Krisa (Acropolis)

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Plan of the acropolis of Krisa
A = Church of Agios Georgios
B = Upper town
C = Lower town
D = Steep wall

Krisa or Krissa ( Greek  Κρίσα or Κρίσσα ) is a first by Homer mentioned ancient Greek city. It is believed that the ruins found at Chrisso today are the Homeric Krisa.

Lore

In Greek mythology , Krisos , the son of Phocos , founded Krisa and named it after himself. His son Strophios ruled over the city after his father. He married Anaxibia , the sister of Agamemnon and fathered the Pylades with her . After the death of her father Agamemnon, Elektra sent her underage brother Orestes to Krisa at the court of Strophios, where he was brought up with Pylades.

The city is mentioned for the first time in Homer's ship catalog for the Phocian contingents of the Trojan War and there Κρῖσα ζάθεα , the holy Krisa, is mentioned. It is also referred to as Krisa in the Hymn to Apollo , and its location is also described. Accordingly, the city or its area lay below the snow-covered Parnassus , on a rock shoulder facing west, below a rugged rock and above a rugged gorge. On the basis of this very precise statement, it was assumed that the poet of the hymn or his informant would have formulated it on the basis of his own appearance. When Apollo, in the form of a dolphin, sailed with Cretan sailors to Pylos , he came to the wine-rich Krisa and from there to his sanctuary in Delphi above . The close connection between the city and the sanctuary meant that the city name Krisa could be used synonymously for the Delphic sanctuary.

In the 7th century BC Krisa must have been an influential city and even participated in the founding of Metapont . According to extensive ancient tradition, Krisa was founded around 590 BC. Ostensibly because of the appropriation of holy land and because of the tariffs levied on travelers in the First Holy War , besieged by a coalition of Amphictyonia , Sikyon and Athens and finally conquered and destroyed. However, other sources call the conquered place Kirrha , which, according to Pausanias, was the younger name of Krisas. The reason for this was probably disputes over the control of the Sanctuary of Delphi, which until then had been in the expanding sphere of power of Krisas. So far there are no traces or finds of the destroyed archaic city.

The name Krisa was retained in poetic and mythological contexts. So Sophocles called the plain of the city in the Elektra the Crisean ( Κρισαῖον πέδον ) and Callimachus also chose this form for a hymn. The bay on which the city was located was almost without exception called the Crisean ( Κρισαῖος κόλπος ) in ancient times .

Agios Georgios church and remains of the wall

location

The ruins that are believed to be the Homeric Krisa are on Stefani Hill, about 1 km south of Chrisso. The church of Agios Georgios stands on the hill, which drops steeply to the south about 50 m. As early as the 19th century, travelers had noticed that there was once a settlement here. John Squire (1780-1812), who explored the Bay of Itea with William Martin Leake and William Richard Hamilton in 1802 , was the first to identify Krisa with the town of Chrisso because of the name. Leake concretized this information in his Travels in Northern Greece in 1835 , because Chrisso can be identified not only because of the name affinity with Krisa, but also because of the description of the Homeric hymn that applies to this place. But it was not until 1936–1937 that the École française d'Athènes carried out archaeological excavations here.

Archaeological evidence

The settlement on Stefani Hill was founded around 1900 BC. BC ( Middle Helladic II) founded. It is believed that residents from Kirrha , about 5 km to the south, settled here after their city by the sea was destroyed by invaders. A city was built on the southwest ledge. The walls of the houses were built from small stones and unfired bricks. Graves from the Middle Helladic period were found between the houses. As was customary for the time, children's graves were located under the floors of the houses. Almost all the graves were stone box graves.

At the end of the Middle Helladic (MH III B, around 1600 BC), Krisa was destroyed by fire. A short time later, during the Late Helladic period I, the hill was partially repopulated, intervening directly in the Middle Helladic structures, some of which were also reused. It took a while for the place to regain its original dimensions. From this time three Megara were found next to small buildings , one of them probably two-story because of the proven stairs, which suggests a palace-like structure. Around 1300 BC BC (Late Helladic III B) a wall about 500 m long and 3.50 m thick was built, which ran west, north and east around the settlement. No wall was built in the south, as the terrain here slopes steeply towards the Pleistostal. In the west one discovered a small gate and in the east at the Agios Georgios church was the main entrance. A second wall with a thickness of 6.20 m was added to the city wall in the northeast. It ran first to the east, bent to the north and turned in a large arc to the steep face in the east. Here, too, the south and east remained unarmed due to the steep terrain. A gate could be found in the north. According to current knowledge, this additionally fortified area remained undeveloped. End of the 12th century BC The city was probably destroyed in the course of the migration movements at that time .

Isolated finds, such as an archaic altar with a dedicatory inscription to Athena and Hera , which was previously regarded as a clue for an archaic settlement of the place, have been carried here from the Delphic sanctuary.

It was not until the 5th or 6th century AD, during the Byzantine period , that the hill was repopulated for a short time. Presumably the settlers came from the neighboring Kirra , which was abandoned at that time. The Bronze Age city wall was renewed and reinforced. The houses were built over the ancient walls.

literature

  • Lucien Lerat, Jean Jannoray: Premières recherches sur l'acropole de Krisa (Phocide). In: Revue archéologique . Volume 8, 1936, pp. 129-145
  • Henri van Effenterre , Jean Jannoray : Fouilles de Krisa (Phocide). In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Volume 61, 1937, pp. 299–326 ( digitized version )
  • Henri van Effenterre, Michelle van Effenterre: Fouilles de Krisa . In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique . tape 62 , 1938, pp. 110-148 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Krisa (Acropolis)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Scholion to Euripides , Orestes 33; see also Stephanos von Byzanz sv Κρῖσα , who quotes Hekataios (= FGrHist 1 F 115a).
  2. ↑ Homer, Iliad 2,520.
  3. ↑ Homeric Hymnos 3,269 and 282-285: ἵκεο δ 'ἐς Κρίσην ὑπὸ Παρνησὸν νιφόεντα / κνημὸν πρὸς ζέφυρον τετραμμένον, αὐτὰρ ὕπερθεν / πέτρη ἐπικρέμαται, κοίλη δ' ὑποδέδρομε βῆσσα / τρηχεῖ ' .
  4. ^ Edzard Visser : Homer's catalog of ships , Teubner, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1997. ISBN 3-519-07442-7 , p. 383.
  5. ↑ Homeric Hymn 3: 439-448.
  6. ↑ For example Pindar , Isthmische Oden 2,18; Pythian Odes 5.37; 6.18.
  7. ↑ Ephoros from Kyme in Strabon 6,1,15 (= FGrHist 70 F 141).
  8. ↑ Pausanias 10,37,5.
  9. ↑ For the occasion, course and consequences see, for example, George Forrest: The First Sacred War. In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Volume 80, 1956, pp. 33-52 ( online ), Filippo Cassola: Note sulla guerra Crisea. In: José Fontana u. a. (Ed.): Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni. Volume 2. Bretschneider, Rome 1980, pp. 413-439 and Klaus Tausend : Amphiktyonie und Symmachie. Forms of interstate relations in archaic Greece (= Historia. Individual writings. Volume 73). F. Steiner, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 978-3-515-06137-7 , pp. 161-166.
  10. ^ Sophocles, Elektra 730.
  11. ↑ Callimachus, Hymns 4,178.
  12. ↑ Compare, for example, Thucydides 1,107; 2.86.
  13. ^ Posthumous from the records published by Robert Walpole : Memoirs Relating to European and Asiatic Turkey, and other Countries of the East. Edited from manuscript journals. Second edition. London 1817, p. 344 ( digitized version ).
  14. ^ William Martin Leake: Travels in Northern Greece. Pp. 583-587 ( digitized version ).
  15. ^ Henri van Effenterre, Jean Jannoray: Fouilles de Krisa (Phocide). In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Volume 61, 1937, p. 315.
  16. ^ Henri van Effenterre, Jean Jannoray: Fouilles de Krisa (Phocide). In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Volume 61, 1937, pp. 316, 318-320, 323.
  17. ^ Jean Jannoray: Krisa, Kirrha et la première guerre sacrée. In: Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Volume 61, 1937, p. 40 ( digitized version ).

Coordinates: 38 ° 27 ′ 57.5 ″  N , 22 ° 27 ′ 50 ″  E