By Scott Shephard
Lions’ Gate - Mycenae, Greece
If you aren’t so much interested in phenomenally impressive things that are also phenomenally old, click here. Otherwise, read on. I promise to be brief.
The woman on the right is our tour guide for our Mycenae/Epidaurus day trip. Her name is Xenia, who taught high school history for 20 years in Athens but decided she wanted to be a tour guide. So she went back to college, got a new degree and then got certified to lead people like us. She was very good.
What she is pointing to is the very famous “Lions’ Gate” at the ancient acropolis (high city) of the town of Mycenae, which flourished around 3500 years ago. After earthquakes, wars, and those looking for material to build roads and new structures, the entry still stands. Yes, the lions’ faces are gone, perhaps because they were made from gold or jade.
But the entry still exists in part because the stones from which it was made were too heavy to move. That leads to an obvious question: how did people with basic tools and technology carve and move them 3 1/2 millennia ago?
Only the lions know . . . .
Canon R5 f/4.5 1/100 sec 100 ISO