Anavysos Kouros

In the late , this over life-size statue stood above the grave of a man from a wealthy Greek family, grandly marking his tomb. With its idealized body, rigid posture, and distant gaze, the statue still commands attention today, long after it was completed around 530 B.C.E. By looking closely at the statue, we can learn quite a lot about the ancient Greeks who looked upon it centuries ago.

This statue is an example of the kouros (plural: kouroi) type of Greek sculpture. The ancient Greek word kouros means "youth" or "young boy," but we don’t know if the ancient Greeks called these statues kouroi—modern scholars were the first to use the term to describe them. [1] A kouros is a statue of a young, nude male. The young age of the kouros is evident in his beardless face, which indicates that he has not yet fully matured into adulthood.

Kouroi are usually entirely nude, though some wear headbands or necklaces. Although kouroi take one small step forward, placing their left foot in front of their right, they are rigid and stiff, holding their clenched fists close to their sides and tensing their muscles. Throughout the Archaic period, Greek sculptors made kouroi that functioned either as grave markers or as given to the gods.

The Greek sculptors who invented the kouros type may have been partially inspired by Egyptian stone sculptures. [2] Just before the beginning of the Archaic period, interactions between Greece and Egypt increased, creating more opportunities for Greeks to see Egyptian statues. Like Greek kouroi, Egyptian statues of elite men are often stiff and rigid, and they are made of stone, a durable and expensive material. However, there are two major differences between typical Egyptian sculptures of men and Greek kouroi. First, whereas kouroi are always nude, Egyptian sculptors usually showed men clothed (elites, like the priest named Tjayasetimu who is depicted in this image, wear kilts). Second, kouroi are fully separated from the block of stone from which they are carved. Although they are stiff, they stand without support. Many life-size Egyptian stone sculptures, including this one, rely on stone supports to stand up. These differences reveal that, while the Archaic Greeks may have taken Egyptian statues as inspiration, they created their own type when they invented the kouros.

For the Archaic Greeks, kouroi were the perfected images of masculinity. They embody a specifically Greek ideal. The Anavysos Kouros is one of the best preserved examples of this ideal. His face is symmetrical, with wide staring eyes and a slight smile. His smile is not meant to convey that he is happy. This expression, known as the Archaic smile, is instead intended to make the statue appear more lifelike. The hair of the kouros is also symmetrical and elaborately styled. Curls are arranged across the figure’s forehead, while long braids of hair fall down his back. This elaborate hairstyle conveys the wealth of the individual represented. A thin ribbon runs around the crown of the kouros’s head, seemingly holding a cap in place. [3] Traces of red pigment are still visible on the eyes and hair of the kouros’s head. [4] Like most ancient Greek statues, the Anavysos Kouros was originally brightly painted. Much of that paint has now faded, leaving the whitish marble visible.

By comparing the Anavysos Kouros to an earlier kouros, we can see how the style of kouroi—and the ideal they embody—evolved throughout the Archaic period. Like the Anavysos Kouros, the New York Kouros is stiff and rigid. Both kouroi stand with their hands clenched at their sides and take one step forward with their left legs. Both have patterned hair and Archaic smiles. Both also originally functioned as grave markers and were probably set up close to each other in the same cemetery. [5] However, the Anavysos kouros is more , or lifelike, than the New York Kouros in several ways. The Anavysos Kouros has much more rounded, fully developed muscles than the New York Kouros does. In comparison, the muscles of the New York Kouros look almost like patterns carved into the stone rather than volumetric muscles. The face of the Anavysos Kouros is also more naturalistic than that of the New York Kouros, with more realistically proportioned facial features and more attention to the transitions between parts of the body.

To create a more naturalistic image, the sculptor of the Anavysos Kouros has carved further into the block of marble than the sculptor of the New York Kouros did. Although the Anavysos Kouros’s hands are still attached to his thighs by small pieces of marble, ensuring that they would not break off, these supports are much smaller than the larger attachments that fuse the New York Kouros’s hands to his sides. The Anavysos Kouros’s rounded muscles make him appear fleshier and more lifelike. He is still idealized—no real person could actually be this symmetrical—but he is more naturalistic than the New York Kouros, which was made 50 years before he was.

This statue is called the Anavysos Kouros because it was found near the town of Anavysos in Greece. Unfortunately, this statue was not discovered by archaeologists. Looters first uncovered the kouros in 1936, and soon smuggled it out of Greece so that it could be sold in Paris. In order to get the large statue out of the country, the smugglers sawed it into ten pieces. [6] One of their cuts is still visible just above the kouros’s navel. When the statue was returned to Greece in 1937, conservators were able to piece almost all of it back together, mending much of the damage that was done.

Almost 20 years after the Anavysos Kouros was returned to Greece, a statue base found near Anavysos was given to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Many scholars believe that the Anavysos Kouros originally stood atop this base. The base is inscribed with ancient Greek text that commemorates the person whose grave it marked. In translation, the text reads: “Stay and mourn at the monument for dead Kroisos whom violent Ares destroyed, fighting in the front ranks.” [7]

This moving inscription tells us much about the person who was buried beneath it. His name was Kroisos, and he died while fighting in a war. [8] He is celebrated as an accomplished warrior, “fighting in the front ranks” against the enemy, destroyed by “violent Ares,” the god of war himself. The text encourages viewers to “stay and mourn” the deceased. Together with the kouros that stood above it, it demands the attention of passersby and asks them to remember the man it memorializes.

The Anavysos Kouros is an idealized representation of a man in his prime. Kroisos could not have actually looked like this statue. No real, living person is so symmetrical or stiff. Moreover, Kroisos was a soldier, and so he must have been a bearded adult when he died. [9] But this statue is not intended to depict Kroisos as he actually appeared. It instead presents an image of a perfect man, as imagined by the Archaic Greeks. His nudity allows him to show off his perfected musculature, which conveys his strength. The wealthy family who had this statue made to mark the grave of their dead loved one chose it because it would forever project an image of perfection, making the ideal memory of their relative permanent in stone.

[1] Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 63.

[2] Stewart (1997), p. 63.

[3] Brunilde Ridgway, The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture, 2nd edition (Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1993), p. 68 suggests that this cap would originally have been covered by a helmet, which is now lost. Real ancient Greek soldiers wore similar caps beneath their helmets.

[4] Gisela M. A. Richter, Kouroi: Archaic Greek Youths, 3rd edition (London: Phaidon, 1970), p. 118.

[5] Richard Neer, Art & Archaeology of the Greek World, 2nd edition (London: Thames and Hudson, 2019), p. 161. Since neither of these kouroi were found by archaeologists, it is more difficult to determine where exactly they were originally set up, but later research suggests they were found close to one another.

[6] Alexander Philadelpheus, “The Anavysos Kouros,” The Annual of the British School at Athens, volume 36 (1935/36), p. 2.

[7] John Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 104.

[8] Kroisos is not a Greek name, but was popular in the Eastern Mediterranean. In antiquity, the most famous man named Kroisos was the king of Lydia (a kingdom in the area of modern day Turkey), who ruled from c. 585–546 B.C.E. It is possible that Kroisos was named after this king, who was famous for his immense wealth. Athenians often used foreign names during the late Archaic period, making it more difficult to tell whether this dead Kroisos was specifically named after the Lydian king. John Griffiths Pedley, Greek Art and Archaeology, 5th edition (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2012), p. 175.

[9] Stewart (1997), p. 66.

Richard Neer, Art & Archaeology of the Greek World, 2nd edition (London: Thames and Hudson, 2019).

Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).