Gortyn Law Code

Trip Start Sep 07, 2008

148

Trip End Dec 09, 2008

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Flag of Greece Heraklion, Crete, Greece
Sunday, September 28, 2008

We are greeted as we step off the bus by the sound off bleating sheep. There are more sheep in Greece than there are people. Gortyna was the capital of the Roman province of Crete and Libya (can you believe how close to Africa we are?!?), so it was an important place in antiquity, even if it was surrounded by sheep.

Indy showed us the famous Law Code of Gortyn inscribed into stone blocks that were later used to form the back wall of a music hall. Before laws were written down like this, they could be bent or rewritten to benefit the aristocracy.

Gina has been teaching us our Greek letters, and some of the letters chiseled into the blocks looked backwards. Indy explained that when the carver wrote the first line left-to-right and got to the end of a row on the stone, instead of doing a carriage return back to the left side, he just started the next row right-to-left and reversed the direction of the asymmetrical letters.

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