Archaeological Site of Dion:
From the sanctuary of Isis, a view to the statue(replica) of Aphrodite Hypolympidia*. The actual statue is housed in the museum. I can’t read the inscription very well, but it seems the first word is the name Anthestia, she and her daughter were major sponsors of the sanctuary.
Aphrodite of the foot of the mountain (Olympus)
Archaeological Site of Dion:
More pictures from the sanctuary of Isis. The visitor actually enters it from the sides.
Archaeological Site of Dion:
Some more pictures from the sanctuary of Isis. The temple of Demeter also has many votive statues. Judging from the votive statues in other sanctuaries, these could be in the likeness of adorants, priestesses, family members of people who were helped or healed by the sanctuary, and sponsors. The last statue depicts Isis Tyche, in the same room, a sacred spring was also housed.
Artemis was previously worshipped at the sanctuary and towards its destruction in the 4th century A.D, it seems that Christ and Isis were worshiped together there. The sanctuary was destroyed by a series of earthquakes and floods. This series of natural disasters might have also destroyed Dion’s oldest christian basilica.
Sites of central Athens/ The Library of Hadrian:
A view of Hadrian’s Library from the Monastiraki metro station.
For this series about monuments in central Athens, I will post limited commentary on this round. But they will be reblogged with added commentary that will include information about their recent history.
Archaeological site of Acropolis, Athens/ Erechtheion:
The area around the Erechtheion was considered the most sacred of the Acropolis. The Erechtheion was a complex marble building in the Ionic
order, an exceptional artwork. The eastern part of the Temple was
dedicated to Athena, whilst the western part was dedicated to local hero
Boutes, Hephaistos and other gods and heroes. Thus, the Erechtheion was
a temple with multiple functions, housing older and newer cults, and
the site of the ‘Sacred Tokens’, the marks made by Poseidon’s trident
and the olive tree, the gift of Athena to the city of Athens.The building had two porches. The roof of the north porch was
supported on six Ionic columns, while below its floor the Athenians
pointed at the mark of the thunderbolt sent by Zeus to kill the
legendary King Erechteus. At the south porch, which was the most
well-known, the roof was supported by six statues of maidens known as
the Caryatids, instead of the typical columns. Below it stood the grave
of Kekrops, another legendary King of Athens. A building inscription of
the Erechtheion refers to the Caryatids simply as Korai (maidens), while
the name Caryatids was assigned at a later time. The second Korai from
the western section was removed by Lord Elgin in 1801 and is today
located in the British Museum.Several interpretations about the Caryatids have been put forth. The
most convincing one supports the view that they constituted the visible
portion of the grave of Kekrops and were the choephoroi who paid tribute
to the glorious dead. The main building and the north porch were
surrounded by a continuous Ionic frieze decorated with images of gods,
heroes and mortals, in scenes related to the ancient cults of the
Erechtheion. The figures were separately carved in Parian marble and
affixed on slabs of grey Eleusinian limestone.
I was clearing my archive, and I found these pictures I had taken a long time ago. Now that the weather is clearing up I will be probably going up for more pictures…
Thessaloniki’s Roman Forum:
The portico in the forum used for leveling the ground, small shops were installed in the surrounding area during the &Ro;oman period. Now it houses the museum of the Roman Forum.
The public bath of Ancient Nemea, the Temple of Zeus of Nemea, the stoa at the stadium of Ancient Nemea.
Nemea belonged to the region of Ancient Kleones, it was not however a residential area, but a complex of sanctuaries and a stadium. The Nemean games took place there in honour of the Nemean Zeus since the 6th century B.C. The stadium that was found in the site was constructed in the 4th century B.C
Most of greek archaeological sites are discovered underneath arable lands, where families might have been growing olive groves, or other crops for decades. So the purchase of these lands (at a symbolic price) for excavations is also a significant cost for the public sector. The hope to attract tourists in the area is usually a strong motivator for farmers to give up on their land.
The land in which the stadium of Nemea was found was purchased by professor of archaeology Stephen Miller from the University of Berkeley in California, who raised a number of sponsorships for the purchase of the lands- which were given to the public sector-, the restoration of the site and the construction of the museum. He also secured a steady influx of students of archaeology who work at the site.
According to the professor the farmer who sold him the olive grove apologized to him after the purchase because the olive trees were not very productive, as if something was obstructing their roots. Sure enough the stadium’s impressive stoa was discovered underneath the grove.
The archaeological site has been transformed into a well maintained archaeological park that is in complete harmony with the nemean landscape. The museum also has a pleasant atmosphere, but it suffers a bit in the way of the exhibition.
The Nekromanteion of Acheron:
The ancient nekromanteion or nekyomanteion (oracle of the dead) is in the nomos (county) of Preveza, on the north bank of the river Acheron. The region as a place of contact with the dead is also mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey; Odysseus arrives at the site in order to contact the spirit of Tiresias.
In ancient times the sanctuary belonged to the Thesprotians, one of the early greek tribes that settled Epirus at about 2000 B.C. Mycenaean installations dating from the 14th c. B.C have been noted in the region, Ephyra, 500m to the north of the sanctuary.
The sanctuary was discovered on the crest of a rocky hill, beneath the ruins of the monastery of St. John the Baptist (18th century), during excavations conducted by professor Sotirios Dakaris in the years 1958-1964 and 1976-1977.
The most important finds come from the basement of the sanctuary, where the crypt was. There the remains of a device were found, a kind of crane used to make the figures of the deceased appear to the pilgrims. This may have also been the reason why the walls in the main sanctuary were so thick, making it possible to create secret passageways along which the priests could move unobserved.
The devices combined with the side-effects of the special diet of beans and lupins to which pilgrims were subjected, created the necessary preconditions for communicating with the souls of the dead.
Visitors departed from a different road than the one they had arrived from at the sanctuary and were required to keep silent about what they had seen and heard to avoid being impious towards the deities of the Underworld.
The nekromanteion was burned down by the Romans in 167 B.C. The courtyard was reoccupied in the 1st century. According to Dietwulf Baatz the sanctuary might not have been a sanctuary at all, but a Hellenistic fortified private residence due to the great number of agricultural tools and fishing equipment that was found, along with the limited number of religious figurines*.
(text/translation by Ioulia Katsadima)
*Though the site might have been reused as a residence, it was not uncommon to devote common utensils to a sanctuary. Τhe site could have also been looted since it was discovered relatively late by archaeologists of the state. Religious objects might have also been destroyed by the residents of the monastery in the 18th century. Churches and monasteries were habitually founded on top of or even within ancient sanctuaries in an effort to exorcise the “old pagan daemons” from these places and sanctify them.
Ancient Messene is one of the most important cities of the antiquity to have been preserved in its entirety. Today it is an archaeological park that hosts a number of small scale theatrical and musical festivals in the summer. The most prominent monuments of the city are the theater, the Stadium, Gymnasium, and the complex of the Asclepieion. Roman residences with their beautiful mosaics lend some color to the landscape. Messene was built in the 4th century B.C and it started being abandoned shortly after the Early Christian period (4th century A.D).
Messene from whοm the city took its name was worshipped as a goddess. She was one of the principal deities of the city together with Zeus Ithomatas and, in the Hellenistic times (3rd-2nd c. B.C.) when the Asklepieion was built, she was worshipped probably together with Asklepios who was also a chthonic deity of fertility, of life and death historically linked to the pre-dorian past of the land of Messene.
The system of city planning that is encountered in Messene is the so called Hippodameian system named after its original inventor, Hippodamus from Miletus, an architect, geometrician and astronomer of the 5th c. B.C. This plan was pre-determined, strictly geometric in nature, and based on the virtues of the democratic constitution, that is, the principles of isonomy (equality before the law), of isopolity (equal civic rights) and of isomoiria (equal share in landownership); still, it could afford to adapt to the peculiarities of the landscape and the particular climatic conditions of each site so that it conformed smoothly with the natural environment. It is according to these very principles that Ancient Messene, the new capital of the free and independent Messenia, was built in 369 B.C. by Epameinondas from Thebes.
I would really like to prepare a text about the financial reality of the excavation and preservation of this kind of archaeological sites, European policies for financing such projects and their contribution to the financial crisis. Ancient Messene isn’t the only site of such a scale to have been preserved in its entirety and as is evident the budget for maintaining such a space is no laughing matter.
Ancient Messene / The mausoleum of the Saithidae family:
The doric temple-like building with four columns on the front supported by a high podium functioned as a mausoleum for the burials of the elite family of the Saithidae, from the 1st to the 3rd century A.D. Eminent members of this family held important offices as High Priests and Helladarchs (Governors) of the Province of Achaia under the Roman rule.
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