Parthenon Frieze _ East V, 33-35

myminifactory

  One the left, a woman (33) is taking over the stool carried by a girl (32) from the previous fragment. A man (34) wearing a long tunic takes a folded cloth from a child (35). The man is probably the archon basileus, the person in charge of Athenian state religion. The cloth is probably the sacred robe (peplos) of Athena. The sex of the child is disputed but, comparing this figure with others in the frieze, it appears to be a boy. The east frieze is comprised of eight or nine blocks (research has shown that VII and VIII formed a single block) that are considerably longer than the blocks of the other sides. The middle block V is 4.50 m. in length, whereas the corner blocks are narrow because they are in fact the narrow ends of block I of the north frieze and block XLVII of the south frieze. The surviving blocks and fragments are scattered among various museums: in the Acropolis are blocks II and VI, in the British Museum blocks I, III-V, VIII and in the Louvre block VII. In addition a number of fragments are in the British Museum and others are in the Archaeological Museum of Palermo. In contrast to the west frieze, the east frieze has a certain symmetry of composition, since it is the focal point of the processions of the other sides.The frieze of the Parthenon forms a continuous band with scenes in low relief that encircles the upper part of the cella, the main temple, within the outer colonnade. The theme represented was the procession toward the Acropolis that took place during the Great Panathenaia, the commemoration of the birthday of the goddess Athena.Numbering taken from I. Jenkins, The Parthenon Frieze, 1994. Frieze slabs are marked in Roman numerals, People are marked in arabic numerals.