Kroisos Kouros
Encyclopedia
Kouros
A kouros is the modern term given to those representations of male youths which first appear in the Archaic period in Greece. The term kouros, meaning youth, was first proposed for what were previously thought to be depictions of Apollo by V. I...
from Anavyssos
Anavyssos
Anavyssos is a town and a former municipality in East Attica, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Saronikos, of which it is a municipal unit....
in Attica
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
which functioned as a grave marker for a fallen young warrior named Kroísos. The free-standing sculpture strides forward with the "archaic smile
Archaic smile
The Archaic smile was used by Greek Archaic sculptors, especially in the second quarter of the sixth century BCE, possibly to suggest that their subject was alive, and infused with a sense of well-being. To viewers habituated to realism, the smile is flat and quite unnatural looking, although it...
" playing slightly on his face. The sculpture is dated to c. 540-515 BC and stands 1.95 meters high. It is now situated in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens
National Archaeological Museum of Athens
The National Archaeological Museum in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the great museums in the world and contains the richest collection of artifacts from Greek...
(inv. no. 3851).
The inscription on the base of the statue reads: "Stop and show pity beside the marker of Kroisos, dead, whom once in battle's front rank raging Ares
Ares
Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent aspect of war, in contrast to the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and...
destroyed".
The Kroisos Kouros is central to two ongoing archeological debates: first, whether kouroi represented specific young men or were generic representations of idealized archetypes which might not actually resemble a specific person commemorated, and thus are symbolic representations embodying the ideal of the male warrior en promáchois (ἐν προμάχοις), "in the front line" of battle, not naturalistic ones; and second the authenticity of the Getty kouros
Getty kouros
The Getty kouros is an over-life-sized statue in the form of a late archaic Greek kouros. The dolomitic marble sculpture was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, in 1985 for $7 million and first exhibited there in October 1986....
, which bears a falsified provenance
Provenance
Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...
and displays a suspicious similarity to the Kroisos kouros.