooms of the Athens Archeological Museum for an up-close look at the Antikythera Mechanism, an astonishing marvel of ancient technology.
With thanks to Takis of Athens Taxidrives, we are met promptly by Lampros, and 20 minutes later, are deposited outside, where banners announce the Museum's 150th Anniversary with a celebratory exhibit aptly titled the "Odyssey."
We enter, and are immediately greeted by the mask of Agammemnon, uncovered by amateur archaeologist Schliemann who traced Homer's descriptions of Troy directly to the site. It was, of course, not really Agamemnon's mask - no one knows whose it is, but it is magnificent, nonetheless.
We head on to the Bronze rooms where we stop to marvel at these, the best and precious few surviving works. Highlights include a boy racing on horseback and a young man winding back for an Olympian throw, his concentration fixed on an unseen target before him in ivory and ebony for all time. After some time absorbing the talent of the ancients, we proceed to the rooms dedicated to this masterpiece of ancient technology.
Mankind has achieved incredible leaps of knowledge when driven by the urge to survive. Over the centuries we have tamed land and sea, bending them to our will to preserve successive generations. Greeks and then Romans harnessed water and gravity to furnish this essential substance, quenching thirst, but also providing sanitation even heated luxurious baths!
No more singular evidence of our primordial genius exists than in this seemingly innocuous device.
"The mottled mass of bronze hiding beneath 2 millennia of salt-born corrosion conceals one of the most incredible wonders of the Hellenistic Period!"
More than a hundred years ago, this device was found by sponge divers at the bottom of the sea near the island of Antikythera. An enigma for the next hundred years, it was only in 2000 that an international community of experts including an archeologist, astronomer and mathematician undertook a decades-long scientific investigation into the mysteries contained within the object ultimately determined to be the world's oldest computer!
Composed of some 30 precision bronze gears, we now know the machine dates from around the end of the 2nd century B.C., making it the most sophisticated find from its time, and literally rewriting the history of the ancient world. In fact, nothing as complex was built again over a thousand years!
The Antikythera Mechanism was designed to predict astronomical phenomena, and operates as a complex mechanical "computer" which tracks the cycles of the solar system.
With the help of Hewlett Packard (US) and X-Tek (UK), the bronze gears, complete with a Greek have been mathematically decoded, and are capable of precise lunar, solar and even eclipse predictions, not calculable again until the age of Copernicus! Wow! And I thought my original IBM PC-XT was old!
It is even thought that this ancient computer may have been devised by none other than Archimedes himself, small wonder, given the astronimical genius that went into designing it!
It is humbling and awesome at once to think that the vessel on which this device was being transported (or maybe even used) would succumb to a Mediterranean storm one day, thousands of years ago, and take down to Poseidon's lair a spark of knowledge not to be rediscovered until well into the 15th Century!
Check out the video below to get a brief glimpse into the history of this remarkable object!
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. - Archimedes