Psychro's cave
The Psychro Cave ( Greek Ψυχρό ), also known as Zeus Cave and Dictaean Cave or Dictaean Grotto , is located near Psychro above the Lasithi plateau on the Greek island of Crete , about 48 kilometers southeast of Heraklion . It was an important place of worship for the Minoans , as evidenced by finds that go back to the early Minoan epoch (around 2800 BC). The Greek myth that Zeus was born in this cave and was cared for by Amaltheia and the Curetes is possibly connected with this cult . The Psychro Cave has been identified as the mythical cave, which in ancient times was called Δικταίον Αντρον ( Diktaion Antron , "Diktean Cave" ). The nursery of Zeus is in the Ida Mountains ( Idean Grotto ).
The Dictean Cave in Mythology
According to Hesiod's account of the birth of Zeus:
In the case of Apollodor, this report is supplemented to the effect that the young Zeus was handed over to the care of the Curetes and the daughters of Melisseus ("honey man") , the nymphs Adrasteia and Ide . The nymphs nourished the infant with the milk of Amaltheia, while the curetes guarded the boy and struck the shields loudly with their spears in order to drown out the cry of the newborn so that he would not be found by his father Kronos , who intended to to devour the son.
According to Athenaeus, noise was caused by the loud grunting of a sow, on whose teats the young Zeus was feeding. For this reason, the pig is a sacred animal for the Cretans, and no Cretan is ready to eat pork.
In addition to the legend about the birth of Zeus, the dictean cave also plays a role in the account of the kidnapping of Europa at Lukian of Samosata . That is where the divine marriage between Europe, the Phoenician king's daughter, and her kidnapper Zeus takes place:
"... and Zeus in his own form led Europen, who was now glowing with a sweet reddening of shame and did not dare to open her eyes, since she now realized what it was all about, to the dictaean cave."
Further sources in ancient literature can be found in Strabo ( Geographica 10,4,12), Dionysius of Halicarnassus ( antiquitates Romanae 2,61) and Diodor ( libraries 5,70). However, these reports probably refer to the Idean Grotto in the Psiloritis Mountains.
Excavations
Coordinates: 35 ° 9 ′ 46.2 ″ N , 25 ° 26 ′ 42 ″ E
Around 1880 a hunter found a bronze statuette of a bull in the cave. This triggered a treasure hunt by the residents of the surrounding villages, during which a large number of bronze objects and clay statuettes were found, especially in the upper part of the cave. The news of these finds prompted Joseph Hatzidakis , then President of the Education Friends of Heraklion, and the Italian archaeologist Federico Halbherr to visit the cave in 1886 and carry out an informal excavation.
The actual archaeological development of the cave began in 1895. The year before, the British archaeologist Arthur Evans (known as the excavator of Knossos ) had visited Lasithi and bought some of the finds from the cave. Now, together with his colleague John Linton Myres, he began a systematic exploration of the cave space. At first it was limited to the layers close to the surface and the crevices of the stalagmites , as the limited resources did not allow clearing of the numerous pieces of rock that had fallen from the ceiling. When the excavation continued in 1896, a young man named Jorgos Margojannakis informed Evans about the discovery of a "broken stone with letters". It turned out to be a fragment of a soapstone sacrificial table with three hollows for libations . The characters were found to be linear A .
In the following year 1897, the French archaeologist Joseph Demargne carried out an unofficial excavation and found another piece of the offering table, another offering table made of the same material with only one cavity, as well as clay pots and a gold ribbon.
Demargne was also involved in the next official excavation carried out by British archaeologist David George Hogarth , director of the British School at Athens , in 1899. From today's point of view, Hogarth's excavation methods can be criticized; In particular, the use of explosives in excavations is now uncommon. Hogarth used gunpowder to shatter the fallen overburden. At least it was possible to secure a large part of the finds from the near-surface layers and the stalactite crevices.
The known finds from the official and unofficial excavations were compiled by John Boardman in a monograph published in 1961 .
The artifacts are now distributed across various museums:
- Ashmolean Museum ( Oxford ): Evans finds;
- Louvre ( Paris ): Finds from Demargne;
- British Museum ( London ) and Fitzwilliam Museum ( Cambridge ): Part of the Hogarth finds, mainly clay objects;
- Archaeological Museum (Heraklion): Main part of the finds from Hogarth and finds from Hatzidakis and Halbherr;
- Archaeological Museum ( Agios Nikolaos ): some recent finds.
literature
- B. Rutkowski, Krzysztof Nowicki: The Psychro Cave and Other Sacred Grottoes in Crete . Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 1996.
- L. Vance Watrous: The Cave Sanctuary of Zeus at Psychro: A Study of Extra-Urban Sanctuaries in Minoan and Early Iron Age Crete . Université de Liège / University of Texas at Austin, Liège / Austin 1996.
- Jorgos I. Panajotakis: The Dictaean Cave . Lassithi 1988.
- L. Vance Watrous, H. Blitzer: Lasithi. A History of Settlement on a Highland Plain in Crete . In: Hesperia Supplements . tape 18 , 1982, pp. i-xiv, 1-122 .
- DG Hogarth: The Dictaean Cave . In: The Annual of the British School at Athens . tape 6 , 1978, p. 94–116 , doi : 10.1017 / S0068245400001945 ( archive.org - reprint of the yearbook 1899–1900).
- John Boardman: The Dictaean Cave and Iron Age Crete . In: The Cretan Collection in Oxford Series . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1961.
- W. Boyd-Dawkins: Remains of Animals Found in the Dictaean Cave in 1901 . In: Man . tape 32 . Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1902, p. 162-165 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 1.5 (1.1.6)
- ↑ Athenaios : Deipnosophistai 9:18
- ↑ F. Halbherr, P. Orsi: Scoperte nell 'Antro di Psychro . In: Museo dell 'Antichità Classico . tape 2 , 1888, p. 905-910 .
- ^ Arthur Evans: Further discoveries of Cretan and Aegean scripts . In: Journal of Hellenic Studies . tape 17 , 1897, pp. 305-357 .
- ↑ DG Hogarth: The Dictaean Cave . In: The Annual of the British School at Athens . tape 6 , 1978, p. 94-116 .