A Fragment of Sculpture

Extract

Many years ago, on my first visit to Greece, I scrambled down from the Temple at Sunium to bathe off the cape. Half-way down, I came across a fragment of worked marble c. 7 in. long, heavily discoloured on the fractured side; the break was ancient (Plate 111(a)). It was lying on a 20° slope, and just why its seaward journey had been interrupted at that point was not evident. I put it in my pocket and took it home, explaining it to myself and other people to whom I have shown it as a piece of an architectural moulding. Actually, its worked side, from end to end, is slightly concave, but I explained this as the result of wear.

It was not until after many (far too many) years that, having still never seen an architectural moulding at all resembling my fragment, I began to wonder if it belonged to a piece of sculpture; and it was reserved for a student, Mr. James Picken, of Glasgow, to ask, ‘Could it be a piece of hair?’ Now at last I took the step of looking up Gerke's illustrations of a statue found at Sunium: the famous kouros. Its hair, I saw, was rendered in the manner of my fragment, with concave ‘waves’ meeting in salient ridges (Plate III(b)). Ifit had been rendered in the commoner manner, with convex waves, I might have been less slow to recognise it. Also, the kouros had a piece missing above the left shoulder, which, it seemed, might well be my fragment (Plate 111(c)). It only remained to take it to the National Museum at Athens, to have the great pleasure of finding that it was indeed the missing piece, and to leave it for re-attachment where it belongs.