On Wednesday 30 April 2025, the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion will hold a lecture on the occasion of the temporary exhibition EKATOMPOLIS: The World of Archaic Crete.

The speaker will be James Wright, Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, USA, and Director of the University of Toronto’s excavations at the Kommos.

The lecture will be given in Greek.

Professor Wright will present Kommos, the port of southern Crete that flourished during the Early Iron Age. There, on Minoan ruins, a sacred site was developed to accompany the trade and maritime passage. Caves, warehouses, altars and bowls with the first alphabetical signs invite us to a tour of the world of travel and memory, the world of the Mediterranean ports.

How did Phoenicians and Cretans interact in this port of southern Crete? And how is the place linked to the birth of the Greek alphabet? Could the sandy beach of Kommos be that ‘hearth of Gortys’ where the Homeric storm brought the ships of Menelaus, lost on their way back from Troy?

Through archaeological finds, Professor Wright will illuminate unknown aspects of the history of this cosmopolitan seaport, where people from distant lands, their gods, letters and merchandise met through the ages.

James Wright

(short bio)

James C. Wright held the William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair and is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. He served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Bryn Mawr from 1995 to 2000. From 2012 to 2017, he served as Director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. He is currently Director of the Nemea Valley Archaeological Program and Director of the University of Toronto’s excavations at Kommos, both in Greece. He also participated in the University of California at Berkeley excavations at the Sanctuary of Zeus at Nemea during the years 1974-1977. His main research interests focus on the evolution of complex societies in the Aegean, with particular interest in architecture, urbanization, burial customs and food practices. He has authored, edited or co-edited six books and conference proceedings, 68 articles and numerous book reviews. He has received grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the National Geographic Society. He is a Corresponding Fellow of the German Archaeological Institute. He is married to Mary K. Dabney. Together they co-directed and published the excavations at Tsugiza Hill in Nemea and the cemetery excavations of the Mycenaean settlement at Tsugiza, as well as at the nearby sites of Barnavos and Agia Sotira. The latter publication was awarded the 2021 Anna Marguerite McCann Award for Fieldwork by the American Institute of Archaeology.

Date: Tuesday 30 April 2025

Time: 18:30

Venue: Archaeological Museum of Heraklion – Lecture Hall

Admission Free

The lecture will be broadcast live via the Museum’s YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/live/qF-mEAFOf8w?feature=share