Iran to Display Penelope’s Statues

TEHRAN (IRNA) - Three pieces of Penelope statue will be displayed in Iran within a month, said ex-director of the National Museum of Iran Mahnaz Gorji.

Date: 02 August 2015 - 21:13

News ID: ۱۶۷۲۰

Iran’s life-size marble statue of Penelope excavated in Persepolis in 1945 along with its Roman counterparts are currently on display at Milan’s Prada Foundation from May 8.
Earlier in March Iran lent the statue for a four-month exhibit based on an agreement between National Museum of Iran and Milan’s Prada Foundation.
Director of Iran’s Museums and Historical Properties Office Mohammadreza Kargar said that the upcoming exhibition aims to bring out the differences and values of the three statues.
He said that Italian government will bear the expenses for maintenance, protection, packaging and transport of the statues.
The Statue of Penelope, believed to be that of Penelope — a life-size Greek lady in the Severe Style, is a marble statue which was discovered in Persepolis and was excavated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago in 1945. It lay scattered in three fragments in the ruins of the Persepolis Treasury. The statue sheds light on Greek presence in Iran during the Seleucid period.
Penelope is a character of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, one of the two great epic poems of ancient Greek literature. Penelope is the wife of the main character, the king of Ithaca, Odysseus (also known as Ulysses), and the daughter of Icarius and his wife Eurynome.
She waited twenty years for the final return of her husband from the Trojan War, while she had a hard time in refusing marriage proposals from several princes for four years after the fall of Troy.
For this reason, she is often regarded as a symbol of connubial fidelity.