Parthenon Project | Autumn 2022

Parthenon Project

This project examines the Parthenon Frieze, the locations of remaining fragments, the debate over the Parthenon Sculptures (a section of the frieze held in the British Museum), and an overview of the Parthenon and its relevance to both ancient history and modernity.

The project incorporates various tools that we learned about in our class, Digital Humanities in the Ancient World, taught by Georgios Tsolakis. It uses Peripleo, a software developed by the British Museum to showcase an overview of artifacts with links to descriptions in order to conduct an analysis of the distance between various fragments of the frieze. Using Peripleo shows the magnitude of how scattered the fragments of the frieze are and allows users to interact with the institutions that hold those fragments. The link to Peripleo can be found in the “Other Marbles” section of the toolbar. In order to expand on the location of the various museums I talk about, I also embedded a link to Google Maps. Although we did not expand upon the use of Google Maps specifically in our class, we engaged with other sources of mapping software, such as QGIS, that demonstrated how important the use of mapping software was to digital humanities. Although it was a possibility, I decided not to use QGIS in the project because it was more difficult to incorporate hyperlinks within the software and link it to an external website. Peripleo was much more user-friendly in that regard. The incorporation of Google Maps can be found in the “Parthenon Overview” section of the toolbar, the “Fragments in the Acropolis Museum” section of the toolbar, and in the “Parthenon Sculptures in the British Museum” section of the toolbar. I used Peripleo over Google Maps when I wanted to show multiple locations and how they related to each other, and I used Google Maps when I wanted to highlight where one location was.

Additionally, since we discussed 3D imaging and various pieces of software used to conduct 3D imaging in Digital Humanities in our class, I have also included links to various 3D models that could be found on Sketchfab (a site we engaged with thoroughly in our class). The links to 3D images can be found in the “Parthenon Overview” section of the toolbar and the “Parthenon Sculptures in the British Museum” section located in the toolbar. Some of the 3D images, such as the one found in the “Parthenon Overview” section, are from independent artists using aerial footage. Others, on the other hand, such as the one found in the “Parthenon Sculptures in the British Museum,” were created by established museums with teams dedicated to 3D imaging who had direct access to these artifacts. The versatility of 3D imaging and how so many different kinds of people could partake in this technology were something I wanted to highlight in this project.

I also utilized the skills that I gained through learning HTML this quarter by editing the existing HTML framework of a general syllabus site formatted by my professor to incorporate my needs for this class. This included things like changing the layout of the website and figuring out how to imbed images of various sizes with varying levels of frequency. Getting to use HTML through GitHub Pages was also a great skill to learn as we had to use GitHub for many of our assignments and projects this quarter - it proved very useful to learn how to deploy a website through Github and expand upon previous code to create a unique product. I incorporated many of the same syllabus page elements into my website because of how adaptable the template is. Using the GitHub template helped me realize the collaborative nature of coding and how we can build upon other people’s works to add our own flair. My skills in HTML also improved drastically through observing how the website operates and learning how to tweak its layout, information, and functions.

Ultimately, I wanted to conduct this analysis of the Parthenon Sculptures and the Parthenon as a structure in light of the recent news that the British Museum is in talks to come to a solution with Greece after the ascension of Rishi Sunak as prime minister. The Parthenon Sculptures have always been a source of interest for me as the debate around them has been going on for so long - since their arrival in Britain, there have been talks to return the marbles to Greece. Analyzing their history through the tools I detailed above and being able to incorporate them all into a single website helped me consolidate a large amount of information; I got a better sense of the artifacts and their history by viewing them in this form. It also helps me portray how important the artifacts are, both to the people that live in Greece and whose cultural heritage is imbued within there artifacts and to people like me who are entranced by these objects and love studying the time period that they come from. It was also important to me to include an analysis of the Parthenon within this website to show that the sculptures and fragments from the frieze are part of a larger cultural heritage site that was of immense importance to ancient Athenians. The Parthenon continues to be of great significance to people in Greece and around the world today. It is easy to take these sculptures as singular entities that show a glimpse into a past long forgotten but both Greece’s efforts to reunite the marbles and England’s hope to hold on to them show how important these marbles continue to be. They are not singular entities but are fragments of a connected artifact that was incredibly important to the culture it resided in. I hope the reader of this website can come to a conclusion of whether there’s more value in viewing these marbles in a fragmented state from a global context or in viewing them as a singular entity in the place that they originated from.

To conclude, I would like to thank Professor Georgios Tsolakis for guiding me through these projects and offering a great introduction to digital humanities through his course. I learned a great amount about tools that I was not aware even existed before and hope to continue my studies in this field, learning about how to better use the tools of modern world to understand ancient history.