Hermes (Greek stamp) (Vienna emission) . All these issues have been overprinted in many cases up to 1920: Value, colour and type of the sixteen stamps of common usage set, printed in "taille douce" in 1911 : General Philately: General Philately - Literature: Large Hermes Head - Traditional Philately: Large Hermes Head - Postal History: Hermes (Greek stamp) The Greek god Hermes, messenger of the Gods in the Greek mythology, is the representation chosen, in 1860, by the Kingdom of Greece to illustrate its first postal stamps. The first type, the "large Hermes head", was issued in October 1861, and stayed in circulation
Altar of the Twelve Gods was a Pentelic marble statue base inscribed on its front: thus identifying the enclosure as that of the Altar of the Twelve Gods. As of 1992, "nearly nine-tenths" of the Altar lay buried beneath the Athens-Piraeus Electric Railway, with only the southwest corner of the enclosure visible. More of the Altar was uncovered by Greek archaeologists in 2011 when the train tracks were temporarily removed for maintenance work. Once the Altar was exposed, archaeologists and a group promoting the revival of ancient Greek polytheism filed legal injunctions to prevent replacement of the tracks of the Athens-Piraeus Railway. The court ruled