2,607 ancient Hellenic coins repatriated, and the British Museum houses exhibition on the body in ancient Hellenic art

Two small bits of news today: Germany has repatriated 2,607 ancient Hellenic coins to Greece and the British Museum will host an exhibition on the body in ancient Hellenic art. While the British Museum and I are not best friends, the exhibition does sound interesting.


2,607 ancient Hellenic coins repatriated from Germany


Three years after the confiscation of 2,607 ancient Hellenic coins by German authorities in September 2011, the valuable antiquities have been returned to Greece, thus reports the Archaeological News Network.

According to an announcement of the Culture Ministry, the coins were found in the luggage of a Greek citizen travelling by car to Munich and seized by the German police. Most of them are made of copper and date back to the Classical, Hellenistic, Roman and post-Roman eras.


British Museum houses exhibition on the body in ancient Hellenic art

The British Museum will be hosting an exhibition entitled “Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art” from March 26 to July 5, 2015. This exhibition will focus on the human body and the way it was portrayed in ancient Greece.

Ancient Greeks were the first to portray the naked human body in a way that did not emit humiliation but glory. They were obsessed with perfection and believed that a man’s body was in perfect balance only when naked.

The male body was celebrated in all its forms, however, for women things were a little different. Aphrodite was the only woman to be sculpted naked. Women were usually portrayed wearing thin layers of clothing which provided an intensely sexual element to many of the female form sculptures.