“The Ring of Theseus”

The first exhibit of the Unseen Museum was the ring of Theseus, a Mycenaean gold signet ring, a random find from the Anafiotika houses neighbourhood that turned up among the earth deposits thrown down the slope, in the course of the works for the extension of the old Acropolis Museum, in the 1950’s.

The bezel of the ring depicts the popular Minoan scene of bull-leaping, flanked by a lion and a tree. Mycenaean signet rings were personal prestige objects of the first Greek-speaking rulers, the Mycenaeans.

The choice of this particular scene on a ring that was to be worn by the rulers of Athens indicates a preference for a Minoan theme and its symbolic connotations. We do not know the reason for this inclination, but, nonetheless, it generates a variety of interpretive associations into our mind.