Marbles and Gold

The greatest things in the world should be... shared and enjoyed by as many people in as many countries as possible”  Neil Macgregor

Well that was kept quiet, news that one of of the Elgin Marbles has just been flown to State Hermitage Museum in Petersburg on loan, when the Elgin Marbles have never ever left these shores before. Should add of course before their controversial arrival on these shores, which is another tale altogether....

Neil Macgregor mellifluous tones describing this wonder was calm and as LS said the British Museum are a very independent bunch of trustees and do not heed their political masters..... 

Llissos is a river god, and represents the river that flows through Athens, and that is more or less all I have learnt about him.  The statue is headless and according to Macgregor there is a stream of water falling from his back.

The other news that came through this morning is equally exciting, that is of course if you like history about Celtic gold and Greek river gods, is that the Jersey Hoard, which at the moment is carefully being pulled apart has revealed gold torcs and other items within the vast store of coins.

And as I have written so much about rivers, here is a little story from an earlier blog called Etymology

The strangely named hamlet of Werg was a community of nine dwellings on the River Kennet."One of the many pools on the river, as it wove its way through the water meadows was "Nicker Pool", where it is said the water spirits played. When the climatic conditions are right, the whirling wraiths can still be seen, so that the local name had good cause to be established."

Werg of course is a word that can be transformed into many meanings but given that there were only nine dwellings by this stretch of the river near Mildenhall, one of the meanings is outlaw or criminal, and presumably popular medieval myth has taken up the word and transformed a particular happening of the water spiralling around maybe, a bit like cropcircles, and transformed it into water wraiths, probably the spirits of the poor wretches who lived here.