On this Greek site about Mt. Athos I found pictures of these strange “bas-relief” carvings and a round shape cut in mountain stone, in the neighbourhood of Lavra.
1. circle
2. cross
3. unknown object (a dove?)
4. human figure with animals
5. human figure with a hart-shape
6. round shape with Lavra on the background
Surely all the shapes have a religious meaning and it is obvious on picture 2. with a Christian cross, but I am quite puzzeled by the other – primitive – images of men and animals and the unknown shapes. What could they mean and who made them? Who knows more?
Wim, 4/5
On my first visit to Great Lavra, I took a walk with a non-Orthodox German man who had visited more than a dozen times. He went to bring me to the isolated stone cottage where an old Greek man lived — a friend of his. That’s where these petroglyphs are — near his cottage. You missed the best one — in the back garden of the cottage is a wine-stomping press carved out of the stone. He explained that all these features were created by the primitive agrarian society that lived on that peninsula 3,000 years ago. To learn more, see my comments and my photos on this website: http://temp.georgesimmscom.officelive.com/mtathos.aspx