Let’s go back in time to Greece in 1939-40. Greco-Italian war is not far off. On the hill of Agios Nikolaos in Agios Georgios de Grevena, the villagers, doing forced labor, are digging the ground to build machine guns to defend the area.

But the hoe of the then 35-year-old Dimitrios Zikos fell into the “treasure”. It was the “Winged Victory” engraved on the paragnath of a helmet from the 4th century BC. He reverently raised the bronze object. None of his fellow villagers could understand the archaeological find. They believed that the figure depicted on it was … the Virgin Mary. They reverently took the “Winged Victory”, took it to the village in procession and first placed it in the community church of the Holy Apostles. 47 years later, in the same village, two farmers discovered in a plowed field “Heracliotissa”, a 3rd-century Roman funerary statue 1.5 meters high and weighing 150 kilograms, which is today in the warehouses of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Grevena.

This nice twist on the obscure origins of two important archaeological sites in the possession of the police was prepared for us by the teacher Agios Georgios Ilias Gagalis. The reason was the publication “K” (09/11/2022) about new finds in the archaeological excavations of this area, discovered as a result of excavations this year, carried out by the Ephorate of Antiquities of Grevena and the Catalan Institute of Classical Archeology.

“Before the creation of the EFA (in 2014), Grevena was the “El Dorado” of antiquities,” argues Mr. Gagalis in K. “Many archaeological objects coming from the area of ​​Agios Georgios are indeed the products of illegal excavations, however, Herakliotissa and the Winged Victory, as well as other objects, came from the inhabitants to the archaeological services thanks to the love of their place. The credit for the tradition of Herakliotissa belongs to the farmers Ilias Bataras and Dimitrios G. Karagianni,” he adds.

According to the data collected by Mr. Gagalis, two Agiorgievites went to the Serven Rachi agricultural region on the morning of November 13, 1986 for agricultural work. Suddenly, in the middle of the field, they saw a marble pillar. It was brought to the surface by their fellow villager Christos Kyriakidis when he was plowing his field the previous night. The marble statue was upside down. With great difficulty they dragged the heavy load, loaded it onto their tractor and delivered it to the village police station. Two days later, it was handed over to the EFA of Larisa, where it was exhibited in the city museum. Since 2014, it has been in the warehouses of EFA Grevena. The two then young farmers from Agios Georgios received a fee of 500,000 drachmas.

“The act of two farmers, although some of their fellow villagers ridiculed them, urging them not to hand over the statue, but to illegally trade it for more profit, was and remains to this day an example for everyone,” the message says. Mr Gagalis. The event, he adds, “instead of being the reason for the immediate start of excavations, was defiantly ignored by the state, as well as by the EFA of Larisa and Ajanis Kozani, who were in charge of the archaeological excavations in the Grevena area. As many as 35 years had to elapse for systematic excavations to begin in what would seem to be the most important archaeological area in Grevena, thanks to the efforts of Sonia Dimakis, head of Grevena’s EFA, and a few people who believed in them. , even founded the association of archaeologists DERDAS to help Ephorat’s research work.”