SEA has appealed to the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, against the eviction order, which, according to the Culture Ministry, was prompted by the fact that it hosted an event in the garden of the historic Ermou Street building over the summer that was unrelated to its activities, hence violating the terms of the building’s concession. The event on the deadly migrant shipwreck off the coast of southwestern Greece on June 14 and was organized by an activist group. In a statement concerning the expiry of the deadline on Tuesday, SEA said it expects the ministry to await the court’s decision before making any moves to have the premises vacated. The ministry, meanwhile, claims that it was never informed of the appeal against the eviction order.                 In the meantime, if SEA is forcibly evicted, it will need to find not only a new headquarters to host its operations and guest quarters, but also a home for its valuable archive and library.    SEA says that it has supplied the ministry with a detailed report on its housing needs and is supposed to hold a meeting with the ministry’s political leadership on October 30.

Storm Daniel may have caused a meter of rain to fall on the hills of eastern Libya, an unprecedented amount since records began in the mid 19th century scientists say, and water was still flowing through the site when Reuters visited last week. The flooding caused mud and rubble to pile in Cyrene's Greek-era baths that will require specialised clearing said local antiquities department official Adel Boufjra. He warned that although the damage so far has been slight, the flooding may have added to subsidence that could later topple one of the monuments. "I'm pretty sure, and expecting, that one of these landmarks could collapse due to the excessive underground water during the winter," he said. While that risks great damage to the picturesque ruins at Cyrene, known locally as Shehat and a draw for travellers since the 18th century, the water has also washed clear a previously unknown Roman drainage system, Boufjra said. "The flooding has revealed a new site - a water canal that I believe dates back to the Roman era. It is a distinctive discovery for the city," he said. Scientists at the World Weather Attribution, an international research group, said climate change had caused up to 50% more rain during the storm than would previously have been the case - underscoring future risks to heritage. Cyrene was a Greek colony and one of the principle cities of the ancient Hellenic world before becoming a major centre under the Romans until an earthquake destroyed it in the year 365. One of Libya's five UNESCO World Heritage sites, along with the extensive Roman ruins overlooking the Mediterranean at Sabratha and Leptis Magna, Cyrene's stone pillared temples stand on a fertile hillside near rocky crags.  

The museum said last month it had sacked a staff member over stolen, missing or damaged items in a crisis that highlighted internal failings and led to its director quitting days later. Home to treasures such as the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon marbles, the British Museum houses one of the world's most visited collections and has since tightened its security. Sixty items had now been returned, with a further 300 identified and due to be handed back imminently, the museum said in a statement. "If you are concerned that you may be, or have been, in possession of items from the British Museum, or if you have any other information that may help us, please contact us," said a page on its website advertising a dedicated email address. The page said it was only disclosing the types of artefacts stolen and heeding expert advice not to share full details. It said the stolen items included gold rings, ear-rings and other pieces of jewellery dating back to ancient Greek and Roman periods as well as small objects such as gems that were often set in rings. The museum, which is facing demands from several governments for the repatriation of historical treasures to their home countries, said it was working with London's police, "actively monitoring" the art market, and had registered the missing items on the Art Loss Register database. The museum is also consulting an international panel of experts.  

In an interview, Mendoni said a limit of 20,000 visitors to the Acropolis per day was based on a report by the Management and Development of Cultural Resources Organization, which suggested the limit to prevent congestion and protect the ancient and iconic site. The minister said the report took into account the amount of time visitors spent at the site and aimed at providing a constant flow of visitors and preventing bottlenecks at the entrance especially during the morning hours, when the highest traffic to the Parthenon occurs. "The purpose is to avoid the congestion that used to occur up to yesterday, as 50% of visitors want to go up to the Acropolis between 08:00 and 11:00," the culture minister said. The new online-based system keeps track of the number of visitors, providing a cut off once a zone has already filled its alloted number of visitors. "The current open hours from 08:00 to 20:00 have been divided into 12 visiting zones," Mendoni said, referring to the extended schedule during summer. "Every zone has a specific number of allowed visitors. For example, the 08:00-09:00 zone allows 3,000 people; it will not allow 3,000 + 1. This means that visitors have a greater opportunity for the right touring and enjoyment of this major monument," she added. The new system will provide a constant flow and prevent congestion both at the site and at the entrance, where a bottleneck often occurred.  Mendoni said that from July to early September, Cultural Resources Organization and archaeology officials of the Athens Ephorate had met with tourism officials and guides to brief them and give them time to adjust to the new procedure.

The Association underlines that “the case of the stolen antiquities from the British Museum raises once again ethical questions about the Museum itself, the way in which its collections are assembled, and the way in which they have been managed over time by the administration. In fact, the latter is burdened not only by the fact itself, which makes a metropolitan museum a site linked to the network of illegal trafficking in antiquities but also by the delay in disclosing the case, with the resignations of its executives raising questions about the attempted cover-up.”                 “Given the timeless phenomenon of the sale of antiquities from the British Museum’s Collections, it certainly puts our country’s righteous demand for the return of the Parthenon sculptures and their reunification with their birthplace, the Parthenon, on a completely different basis,” argues the Association of Greek Archeologists. “Both Greek archaeologists and public opinion in our country, we await the initiatives of the Greek Government and the Ministry of Culture in this direction,” the announcement concludes.

The museum said it has also ordered an independent review of security and a ”vigorous program to recover the missing items.″ The stolen artifacts include gold jewelry and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century B.C. to the 19th century A.D. Most were small items kept in a storeroom and none had been on display recently, the museum said. “Our priority is now threefold: first, to recover the stolen items; second, to find out what, if anything, could have been done to stop this; and third, to do whatever it takes, with investment in security and collection records, to make sure this doesn’t happen again,″ said George Osborne, the museum’s chair. “This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the museum we have embarked upon,” Osborne said. The museum said legal action would be taken against the dismissed staff member and that the matter was under investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police Service. The 264-year-old British Museum is a major London tourist attraction, drawing visitors from around the world who come to see a vast collection of artifacts ranging from the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the language of ancient Egypt to scrolls bearing 12th century Chinese poetry and masks created by the indigenous people of Canada. But the museum has also attracted controversy because it has resisted calls from communities around the world to return items of historical significance that were acquired during the era of the British Empire. The most famous of these disputes include marble carvings from the Parthenon in Greece and the Benin bronzes from west Africa. Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, apologized and said the institution was determined to put things right. “This is a highly unusual incident,” said Fischer said. “I know I speak for all colleagues when I say that we take the safeguarding of all the items in our care extremely seriously.”  

These sites were selected based on their degree of vulnerability to fires, their registration in the UNESCO World Heritage List, visitor numbers and other criteria, while actions for preventive fire protection are implemented under a memorandum of cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection.  Before the start of each fire season, the competent ephorates of antiquities conduct inspections and record the available means of fire protection, prepare thorough reports, implement corrective actions, and take preventive fire protection measures at the selected sites.              Last year, the sites at which the special methodology was applied were 10 (Delphi, Ancient Olympia, Mycenae etc), while this year the number increased by 16, in addition to the standard preventive fire protection measures that are implemented annually at all archaeological sites. 

At the moment there is a heat wave in Athens and Greece with temperatures over 40 degrees celsius.

The architectural fragment, dated to the 5th century BC, is originally from the upper architectural section of the Erechtheion (Temple of Athena Polias), the Ministry of Culture said in a statement. It bears an egg-and-leaf sculpted decoration. The fragment was turned over to the prefecture on behald of a French citizen, Jacqueline Junelles, who had possssion of the fragment since the 1970s. She said the fragment was removed from the Acropolis in the 1930s. It will be presented to Greek Ambassador Dimitrios Zevelakis.  

A ministry statement said the finds from work this year included more than 2,000 intact or almost complete clay figurines, mostly of women and children but also some of male actors, as well as of tortoises, lions, pigs and birds. Several ceremonial pottery vessels that were unearthed are linked with the worship of Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of agriculture, and her daughter Persephone, to whom the excavated sanctuary complex was dedicated. The seaside site of Vryokastro on Kythnos was the ancient capital of the island, inhabited without break between the 12th century B.C. and the 7th A.D., when it was abandoned for a stronger position during a period of pirate raids. The artifacts came from the scant ruins of the two small temples, a long building close by that may have served as a temple storeroom and a nearby pit where older offerings were buried to make space for new ones. The sanctuary was in use for about a thousand years, starting from the 7th century B.C.   The excavation by Greece’s University of Thessaly and the Culture Ministry also found luxury pottery imported from other parts of Greece, ornate lamps and fragments of ritual vases used in the worship of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis, an ancient Athens suburb. It is unclear to what extent the site on Kythnos was associated with Eleusis — one of the most important religious centers in ancient Greece, where the goddesses were worshipped during secret rites that were only open to initiates forbidden to speak of what they saw. The sanctuary at Eleusis is known to have owned land on the island. Kythnos, in the Cyclades island group, was first inhabited about 10,000 years ago. Its copper deposits were mined from the 3rd millennium B.C., and in Roman times it was a place of political exile. The excavations are set to continue through 2025.

The find announced Thursday would drag the dawn of Greek archaeology back by as much as a quarter of a million years, although older hominin sites have been discovered elsewhere in Europe. The oldest, in Spain, dates to more than a million years ago. The Greek site was one of five investigated in the Megalopolis area during a 5-year project involving an international team of experts, a Culture Ministry statement said. It was found to contain rough stone tools from the Lower Palaeolithic period — about 3.3 million to 300,000 years ago — and the remains of an extinct species of giant deer, elephants, hippopotamus, rhinoceros and a macaque monkey. The project was directed by Panagiotis Karkanas of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Eleni Panagopoulou from the Greek Culture Ministry and Katerina Harvati, a professor of paleoanthropology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. The artifacts are “simple tools, like sharp stone flakes, belonging to the Lower Paleolithic stone tool industry,” the co-directors said in comments e-mailed to The Associated Press. They said it’s possible the items were produced by Homo antecessor, the hominin species dating from that period in other parts of Europe. Homo antecessor is believed to have been the last common ancestor of modern humans and their extinct Neanderthal cousins, who diverged about 800,000 years ago. “However, we will not be able to be sure until hominin fossil remains are recovered,” the project directorss said. “(The site) is the oldest currently known hominin presence in Greece, and it pushes back the known archaeological record in the country by up to 250,000 years.” The tools, which were likely used for butchering animals and processing wood or other plant matter, were made about 700,000 years ago, though the researchers said they were awaiting further analyses to refine the dating. “We are very excited to be able to report this finding, which demonstrates the great importance of our region for understanding hominin migrations to Europe and for human evolution in general,” the three co-directors said. Archaeologist Nikos Efstratiou, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Greece’s University of Thessaloniki who was not involved in the project, said the discovery was “very important” in itself, not just because it represented the country’s oldest known site. “There is an archaeological context in which tools, and remains of animals, have been found,” Efstratiou said. “It’s an important and very early site ... that allows us to move far back, and in an authoritative manner, the age of the first tools in Greece.” Another of the sites investigated in the Megalopolis area of the southern Peloponnese peninsula — home of the enormously later sites of Mycenae, Olympia and Pylos — contained the oldest Middle Palaeolithic remains found in Greece, dating to roughly 280,000 years ago. “(It’s) one of the oldest sites in Europe that have tools characteristic of the so called Middle Palaeolithic tool industry, suggesting that Greece may have played a significant role in (stone) industry developments in Europe,” the researchers said. The Megalopolis plain has for decades been mined for coal to supply a local power plant. During Palaeolithic times it contained a shallow lake. The area has long been known as a source of fossils, and in ancient times huge prehistoric bones dug up there were linked with the Greek myths of a long-vanished race of giants that fought the gods of Olympus. Some ancient writers cited Megalopolis as the site of a major battle in that supernatural war.

Named 'Cosmote Chronos', the application combines the capabilities of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with the signal strength of 5G networks to present scientifically documented recreations of the Acropolis. These include the Parthenon, the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia and the Chalkotheke (housing metal votive offerings), of which the latter two have not survived. The application also includes the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the monuments of the southern slope of the Acropolis, viewed from the Acropolis Museum. It also presents emblematic pieces exhibited on the Museum's 3rd floor, where the Parthenon sculptures are displayed. The application can be used live in a point-and-view manner when visiting the site, or at home. Speaking about the app, Culture & Sports Minister Lina Mendoni said that accessibility to the Acropolis "now extends to the digital realm, as real or virtual visitors anywhere in the world can share into this historical knowledge." Digital technologies "can be catalytic to the preservation and promotion of our rich cultural heritage at a global level," noted Cosmote CEO Michalis Tsamaz. Cosmote is Greece's main telecommunications provider and co-creator company of the app. The app is available free of charge, in both Greek and English, for Android and iOS in the relevant app stores.