Mark abbe was ambushed by color in 2000 while working on an archeological dig in the ancient greek city of aphrodisias in present day turkey.
Marble statues color.
Why are noses missing from so many egyptian statues.
At the time he was a graduate student at new york.
To us classical antiquity means white marble.
The temples that housed them were in.
The myth of the white marble started during the renaissance when we first began unearthing ancient statues.
As far as they knew unpainted white marble was precisely the way their ancient forebearers had sculpted.
Not so to the greeks who thought of their gods in living color and portrayed them that way too.
While to our modern eye the bright colors of greek and roman statues scream tacky to the ancients who painted them it was expensive back in the day slaves wore rough cloth like undyed and unbleached icky tan colors.
Most of them had lost their original paint after centuries of exposure to the elements.
The well to do wore inexpensive colors and the extremely wealthy wore royal colors.