MEET MYRTIS, AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD FROM ANCIENT ATHENS
MEET MYRTIS, AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD FROM ANCIENT ATHENS
Description
During the construction of the Athens Metro, the skull of child is discovered, who died during the plague in the 5th century BC. Using the skull as a base, Professor Manolis Paparigorakis, who was researching the appearance of ancient Greeks, began to reconstruct the face of the little Athenian, who gained immortality.
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THIS IS ATHENS
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Blashs Pogkas
Interviewee
- Manwlhs Papagrhgorakhs
Podcast Producer
- Magia Filippopoulou
- Fenia Xala
Sound Designer
- Giwrgos Ramantanhs
Sound Editor
- Dhmhtrhs Papadakhs
Photographer
- Manwlhs Papagrhgorakhs
Voiceover
- Steve Lever
In ‘94, the tunnel boring machine for the Metro ran into the graveyard at Keramikos in Athens. This trove of archaeological treasure was found, and in it, at the edge of the graveyard, there were the graves of the dead from the times of Thucydides and Pericles, when Athens was struck by the great plague.
The pit was very large in breadth and depth. It was several metres. It was an irregular burial, a mass grave, and one skeleton was even found vertical in the pit, with its head down and feet up, because the burials there were very rushed.
There was a child’s skull. Myrtis’ skull had all this structure, with nothing missing, and it was the first time I saw a child’s teeth in a skull. I put it to one side because I liked it, as an anatomical find.
I am an orthodontist at Athens University, an assistant professor. I wanted to study the profile of a modern Greek and an ancient Greek and compare them. However, along the way, we analysed the remains of pulp in three teeth from skulls of that period, to find what had caused the plague in Athens. This project attracted international interest. After seven failed attempts, the eighth reagent showed that it was Salmonella enterica typhi, which causes typhoid fever.
A presentation was made in 2006 at the Thessaloniki International Fair. By chance, a journalist wanted an interview. When we reached Myrtis’ skull, which was in the exhibition, I said to her, ‘Do you remember years ago, when Philip and the Macedonian gold were here, with the reconstruction of Philip’s face?’ ‘Yes’. ‘We are planning to reconstruct Myrtis’. That’s all I said. She closed her notebook and left. It was 12 o’clock, I remember, and at half-past twelve my phone started ringing. ‘When and why are we doing the reconstruction?’ Why? Because this lady worked for the Athens News Agency, and the whole thing had blown up. And so, I began the reconstruction of Myrtis.
Around thirty different specialities were involved in making Myrtis. There was the excavation by the archaeologist, the preservation of the skull by the university, the anthropological and medical studies; it went for a CT scan, where they scanned Myrtis’ skull. After that, the plastic skull went to Sweden, and there, Oscar Nilsson, the Swede, built the skull from the inside out, placing on the facial muscles from the base outwards. He put in the hairs one by one; he made Myrtis. This was something never seen before, not just in the area of Greece, but globally.
With Myrtis we are very close, around 95%. Because it was a skull... none of the bone structure was missing, just the nasal bone. There is always difficulty with the facial features made of cartilage, such as the nose and ears. Myrtis’ ears are very pretty, but they are not them, right? Because we don’t have anything that would allow us to copy them. And another feature that is always difficult to approach aesthetically and reproduce realistically is the lips. As an orthopaedic dentist I can determine, design, outline, and shape the lips depending on the substructure underneath, the teeth.
The colour of the eyes and hair are different, the one is chestnut red, the other chestnut brown. At that time, chestnut was the predominant factor. However, when I called Oscar and sent him the colour code that I found here in Greece and I asked him, ‘Do you have that company in Sweden?’, he replied, ‘Yes’. The code was the same, but, while in Greece it came out chestnut brown, in Sweden it came out chestnut red.
When Myrtis came from Sweden, I had her at home. I put a piece of cloth over her, so it would be like she was dressed, and I put her in an armchair. I went out for the evening and came back later. And when I turned on the light, I saw Myrtis in the armchair where I had put her. I lost it for a few seconds. Because I don’t have children, and then I saw a child in my home! Those few seconds when I had a child at home are still engraved on my memory. The passage of those few seconds has left its mark, because it was something I had never felt before, seeing a child from ancient times like that. I was captivated.
When Myrtis was presented at the Acropolis Museum, not just nationally but globally, there was great interest. The BBC, CNN, Figaro, The Times, all the newspapers... The opening was to take place at 19.30. At 19.10, Mr. Pantermalis, the director of the Museum, came into the amphitheatre and told me that we were starting. Because the amphitheatre only had two hundred and thirty-five places. He told me that, ‘Right now, there are one thousand two hundred people in the museum!’ And so, the doors closed at 19.15, leaving about three hundred people outside. When I revealed Myrtis, the audience couldn’t contain themselves. That was a special moment.
It hadn’t been an easy journey, but there were those magic moments that I experienced with the audience, with the children, and with the results of the research. My relationship with Myrtis is like she is my daughter. And when she travels abroad, I take her for post graduate studies!