August 24, 2018 10:28am Few archaeological finds ever garnered such excitement as the discovery of a huge cache of korai statues at the Acropolis in the 1880s. The sculptures of smiling maids in light garments were votive offerings to the goddess Athena circa the 6th century BCE. In 480 BCE, Persians sacked the city of Athens, desecrating the Acropolis and many of the statues there. The Athenians then buried the korai, regardless of condition, in a graveyard of sorts... burying not only the statues, but also in a sense the Archaic Period itself.
It is currently unknown whom exactly the korai are meant to depict. Theories include Athena's worshipers, or the goddess herself, or simply no one in particular other than an idealized rendering of the feminine (an inscription on a kore from a fisherman dedicating the offering to Poseidon seems to favor the latter hypothesis, known as the Agalmata Theory). Regardless, what is undeniably significant is the fact that although the subject matter of all korai is identical — smiling maiden, one leg slightly extended under a dress pulled aside with one hand, the other hand holding an offering — each individual kore statue is unique in artistry and design, the independence so prominent, so fierce, that it cannot be attributed to mere differences in technique and talent... it must be a purposeful statement about the value of the solitary, distinct human being, apart from each other and, ironically, from divinity itself. Perhaps, then, we can also consign to that ancient graveyard the final vestiges of the concept of the bicameral mind.
