A new exhibit featuring exact replicas of ancient Greek musical instruments such as the lyre, homeric phorminx, kithara and aulos will be hosted by the Museum of Ancient Nikopolis near Preveza, in western Greece, until November 20.

The temporary exhibition covers a period ranging from the 8th to the 3rd centuries B.C. and revolves around 17 hand-made musical instruments made by Giorgos Polyzos between 1984 and 2004 for the Athens University student society “Evretirio”.

Speaking in his workshop at Tsopela, Pramanta in Epirus, Polyzos said he was first inspired to start making replicas of ancient musical instruments after visiting an exhibition at the Archaeological Museum in Athens in 1979.

“When, in 1983, my friend the poet, writer and journalist Giorgos Maniatis sent me a text on the relationship between politics and music, this served as an occasion to make a faithful copy of a lyre to offer to him in return. He played it and showed it to his students,” Polyzos recounted, remembering how the students had then greeted him by playing the lyre when he later visited Athens, which inspired him to make his second instrument, a pandouris made from tortoise shell.

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