The Ministry of Culture and Tourism participated in the International EXPO 2010 in China, with an exhibition at Shanghai library.

We shared in it with our research work of “Myrtis’ remodelling”, presenting a video with information about the period in which Myrtis lived as well as with the scientific documentation of our work.

Keramikos is a district in the centre of Athens the biggest part of which is occupied by the archaeological site and the homonymous ancient cemetery. Systematic excavations on the area of Keramikos started in the 1870s by the Greek Archaeological Society and were later assumed by the German Archaeological Institute. The fortification walls, the gates and the Pompeion were revealed first, and later a necropolis on the southern hill, with the ancient cemetery of Athens, dating from about 2.000 B.C. In 1994 a new excavation was prompted in the area by underground works for the construction of the METRO of Athens, where the archaeologists located a new stretch of the cemetery, with dozens of graves and also a mass burial pit. The disorderly, hasty and impious manner of burial and the dating of the few funerary gifts, led archaeologists of the 3rd Ephorate of Athens to the conclusion that it was a mass burial of the victims of the plague that struck Athens during the first years of the Peloponnesian War, between 430 and 426 B.C.

Part of the skeletal material collected from the pit of Keramikos was taken to the Educational Institute of Athens for conservation, as it offered the grounds for a biomedical approach through the study of human skeletal remains
In 2005 a scientific team organized by the Assistant Professor of the University of Athens, Manolis J. Papagrigorakis, conducted research in order to detect the causative factor of the Plague of Athens. Until then, all data pertaining to the plague-causing pathogen were based exclusively on the account of the epidemic as reported by the fifth century B.C. Greek historian, Thucydides, since there was no definite microbiological or paleopathological evidence.

However, molecular biology tools have now enabled the detection of microbial DNA fragments in ancient skeletal material, thus rendering possible the retrospective diagnoses of ancient diseases. Dental pulp DNA material of three intact teeth randomly collected from the Keramikos mass burial pit provided evidence for the presence of the microorganism Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, incriminating typhoid fever as a likely cause of the Plague of Athens.

We presented the video “Myrtis”.