Image: COSMOTE CHRONOS
At the center of modern discussions around culture are issues connected with the preservation of the local cultural heritage of each place. The celebration of the World Day of Cultural Heritage, also known as the International Day for Monuments and Sites, gives us the opportunity to reflect on the crucial role of new technologies—not only in the preservation of our cultural legacies (which are directly connected to our collective memory), but also in the creation of digital equivalents of artworks and monuments, which UNESCO defines as digital cultural heritage.
On this occasion, we bring to the forefront a unique monument of Classical Antiquity that has never been visible in the modern world, and revisit the efforts to represent it throughout history.
The chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos, a work by Phidias, was constructed between 446 and 438 B.C. to be placed inside the Parthenon, in honor of the goddess—protector of Athens. The monumental statue, standing approximately 11.5 meters tall, was either destroyed in a great fire in the 3rd century A.D. or lost under unknown circumstances. To the ancient Greeks, however, it was not merely a representation of the goddess. According to the beliefs of the time, known from sources such as the writings of Pausanias, the deity herself was believed to manifest unexpectedly before the faithful through the form of the cult statue (epiphaneia).
Until 1990, and the unveiling to the public of the most accurate replica of the Athena Parthenos in Nashville, Tennessee, our understanding of the statue’s appearance relied on small-scale Roman marble copies and written descriptions. The original statue was made of plaster with a wooden frame (from sacred wood in a forest dedicated to the god Apollo). Ivory represented the goddess’s skin, and the gorgoneion adorned the aegis she held, while gold plates covered her hair, robe, and armor.
In 1897, on the occasion of the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition, the largest faithful replica of the Parthenon was constructed in Nashville, owing to the city’s nickname: “Athens of the South.” It was decided not to demolish the replica after the exhibition, leading to its reconstruction and operation as a museum, which still houses a rich collection of artworks from Europe and the United States. Perhaps for the first time in the history of monuments as we know them, the structure itself—a vessel of memory and a cultural object worthy of preservation—also became the architectural shell that contains other preserved products of human creativity. The “Athena Parthenos” of Nashville (constructed between 1982 and 1990) was created to adorn the interior of the “Parthenon,” serving as the most complete physical likeness of Phidias’ Athena ever made.
The image of Athena Parthenos, in a journey through time, takes the form that best reflects each era: from the colossal chryselephantine original by Phidias in Classical Athens, to the 3rd-century A.D. marble statuette found in the Roman villa of Varvakeion, to the faithful replica made of plaster, fiberglass, and gold leaf in Nashville’s Centennial Park during the 1980s, and finally to the digital, spectacular likeness that now appears—thanks to the DigiPast application—on the screen of a smartphone or tablet in 2025.
As we move through the 21st century, technology is increasingly transferring humanity’s cultural objects from the physical into the digital realm—preserving the history and memory of each place and contributing decisively to the safeguarding of the past for the future.
Through the DIGIPAST app, the virtual twin of the chryselephantine Athena is accessible at any time to users wishing to explore Classical Athens during the age of Pericles. The fully restored 3D statue of the goddess returns digitally not only to the space for which it was originally created, but also to the historical period during which it was worshipped.
SOURCES:
Kenneth D.S. Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World, Oxford University Press, 2001 (pp. 1–61)
Themata Archaiologias, Vol. 3.3, Sept–Dec 2019 (https://www.themata-archaiologias.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/feidias-2019-3-3-348-367.pdf)
The Collector – Athena Parthenos (https://www.thecollector.com/athena-parthenos-statue/)
The Parthenon, Nashville (https://www.nashvilleparthenon.com/history)
Ann M. Sullivan, “Cultural Heritage & New Media: A Future for the Past” (https://repository.law.uic.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1392&context=ripl)
UNESCO – Digital Heritage (https://webarchive.unesco.org/web/20230616073538/https://en.unesco.org/themes/information-preservation/digital-heritage/concept-digital-heritage)
