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Museum

Delphi Archaeological Museum

Holder of the Charioteer, the Siphnian Treasury frieze, and the Delphic hymns — the only substantial ancient Greek music that survives with its notation.

Delphi, Greece

Scope

Finds from the sanctuary of Apollo and its surroundings.

History of the collection

Built to receive the finds of the French School's Grande Fouille from 1892, an excavation that required the relocation of the village of Kastri from on top of the sanctuary.

Collection notes

The Charioteer of about 470 BCE is one of very few large Greek bronzes to survive, because it was buried by a rockfall. It is a fragment of a larger group including a chariot and horses.

The Delphic hymns, inscribed on stone with musical notation above the text, are the principal surviving evidence for ancient Greek music as sound rather than theory.