The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece (review)

A “national heritage” can be a severe burden. Orthodox Christian Greece has resolutely adopted its pagan past to the point (a) of destroying evidence for centuries of Muslim rule, (b) of expecting all that “classical” Greece produced to be returned to its native soil, regardless of the interest of peoples who are no less heirs to the classical tradition and have indeed been its guardians, (c) of nurturing an inherent jealousy of non-Greeks involved with Greek antiquity, a jealousy that has now to be reconciled with the benefits of foreign libraries, schools, and excavations on Greek soil, and (d) of accepting the notion that the modern Greek state is a product of European royal Christian neoclassicism. Thankfully, much of (a) through (d) is in the process of being abandoned by a younger generation, much of it trained outside Greece, but too often academic questions are still resolved politically. Hamilakis gives a fascinating and sympathetic, if at times puzzling, account of Greek attitudes, from fascist to communist; of ancient hero worship that disregards contrary evidence; and of a remarkable European people, whose land saw the birth of Western culture, dismayed by a past largely irrelevant to it. These are aspects of the country that could surprise many readers, including professionals, who think that they are familiar with the Greeks and Greece.