Kyriakos S. Pittakis (also Pittakys; ; 1798 – 1863) was a Greek archaeologist. He was the first Greek to serve as Ephor General of Antiquities, the head of the Greek Archaeological Service, in which capacity he carried out the conservation and restoration of several monuments on the Acropolis of Athens. He has been described as a "dominant figure in Greek archaeology for 27 years", and as "one of the most important epigraphers of the nineteenth century".
Pittakis was largely self-taught as an archaeologist, and one of the few native Greeks active in the field during the late Ottoman period and the early years of the Kingdom of Greece. He played an influential role in the early years of the Greek Archaeological Service and was a founding member of the Archaeological Society of Athens, a private body which undertook the excavation, conservation and publication of archaeological finds. He was responsible for much of the early excavation and restoration of the Acropolis, including efforts to restore the Erechtheion, the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaia. As ephor of the Central Public Museum for Antiquities from 1836, and later as Ephor General, he was largely responsible for the conservation and protection of many of the monuments and artefacts then known from Ancient Greece.
Pittakis has been described as the last representative of the "heroic period" of Greek archaeologists. He was prolific both as an excavator and as an archaeological writer, publishing by his own estimation more than 4,000 inscriptions. He has been praised for his extensive efforts to uncover and protect Greece's classical heritage, particularly in Athens and the adjacent islands, but criticised for his unsystematic and incautious approach. His reconstructions of ancient monuments often prioritised aesthetics over fidelity to the original, and were largely reverted after his death. He has also been accused of allowing his strong nationalist beliefs to influence his reconstruction of ancient monuments, and of distorting the archaeological record to suit his own beliefs.
Early life
Kyriakos S. Pittakis was born in Athens in 1798. His family origins are obscure; he was probably from a humble background. A contemporary described him as having been born "beneath a forgotten cornice of the Acropolis … which protectively sheltered his cradle." He received his early schooling from Ioannis Palamas, son of the educationalist , and studied at the School of the Commons of Athens from 1810 until 1820. Pittakis seems to have been largely self-taught in archaeology, but became apprenticed around the age of sixteen to the French vice-consul Louis-François-Sébastien Fauvel, sometimes called the "father of archaeology in Greece". During this period, Pittakis established his interest in epigraphy, copying inscriptions from the Acropolis and concealing moveable antiquities from Ottoman forces. He was also supported in his early archaeological work by the , a learned society with a particular interest in antiquities and the education of the Greek population: in 1817, he was listed as receiving support from the society for his studies.
Pittakis is said to have met and befriended the English aristocrat, poet and philhellene Lord Byron. Teresa Makri, the sister of Pittakis's wife Aikaterini, is generally considered the inspiration for the "Maid of Athens" of Byron's 1811 poem.
Greek War of Independence
After growing tensions and preparations throughout the early months of 1821, the Greek War of Independence began in March. When rebel villagers from Attica entered Athens on behalf of the revolutionaries in April, the Turkish garrison retreated to the Acropolis. Ottoman forces briefly recaptured the city in July, but largely departed in August, leaving only a small force behind, whereupon the population rebelled again, forcing the Turks back to the Acropolis and beginning the First Siege of the Acropolis, which would continue until .
At the age of eighteen, Pittakis was inducted into the , a nationalist secret society formed to oppose Ottoman rule in Greece. He may have been initiated into the society by , later a noted classicist, and Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, who became Pittakis's friend and rival throughout his life. Pittakis was present in Athens during 1821–1822, and a member of the irregular Greek force that besieged and eventually retook the Acropolis. He may have witnessed, or participated in, the massacre of several hundred Turkish prisoners from the siege in June 1822: his mentor Fauvel, the French vice-consul, sheltered some of the survivors in his own home until the arrival of two French warships allowed their evacuation.
Pittakis was given charge of Athens's water supply, and later claimed credit for the 1821 rediscovery of the , an ancient spring on the Acropolis, which ensured a fresh water supply to the Greek forces who occupied the site between 1822 and 1827. This was the first rediscovery of a lost monument from Athens's classical period. However, the discovery was also claimed by the Greek military leader Odysseas Androutsos and by the Swiss scholar Felix Stähelin, and is likely to have originally been accidental. During his service in 1822, he acquired the manuscript of the Chronicle of Anthimos, a history of Athens written by the late eighteenth-century educator Ioannis Venizelos, which Pittakis would eventually publish in 1853. He also spent time during 1821–1822 on the islands of Aegina and Salamis, both off the shore of Attica, where he recorded several inscriptions that had been moved there from Athens on account of the fighting.
For his service in the War of Independence, Pittakis was later awarded a "certificate of patriotism" by the Athenian city government. His brother was killed and buried on the Acropolis during the war, either during the first siege or the second, which took place in 1826–1827. During and after the war, Pittakis corresponded with the British architect Thomas Leverton Donaldson, sharing with him news of archaeological discoveries to which scholars outside Greece no longer had access.
Reputed 'columns for cannonballs' exchange
According to a much-cited anecdote, during the first siege of the Acropolis, the Ottoman occupiers began to run low on lead ammunition, and began to destroy the marble columns of the Parthenon in order to remove the lead clamps which held them together. Pittakis, in an effort to preserve the ancient temple, is said to have offered to send ammunition to the Turkish defenders, as long as they left the columns intact. The laconic phrase "here are bullets, do not touch the columns!" is often associated with the alleged incident.
The story is most likely apocryphal. Contemporary reports from the siege indicate that the Greeks themselves fired artillery into the Acropolis ruins, and the offer of ammunition to preserve the ruins is first attested in an 1859 letter by the writer Aristotelis Valaoritis, in which the protagonist is named as Odysseas Androutsos, who only arrived in Athens two months after the Acropolis was retaken. It was first connected with Pittakis by Rangavis in his eulogy for Pittakis after the latter's death in 1863. The modern historian James Beresford has suggested that the origin, or at least the popularity, of the anecdote may lie in the growth of the – an irredentist, nationalist ideology calling for the "return" of classical Greek lands to the modern Greek state – in the mid-19th century, and the desire to strengthen the perceived links between modern Greeks and the heritage of Ancient Greece.
The story has, however, been described as a "powerful myth" with a prominent place in the Greek national discourse, particularly around the debate over the restitution of the Parthenon marbles taken from the temple by Lord Elgin in the early nineteenth century, while Athens was still under Ottoman rule. It has been referenced by the Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri and the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos as historical fact, in an effort to argue for the sculptures' return.
Archaeological career
Shortly after the expulsion of the main body of the Ottoman forces from Athens in 1822, Pittakis began to gather archaeological artefacts from around the city into the Church of the Megali Panagia, which was built on the former site of Hadrian's Library, creating one of Greece's first archaeological museums. Between 1824 and 1828, he attended the Ionian Academy on Corfu, where he was taught by the scholar and classicist Konstantinos Asopios. He studied modern languages, Latin and medicine – medicine being a common field of study for Greek intellectuals of the time, who often sought education in Germany, where legal, philological and architectural training were difficult for them to come by. According to the archaeological historian Vasileios Petrakos, it was on Corfu that Pittakis met his wife, Aikaterini, a fellow native of Athens. During his studies, he continued his archaeological work, returning in 1825–1826 to Salamis to transcribe and catalogue further inscriptions.
In 1828, he unsuccessfully petitioned Ioannis Kapodistrias, who had become independent Greece's first head of state in 1827, for an archaeological post; Kapodistrias instead offered him the post of first secretary to the law-court of Elis, which Pittakis refused. Pittakis later recalled that Kapodistrias had advised him to learn English, so that he could guide English-speaking tourists around Athens's archaeological remains and gather information as to their views on Greece and its government, and to abandon what he said Kapodistrias had called his "delusional ideas" about the ancient Greeks: according to Pittakis, Kapodistrias had told him that the ancients were "restless heads, from whom we … can learn practically nothing." Pittakis returned to Athens, where he resumed his early work of collecting inscriptions, sending several to the German scholar August Böckh for inclusion in the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum. On , he announced the publication of his first book, which he claimed to contain 1,600 newly-published inscriptions. He excavated on Salamis and Aegina in early 1829, and sent several objects to Andreas Moustoxydis, the director of Greece's national archaeological museum (then based on Aegina), for display.
Greek Archaeological Service Since at least 1822, the Greek revolutionaries of the War of Independence had proclaimed that any independent Greek state would be ruled by a hereditary monarch from a European royal family, both to demonstrate compliance with the conservative values of the European Great Powers and to appeal to the political interests of those states in choosing the monarch. On , representatives of Britain, France and Russia selected the Bavarian prince Otto von Wittelsbach as Greece's king.
In August 1832, the German archaeologist Ludwig Ross travelled to Athens, as a guest of Jacob Black, Pittakis' brother-in-law; Ross's first visit in the city was to Pittakis's home, where the two discussed Pittakis's meeting with Kapodistrias and the latter's attitudes to Greece's past. On , Pittakis was appointed to the unpaid role of "custodian of the antiquities in Athens", in which capacity he gave tours of the Acropolis to foreign visitors: one of whom was the American author and poet Nathaniel Parker Willis, who recalled being shown Byron's graffito of his own name on one of the columns of the Erechtheion. Accepting the role on , Pittakis proposed to the Minister for Education, , that his role include responsibility for collecting the Acropolis's scattered antiquities, and establishing a museum in which they could be stored.