Leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini mined the great civilisations of the Ancient Greeks and Romans for the purposes of pomp and propaganda, employing the past as the foundation of their imperial aspirations.
In 1940, after Hitler invaded Poland, he sent archaeologists to try and prove that German communities had lived there before the Poles.
But Hitler was not the first dictator who sought to win the battle for the hearts and minds of his people by using the past to legitimise the present.
All through the 19th century, archaeologists and historians have created an image of Ancient Greece – an idealised place of pure white marble buildings peopled with citizens in white togas – to argue that Europeans were the most civilised people on earth.
The following sections show how the findings of archaeologists have been used to promote the national image of the state.
1775
WINCKELMANN and GREECE
An influential German art historian, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, publishes his Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, which offers a highly influential myth of Ancient Greece.Although he has never visited Greece, Winckelmann writes a passionate and imaginative book which advocates the supremacy of Ancient Greek culture. 'The only way for us to become great,' he writes, 'is to imitate the Greeks.'
Winckelmann's ideas have a great effect on the education systems of many European countries and help instil the idea that gentlemen need a classical education.
As well as being a visionary, he also creates a chronology of Greek art, dividing it into four ages: Archaic, Classic, Hellenistic and Roman. These divisions remain in use today.
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1810
HALLER and AEGINA
A German archaeologist, Carl Freiherr Haller von Hallerstein, goes on an expedition with the first International Association of Archaeologists – a group of men from Britain, Germany and Denmark – to Aegina, a Greek island.
They find the ruins of the temple of Aphaia, a local deity, and thousands of fragments of Ancient Greek statues.
Haller buys many of these statues on behalf of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who is keen to acquire ancient artefacts.
But because the statues have been broken, Ludwig employs Bertel Thorvaldsen, a Danish artist, to put them together and restore them.
Thorvaldsen not only puts them together, he also 'improves' them by subtly working the marble and making the statues look more like the current idealised image of Ancient Greece.
Archaeology can be used to clean up the past.
Back to time line1834
KLENZE and the ACROPOLIS
King Ludwig of Bavaria's son, Otto, is crowned King of Greece after the Turks have been expelled from that country and the European powers move in to control it.
Otto sees parallels between modern Greece, fighting a war of liberation against the Turks, and modern Germany, trying to recover from defeats in the Napoleonic wars. He sends Leo Klenze, his father's friend and favourite architect, to Athens to build a capital city in the style of Ancient Greece.
While excavating on the site of the Acropolis, Klenze discovers Ancient Greek temples. Gradually, Klenze decides to preserve the ancient monuments as a shrine to Western civilisation.
He restores the ancient buildings but selects only those statues and architectural features which correspond to his idea of Ancient Greece as a place of classically proportioned, clean cut, white buildings.
The past tells many stories, but ideology prefers to choose only one.
Back to time line1935
HITLER and MUNICH
The German dictator Adolf Hitler buries the bodies of 16 Nazis, who had been killed during the party's rise to power, in bronze sarcophagi in the centre of Munich.
After a ceremony based on Ancient Roman funeral rites, details of which were provided by Nazi-sympathising archaeologists, the sarcophagi are housed in a specially built Greek-style 'temple', based on the design of the Parthenon in Athens.
Another temple is also built next to the Nazi party headquarters in Munich.
Hitler locates his house and party headquarters in the city’s King's Square, which is the site of two archaeological museums. He renames the square the Acropolis.
By doing so, he is trying to link the Nazi party with the civilisation of the Ancient Greeks, and to give Germany an image of continuity with the past.
Back to time line1937
MUSSOLINI and ROME
In Italy, Benito Mussolini decides to bolster the legitimacy of his Fascist state by celebrating the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.
Mussolini hopes to show that he is walking in the footsteps of his imperial ancestor.
The legendary marble altar of Augustus, known as the Altar of Peace, which lies buried under Renaissance buildings in Rome, is excavated and moved to a more central location.
In 1932, Mussolini had also excavated two boats, dating from the time of the Emperor Caligula, from the bottom of Lake Nemi, south of Rome. Richly decorated, they were put on display in a hangar next to the lake.
In 1944, the retreating army of Mussolini's one-time ally, Hitler, burns the boats as it leaves the area after the Allied invasion of Italy.
These days, Mussolini’s statues and shrines lie half buried and forgotten – just like the monuments of the disgraced emperors of Ancient Rome.
Back to time line1941
HITLER and OLYMPIA
Hitler's troops invade and conquer Greece. In their wake come archaeologists who excavate the site of the ancient games at Olympia in southern Greece.
These Nazis are following in the more honourable footsteps of other German archaeologists who had worked on this site before.
In 1876, a professional archaeologist Ernst Curtius – funded by the German state – comes to Olympia and by examining the levels of silt deposit manages to date the temples he found to the early Christian era. By doing so he explodes the myth that the temples had been put on this site by the god Zeus.
Curtius and other German archaeologists also map out the remains of the famous site of the ancient games, after which the modern Olympic Games are named.
Today, the Olympic Games represent an international ideal quite different from the narrow national ambitions that attempt to make archaeology a servant of the state.
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