A marble head of a child retrieved from the ashes of Smyrna

A marble head of a child retrieved from the ashes of Smyrna, on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, is currently on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens as part of the “Unseen Museum” project which brings to the fore antiquities stored in its vaults. This year’s program is dedicated to the centenary of the Asia Minor Disaster. The work, believed to be a copy of a Hellenistic prototype, used to be housed in the Archaeological Museum of the Evangelical School of Smyrna. It was, according to the museum’s archives, donated by the military attache at the British Embassy in Athens, “bearing vivid traces of fire from the destruction of the city in 1922.”