Sophia’s double: photography, archaeology, and modern Greece

Abstract

In the context of the entangled productions of scientific archaeology, photographic technologies, and the Greek nation-state, this article analyses the ancient Greek idea of the eidōlon (image, phantom, double) as a paradigm for photography. Sophia Engastromenou Schliemann presented herself for the camera as Helen of Troy and mobilized an ancient textual debate about Helen and her double and the Trojan War. This image of Sophia adorned in Trojan gold is widely known and little studied and, as this essay will explore, it circulated far beyond Sophia’s control. Undergirding this article’s historical contingencies is an exploration of the photograph as eidōlon.