22/10/2026
We've been enjoying this account of a study visit to Greece made by our student recipient of the HH Scullard Travel Bursary, as well as their magnificent photographs. We are also grateful for the endowment by Howard Hayes Scullard, who was a Professor in Ancient History here at KCL, which enables us to offer this bursary.
"Thanks to the support of the HH Scullard Travel Bursary, I spent late August and early September travelling from Athens across the Aegean to Crete. On the Acropolis I walked through the Propylaea, the monumental gateway to the sanctuary, to see the Parthenon and the Erechtheion, before going down the south slope to the Theatre of Dionysus. In the Acropolis Museum I was able to look closely at the sculpture from the site, and in the Ancient Agora I visited the Temple of Hephaestus, one of the best-preserved Greek temples, and the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos, which now houses the Agora museum.
"From Athens I went to Delos, a small island off the coast of Mykonos that was sacred to Apollo and later became a major trading centre. In the Sanctuary of Apollo I saw the remains of the Poros Temple, the oldest of the island’s temples to the god, together with the Oikos of the Naxians and the surviving fragments of the Colossus of the Naxians, a large statue of Apollo. I also visited the Terrace of the Lions, which overlooks the now-dry Sacred Lake, and the Ancient Theatre in the residential quarter, before seeing the original lions and other finds in the site museum.
"In Chania, the Archaeological Museum covers the history of western Crete from the Trachilos footprints, dated to around 6 million years ago, and the Palaeolithic petroglyphs of Asphendou, to the Minoan and Mycenaean centre of Kydonia. Finds from Kydonia include Linear A tablets, a scarab bearing the name of the pharaoh Amenhotep III and the painted 'Lyre-player' pyxis, while later material includes finds from the Asklepieion of Lissos and the 'Miser’s House' at Kissamos, destroyed in the earthquake of AD 365. The Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Collection continued the story through the Venetian and Ottoman periods, with wall-paintings by Theodoros-Daniel Veneris, coins and icons of the ‘Cretan School’, and the Maritime Museum of Crete covered the island’s naval history from the Byzantine period to the Second World War.
"I finished at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, which traces Minoan civilisation from its early settlements to the end of the palatial period. I saw Kamares Ware from the first palaces, the Phaistos Disc, the Bull-Leaping Fresco, the stone bull’s-head rhyton used for libations, finds from the sanctuary at Anemospilia, and Linear B tablets, the earliest written form of Greek. This trip has given me a much better understanding of the places and material I study, and I am very grateful to the HH Scullard Travel Bursary and the Department of Classics at King’s for making it possible."
