“When your house is burning or when your ship is sinking and you only have one object to take with you, what you choose certainly means a lot to you. I don’t think the statuette of Aphrodite that Nikolaos Laskaris chose was a random choice,” Dr Kostas Paschalidis, curator in the Department of Prehistoric, Egyptian, Cypriot and Near Eastern Collections at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens (NAM), tells Kathimerini, as he explains the story behind a new object presented in the context of NAM’s “Unseen Museum” exhibition project.
It is a fragment (from lower torso to the knees) of a marble statuette of Aphrodite from the late Hellenistic period, originating in modern-day Bursa, northwestern Turkey. The ancient sculpture was delivered to the NAM by the young curator of antiquities, Nikolaos Laskaris, on the eve of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Ιt remained unidentified in the museum’s storerooms for over a century and is now emerging into the public eye for the first time.
Laskaris, a 21-year-old archaeologist who came from a prominent family of Maroussi, took the statuette of Aphrodite with him from the Department of Antiquities of Smyrna – which had been set up by the Hellenic Army when it landed in the port city in 1919 – boarded the return ship and handed the artifact over to the NAM when he arrived in Greece. For the previous three years he had been living and working on excavations in Asia Minor, thanks to the archaeologist and head of the newly established Antiquities Department in the city, Konstantinos Kourouniotis.
The co-curator of the exhibition, Dr Chrysanthi Tsouli, was the one who searched the museum’s warehouses for the statuette, which is being presented to the public for the first time. “While we were studying the history of Laskaris, in the context of research on Asia Minor finds, Ms Tsouli discovered in the archives as early as 2022 that he had delivered Aphrodite to the museum, but its location in the warehouse was unknown. From the descriptions in the logbook, she remembered that she had seen it somewhere before and after extensive research, she located and recognized it.”
When the Hellenic Army arrived in Smyrna it quickly set up state structures, including the Department of Antiquities, in which Laskaris worked. Together with Kourouniotis, they encouraged foreign archaeologists to begin excavations in the archaeological territory under Greek administration, and it was not long before American, British and French representatives appeared.
The two of them begun their own study in Nysa on the Maeander, an ancient city in the modern-day Turkish province of Aydin, where in the summer of 1921 they discovered the Council House of Elders (“Gerontikon” in Greek), where the ancient senate of the city met.
It was the period when the Greek state on the one hand invested in the maintenance and restoration of archaeological sites in Smyrna and other state infrastructure, and on the other, expanded its military operations further into Turkey.
Then, in June 1921, another young and talented archaeologist, Stratis Paraskevaides, joined the two dedicated men and, with the security they felt by the presence of the Greek army, began to record antiquities found in the depths of Asia Minor. “In the display case where Aphrodite is presented, there are also photographs from this journey. These are prints from 1922,” says Paschalidis, adding that “although things were very serious for the Greek expeditionary force, the excavations did not stop until the summer of 1922, with important discoveries coming to light. For example, Georgios Sotiriou, another important Greek archaeologist, excavated the Basilica of St John at Ephesus, constructed by Justinian I in the 6th century, as well as the tomb of the saint himself there.”
The return and the end
The Hellenic Army held out until August 14, 1922, with Smyrna learning the unpleasant news a day later and High Commissioner Aristeidis Stergiadis sending a message of retreat.
“Laskaris, Kourouniotis, Paraskevaides and Sotiriou each took with them an ancient object. This is not recorded anywhere, but in the autumn of 1922 four objects from these four men were delivered to Athens,” Paschalidis says and explains that the choice of each object seems to symbolize something.
“Kourouniotis chose the marble statuette of a boy with a dog [also known as the little refugee], which was presented in a previous ‘Unseen Museum’ exhibition and is in the museum’s permanent collection. It is interesting if we consider that he and his wife had never had children. Paraskevaides chose a bronze Hercules and it is striking if we notice that both he and the statuette are two figures that are similar in the way they pose. They have the ‘tough-guy’ look. Sotiriou, a deeply religious man and a Byzantine archaeologist, took the extremely rare 4th century stone slab with the medals of the saints, which is in the Byzantine Museum.”
Why did Laskaris choose Aphrodite? As Paschalidis explains, “the then 23-year-old archaeologist was very active in Athens. He wrote his first scientific article titled ‘Forms of Priests,’ the manuscript of which is in the display case along with Aphrodite, and I have the impression that it is a subconscious reference to his father, who was a priest. He went on excursions with his friends, which consisted of the great archaeologists Christos Karouzos, Spyros Marinatos and Ioannis Miliades, and worked at the National Archaeological Museum under the direction of Kourouniotis. In the photographs presented in the tour, I noticed that Laskaris was increasingly frail, increasingly neurotic, but without ever losing his elegance.”
On November 3, 1924, an unpleasant and unexpected event took place. Laskaris committed suicide, at the age of 23, in his family home in Maroussi, shooting himself with a revolver. He chose to leave only a farewell letter to his father, which was found in publications of the time and will be read during the tour of the “Unseen Museum” exhibition.
“This was the reason we gave the exhibition the title ‘The Only Aphrodite of His Life,’” Paschalidis explains. “The whole group of archaologists had brilliant careers and he would have had one too if he had lived. In a letter from Paraskevaides to a fellow student and friend of the group, who informed him of what happened, he mentioned that Laskaris had a mental construct that tormented him and even love failed to keep him alive. Through these words it seems that there was a small love story, but we don’t know more. So, the naked body of the statue of Aphrodite is completely symbolic for me. I think that if there is an antidote to the hardship of life, it is love – to hold a body,” he says with emotion.
Paschalidis had the opportunity to meet Laskaris’ niece on the occasion of a lecture he gave about his life and death in the amphitheater of the National Archaeological Museum in 2023. “His younger sister’s daughter saw a post on the internet about this particular presentation and when she came to talk to me, she confessed how good it was for them to learn about him. ‘He was like a big shadow in the family,’ she told me.”
Paschalidis did not know what the young archaeologist had looked like until his niece showed him a photo. Thanks to her, the team involved in the study of Laskaris managed to identify him in the photos in the museum’s archive, and in this way, an invisible man, whose existence, as well as his work and his history few knew about, was in a way finally recognized many years after his death.
There will be guided tours of the exhibition on December 22, January 8, 12, 22, 26 and February 23 at the National Archaeological Museum. “The Only Aphrodite of His Life” is on display in the Altar Hall (Hall 34) through February 24, 2025.