Antikythera — Antikythera Map Poster & Print

המפה

Antikythera Map Poster & Print

Antikythera sits alone in the strait between Kythera and Crete, a compact wedge of limestone with very little flat ground. From above, the island reads as a rough, elongated shape fringed by cliffs, with a handful of tracks threading between a small harbour settlement and scattered hamlets. The sea takes up most of the frame, and the land becomes a single pale form surrounded by open water.

The island is known worldwide for what was found just offshore. At the start of the twentieth century, sponge divers came across an ancient shipwreck here, and among its cargo was the Antikythera mechanism, a geared bronze device often described as the oldest known analogue computer. The object is now kept in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, but its name will always point back to this coastline.

An Antikythera map poster is an exercise in restraint. There is no dense grid to fill the paper, only a coastline, a thin network of roads and the contour of the island against a wide field of white or black. The result is quiet and graphic, a shape that people who know the island tend to recognise at once, and that others find simply striking.