Inventory number
Ακρ. 863
Artist
Pheidias' workshop
Category
Architectural sculpture
Period
Classical Period
Date
442-438 BC
Dimensions
Height: 1.02 m
Length: 1.24 m
Width: 0.55 m
Material
Marble from Penteli
Location
Parthenon Gallery
Block XXXIV was found in 1843 or 1844 during the excavation campaigns conducted at the time on the Acropolis. It depicts three riders galloping to the viewer’s left and a parade marshal. The latter stands in the middle of the scene and is dressed in a himation that leaves one shoulder uncovered. With his raised right hand he gives a command to the horsemen. The preceding rider wears a chlamys that is fastened around his neck and wrapped around his left forearm. The forelegs and head of his horse are depicted on the preceding Block XXXII (ΜΑ ΑΝΤ. 027) kept in the British Museum in London. The next horseman is shrouded in his chlamys while behind his a horse’s head can be discerned that continues along with a rider on the following, partially preserved Block XXXV (Ακρ. 861). On this same block the biggest part of the next rider’s horse is also depicted. The animals’ reins and bridles were once made of bronze and inserted in the block as indicated by the small holes still visible today.
The frieze on the north side of the Parthenon depicts part of the procession formed by the people of Athens during the Panathenaic festival in honour of the protectress of the city, Athena. The procession's destination was the Temple of Athena Polias on the Acropolis. Its purpose was the transportation of the Panathenaic peplos destined to adorn the age-old xoanon of the goddess and the offer of a grand sacrifice of animals at the Great Altar outside of the temple.
On the north frieze the procession moves along the Panathenaic Way. On its head are youths that lead young cows and rams for the sacrifice followed by more young men who carry water and offerings. Behind them come musicians with flutes and guitars, elders, perhaps officials, holding olive branches, eleven chariots that participate in an equestrian event and finally sixty horsemen divided in ten groups.
The north frieze is fragmentarily preserved due to the explosion of the Parthenon by the Venetians under the command of general Francesco Morosini, in 1687, which damaged mostly the middle part of the long sides of the temple. The drawings attributed to the painter Jacques Carrey, who visited the Acropolis in 1674, just thirteen years before its bombardment by Morosini, are an invaluable resource for our understanding of a few parts of this side of the frieze (Blocks Ι-ΧΙΧ). Three blocks (X, XVIII and XXVI) were removed during the conversion of the Parthenon into a Christian church so that windows would be opened in the blocks' positions. Some of these blocks' fragments were later found on the Acropolis.
The initial length of the north frieze was 58.70 m and consisted of 47 blocks. Today the surviving blocks are divided between the Acropolis Museum and the British Museum in London, where they ended up after they were removed by Thomas Bruce, the lord of Elgin, in 1801-1804 when Greece was still under Ottoman occupation. In order to facilitate their transportation, Elgin's workmen, cut off with saws or crowbars only the faces of the blocks that bore the relief decoration. The Acropolis Museum exhibition includes the plaster casts of the faces of these blocks. On these casts some of the original fragments that fell off the monument, and thus escaped the
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