Heraion of Samos

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Remains of the temple in Heraion of Samos with the only column of the second Dipteros, which is still about halfway up
Fragments of the altar in Heraion on Samos

The Heraion of Samos is the ancient sanctuary of the Greek goddess Hera (" Heraion ") on the island of Samos .

The Heraion, together with the ancient city, today's Pythagorio , was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO .

history

The place of the sanctuary has been used since the early Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. Settled. The location of the settlement in the fertile plain at the mouth of the river into the sea was ideal. As a result of a land subsidence of about 0.5 m towards the end of the 2nd millennium BC Chr. And the resulting rising groundwater level, the settlement was probably finally abandoned due to the swamp.

The fact that the Hera sanctuary later developed into an important complex in a rather unfavorable topographical location in the swampy plain could be traced back to an older cult that was at least connected with the place in the tradition. According to a local legend, Hera was born under a lygos tree that stood in the area of ​​the sanctuary. During the excavations of the remains of the Bronze Age sanctuary, a cult site with a tree stump was found, to which the legend could go back.

Since the 7th century BC The steadily increasing importance of sanctuary and city reached a climax in the 6th century BC. Next to the Heraion of Argos stood the most important sanctuary of the goddess on Samos. Consecration gifts unearthed in Heraion, Sami, testify to trade contacts with the whole of the world known to the Greeks at the time. Numerous statuary consecration gifts were placed in the sanctuary, such as the Geneleos group and the great Kouros of Samos .

Temple complex

The first monumental temple with a double row of columns ( Dipteros I) was built by the architect Theodoros of Samos around 575 BC. Built from local limestone. The first Dipteros had to be abandoned only two or three decades after construction began due to severe foundation damage caused by the swampy ground or by an earthquake. The new building, the Dipteros II, was probably built by Rhoikos from around 530 BC. Its core was largely based on limestone foils from the previous building, the inner columns consisted of porous shafts and marble capitals and bases, only the outer column wreath was built around 500 BC. Made entirely of marble. Dipterus II was once the largest temple in Greece after Herodotus .

Research history

Theodor Wiegand undertook the first excavations in 1910, but these had to be stopped as a result of the First World War . Since 1925 the Heraion has been one of the permanent excavations of the Athens Department of the German Archaeological Institute ; the work was interrupted due to the Second World War, but resumed in 1951 and continued to this day. The results of the excavations are published, the German Archaeological Institute has its own series Samos , in which the architecture and the find complexes in the various cultural layers and thus the chronology of the ancient sanctuary are presented.

The finds from the Heraion of Samos are exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Samos City .

Excavation director

Remarks

  1. ↑ Vladimir Milojčić : The prehistoric settlement under the Heraion. Excavation 1953 and 1955 (= Samos 1). Habelt, Bonn 1961.
  2. ↑ Pausanias 7: 4, 4.
  3. ↑ Jürgen Franssen: Votive and Representation. Statuary dedications from the archaic period from Samos and Attica (= archeology and history, vol. 13). Verlag Archeology and History, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-935289-36-8 .
  4. ↑ See Hermann J. Kienast: The decline of the Temple of Theodoros. In: Communications of the German Archaeological Institute, Athenian Department 113, 1998, pp. 111–131; Christoph Hendrich: The column order of the first Dipteros of Samos (= Samos 25). Habelt, Bonn 2007.
  5. ^ Hermann J. Kienast: Foundation in difficult terrain. Case studies from the Heraion of Samos . In: Adolf Hoffmann , Ernst-Ludwig Schwandner , Wolfram Hoepfner , Gunnar Brands (Eds.): Construction technology of antiquity (= discussions on archaeological building research 5). Berlin 1991, pp. 123-125.
  6. ↑ Andreas E. Furtwängler : Who designed the largest temple in Greece? . In: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologische Institut, Athenische Department 99, 1984, pp. 97–103; see. Hendrik Svenson-Evers: The Greek architects of archaic and classical times (= Archaeological Studies 11). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1997, pp. 7-8. 36-39.
  7. ↑ Nils Hellner : The column bases of the second Dipterus from Samos. Basis for the reconstruction of the temple in its construction phases (= Samos 26). Habelt, Bonn 2009.
  8. ↑ Herodotus, Historien 3, 60.

literature

Web links

Commons : Heraion of Samos  - collection of images

Coordinates: 37 ° 40 ′ 19 ″  N , 26 ° 53 ′ 8 ″  E