The Parthenon
(this is the sixth page; click here for the first page)
Inside the temple, Pheidias carved a huge statue of Athena made out
of gold and ivory
(chryselephantine). (The statue’s not there anymore; it was
melted down to get the gold eventually. This is an artist's idea of
what it might have looked like).
The Parthenon stood as the great glory of Athens and Athena for eight
hundred years. When the Athenians converted to Christianity
about 400 AD, they made their Parthenon
into a Christian church, and it continued to stand for another thousand
years. But when the Ottomans
took over Greece in the 1400’s AD, they weren’t so interested
in Christian churches, because they were Muslims.
The Parthenon began to fall into disrepair. And then in the 1600’s,
the Ottomans used the Parthenon to store ammunition in during a war
against the Venetians.
The Ottomans thought nobody would attack the Parthenon, so their ammunition
was safe there. But it was accidentally set on fire and exploded,
doing a lot of damage to the carvings and the roof.
In the 1700’s, an Englishman, Lord Elgin, bought some of the carvings from the Ottoman government and brought them back to England. Now they are in the British Museum. Many people feel the carvings should be returned to Athens; other people feel they should stay in England.
To find out more about the Parthenon, check out these books on Amazon.com or in your library:
A Greek Temple, by Fiona MacDonald, Mark Bergin (2002) (this is specifically about the Parthenon, not just any Greek temple)
Parthenon, by Lynn Curlee (2004). For kids. Lovely pictures.
The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present, by Jeffrey M. Hurwit (2000). This is not a children's book, but it is pretty interesting reading. Hurwit is a archaeologist and art historian who works on the Athenian Acropolis.
First page on the Parthenon
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