Bank altar
The bank altar is a part of cult places found in early oriental and Mediterranean cultures (e.g. Malta , Crete (Apesokari), Balearic Islands ( hypogeum of Torre del Ram ) up to the Iron Age Sardinian nuragic culture ) .
The roughly knee-high stone structures can be found e.g. B. on the exedra of Maltese temples ( Ħaġar Qim ; or in them Ġgantija ) as well as on many Sardinian fountain and megaron temples . They were not used as seating, as is often assumed, but presumably to put down sacrificial goods.
The oldest bank altar comes from a round hut in Jerf el Ahmar in Syria (9200-8500 BC) The oldest altar shape in Europe is the stone slab ( Lepenski Vir ) on the floor . It was incorporated into the screed floor. The somewhat raised altar stone was created later, into which a small bowl was sometimes driven. Integrated holes were used for libation, the drainage of libations (liquids). A so-called altar goddess, a bank altar with an anthropomorphic figure is a terracotta of the Vinča culture by Fafos I.
Georg and Vera Leisner can also find benches in the rock-domed tombs of Alcaide in Spain and Pamela in Portugal. On megalithic sites in France and Scotland one can find the low stone walls called “parements” next to the entrances to the chambers. One is in the Allée couverte of Giraumont and in the dolmem of the Chapel of the Seven Saints in France.
The bank altar in the south temple of Kalapodi dates from the 14th century BC. Chr.
literature
- Kurt Galling : The Altar in the Cultures of the Ancient Orient. An archaeological study. Curtius, Berlin 1925, p. 46ff. §5: The bank altar.
- Ingeborg Witzmann: Bronze Age fixed altars on Crete. Vienna 2009 (Vienna, Univ., Diploma thesis; online; PDF; 27 MB ).
- Michael Weissl: Basics of the construction and layer sequence in the Artemision of Ephesus. In: Annual books of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna. 71, 2002, ISSN 0078-3579 , pp. 313-346 ( online; PDF; 892 kB ).