Of Marble and Eternity

de Stéphanie Keskinidès

The Cycladic Idols are the most famous manifestation of a civilization which flourished in the heart of the Cyclades, 5000 years ago, the “Cycladic Civilization”. This group of circular islands in the heart of the Eastern Mediterranean played a leading role in the region during the Early Bronze Age. Lock of maritime circulation in the third millennium BC, it constitutes the first known civilization in this part of the world, with a developed social organization, complex beliefs and religious practices, an iron industry and marine carpentry in its hands. of ingenious craftsmen, and admirable artistic expression.
But the idols of the Cyclades still maintain an unresolved enigma today as to their destination. These timelessly graceful marble figurines, exhumed on numerous islands in the archipelago, nourish the imagination of artists, historians, researchers and archaeologists alike. They tirelessly search the Cycladic islands in search of clues allowing them to affirm or refute their theses about this ingenious people.
A maritime people, erecting monumental places of worship, working in bronze, building fast boats, sculpting enigmatic idols whose real function is not yet known to us. Muses, goddesses or simple representations of a distant culture, what do these disturbingly modern sculptures tell us? What was their role, their function? What do they tell us about the men and women of the Aegean to the Neolithic, inextricably linked to the land, the sea and the cosmos?