Lyktus

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Lyktus
Buleuterion, Lyktus

Buleuterion , Lyktus

meaning Ancient greek city
Start of building: 13th century BC Chr.
founding 6th century BC Chr.
Heyday 2nd century AD
Given up around 1200
discovery 16th Century
Height: 620 m
Location: 35 ° 12 '28 "  N , 25 ° 22' 7"  E Coordinates: 35 ° 12 '28 "  N , 25 ° 22' 7"  E
Directions Heraklion - Kastelli
opening hours freely accessible
entry free

Lyktos ( Greek  Λύκτος ) or Lyttos ( Greek  Λύττος ), Latin Lyctus , is the name of an ancient city in Crete . Today the nearby village of Lyttos bears the name.

mythology

In Greek mythology , Lyctus played a central role in the myth of Olympian Zeus . According to Hesiod's theogony , Lyktos was the place where Rhea , fleeing from her husband Kronos, gave birth to her third son Zeus and hid in a cave in the Dikti Mountains ; after Polybios and Pausanias , Lykaion in Arcadia was the place of birth, and Zeus was brought to Crete by Rhea's mother Gaia and then hidden in the Aigai Mountains near Lyktos and raised there by Amalthea .

history

In the list of place names in the mortuary temple of Pharaoh Amenophis III. the place is mentioned as Rikata , a trading place of the Keftiu (Cretans). The place appears as ru-ki-to ( ??? ) on Linear-B clay tablets from Knossos , which are written in Mycenaean Greek . In Homer's Iliad , as in most ancient manuscripts, the city is called Lyktos (Λύκτος), on coins and in inscriptions almost all of them are called Lyttos (Λύττος), Lyktos being the older form of the name.

In ancient times, Lyktus was the oldest city in Crete and was founded by the Lacedaemonian colonists in the Doric era . Greek mythology reports a Doric immigration to Crete under Tektamos , two generations before Minos , which fell into the third palace or post- palace period of the Minoan culture . Homer names Lyktos in the ship catalog of the Iliad , the list of ships sent in the Trojan War . Koiranos , the charioteer of Meriones , came from Lyktos and was killed by Hector . In the Odyssey , Homer states that some of the inhabitants of Crete were Dorians at this time. According to recent research, increased Doric immigration to Crete did not occur until around 1000 BC. The explanations of the geographer Strabon , who reported that Althaimenes , the son of Keisos , came to Crete and founded cities, fit this date . The location of Lyktos on a ridge is typical for the founding of cities by the Dorians.

The Spartan Lykurg , who stayed in Crete for a while, is considered to be the legislator of Lyktos . On some stone blocks from Lyktos there are parts of legal codes from the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Received. The citizens were divided into hetaires and held syssitia , which were financed by taxes. Lyktus became very influential. His domain extended from the north to the south coast and in the east to the city of Minoa . The city of Arsinoe also belonged to the sphere of influence. The port city of Lyktos was Chersonesos on the north coast of Crete . Shortly before 411 BC The city made a treaty with Lindos on Rhodes .

344 BC BC Lyktos was conquered by Knossos with the help of a Phocian army led by Phalaikos . Archidamos III. von Sparta, who was on the way to Taranto with his armed forces , landed on Crete without further ado, defeated the attackers and gave the city back to its inhabitants. In the 3rd century BC An alliance was made with the Seleucids Antiochus I and his successor. Alliances were also formed with the cities of Malla and Praisos . Lyktos rose to become one of the most influential poles in Crete. However, when it became dependent on Gortyn and Knossos to the northwest, there was a constant dispute. It received support from Philip V of Macedonia .

The coalition of Gortyn and Knossos brought all of Crete under their control. Only Lyktus refused to submit, which ultimately ended in the so-called Lyttic War (221-219 BC). However, the cities of Polyrrhenia , Keraia and Lappa soon left the coalition with Knossos, and in Gortyn there were clashes between coalition supporters and coalition opponents . Knossos therefore sent troops to Gortyn to support their allies. Lyktos devastated the Knossische area at this time. After Gortyn was pacified again, the coalition took advantage of the absence of troops and moved against Lyktus. The city was conquered with ease, completely destroyed, and women and children enslaved. After the Lyctic troops found their hometown destroyed, the population went into exile in Lappa

Not much later the city was rebuilt and shortly before 200 BC. The city reappears as an ally of Hierapytna . 184 BC BC it conquered the Knossischen places Lykastos and Diatonion together with Gortyn. A year later it was mentioned in connection with a treaty with Eumenes II . With the conquest of Crete by the Romans , Lyktos became 67 BC. Captured by troops under the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus . In Roman times the city still played a considerable role, from this and the following Byzantine period all still visible remains come. In late antiquity Lyktos became a bishopric and was fortified with a wall for the first time. It was abandoned at the beginning of the Venetian period .

exploration

The Italian Onorio Belli toured Crete several times between 1582 and 1596 and took in the ruins that were still visible. He drew the floor plan of the Lyktos theater. It was the largest in Crete, was about 180 m wide and held 80,000 spectators. There is no trace of this structure today. In 1834 Robert Pashley visited the place. While the English captain Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt was mapping the sea around Crete from 1851-52, he also came to Lyktos. In 1894, the Italian archaeologists Lucio Mariani and Antonio Taramelli recorded the visible ancient remains. They suspected the theater about 200 m east of the Timaios Stavros church. Angeliki Lebessi carried out the first systematic excavations in 1971. From 1981 to 1986 the Greek archaeologist Giorgios Rethemiotakes uncovered the Bouleuterion. In the 1990s Krzysztof Nowicki visited the place. During the inspection he found a few Late Helladic sherds (SH IIIC) west of the Acropolis as well as protogeometric , geometric and archaic ceramics. Most of the sherds came from the Classical , Hellenistic and Roman times. He suspected that Lyktus was in the 13th century BC. Chr. (SH IIIB / IIIC) was founded.

description

Aqueduct at Toichos

On the highest point of the acropolis of Lyktos there is a small three-aisled late Byzantine Agios Georgios church. It can be dated to the year 1321 by means of an inscription with a date. Only a few remains of the frescoes have survived inside. It has a length of 7 m and a width of 6 m. The entrance is on the west and there is an apse on the east . The north side wall has one buttress and the south has two. Antique building materials were used to build the church, some of which came from a previous building. In the northeast corner there is a stone with an inscription from the 2nd century. The stone bears a cross on the side, which shows that it has served as the column capital of a church in the meantime.

The foundation walls of the Buleuterion were found on a lower plateau about 30 m north-west of the church. It is a 13.90 m long and 11.40 m wide building. It had a floor made of white-gray marble slabs. In the west there was a speaker's podium and on the long sides in the north and south there were two rows of seats for listeners. In the building there were several inscriptions and a small altar that was used for the imperial cult. On the basis of the columns with Corinthian column capitals that were found, which resemble capitals from the Villa Dionysus in Knossos, the Buleuterion can be dated to the early 2nd century. The building was probably destroyed by the earthquake on July 21, 365. At that time, however, it was no longer used as a buleuterion. To the left of the entrance to the building, two inscriptions from the building were erected. They both date from the period between December 10, 124 and December 9, 125. The one on the left honors Vibia Sabina , the wife of the Roman emperor Hadrian , the other one to Hadrian himself.

About 60 m to the east are the ruins of a windmill with an apsidal floor plan. There are further foundation walls of windmills with apsidal or round floor plans east of the Acropolis. About 180 m northeast of the Agios Georgios Church is the single-nave Timaios Stavros Church. It dates from 1843. It is about 12 m long and 5 m wide with an apse in the east and an entrance in the south. To the right of the entrance is a stone with an inscription from the second or third century. The ancient festivals Theodaisia ​​and Belchania are mentioned here.

About 40 m west below the Timaios Stavros church are the ruins of a conical building . About 20 m further west there are foundations of nine round rooms. Because of the numerous pottery shards and bones of sacrificial animals, it is believed that an oracle site existed here. To the southeast of the Acropolis there are still imposing remains of the Roman cisterns .

About 1.4 km south-west of Lyktos there are remains of the aqueduct, which can be up to 14 m high , near Toichos . It conducted water into the city from a spring about 10 km to the east above Krasi . Since the aqueduct followed the contour of the mountain to Kastamonitsa and then more or less ran along the ridge to Lyktos, the aqueduct had a total length of 22 km.

The modern Lyttos

After the ancient city, the village of Xidas (Ξιδάς) below the ancient city was renamed Lyttos Irakliou (Λύττος Ηρακλείου). Today it belongs to the municipality of Kastelli . The soccer club Lyttos Ergotelis from Heraklion also bears the name.

literature

Web links

Commons : Lyktos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hesiod: Theogony 477 ( German translation )
  2. ^ Robert von Ranke-Graves : Greek Mythology , Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1960, ISBN 3-499-55404-6 , p. 32.
  3. ↑ Elmar Edel , Manfred Görg: The place name lists in the northern columned courtyard of the mortuary temple Amenophis III . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-447-05219-8 .
  4. ↑ ru-ki-to. Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B. minoan.deaditerranean.com, accessed May 15, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Georg Busolt : The history of Greece up to the battle of Chaeroneia . Volume 1. Perthes, Gotha 1885–1904, p. 332, Textarchiv - Internet Archive .
  6. ↑ Polybios 4, 53-56; Aristotle : Politics , 1271b.
  7. ↑ Homer: Iliad , 2, 647; Edzard Visser : Homer's Catalog of Ships . B. G. Teubner, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-519-07442-7 , pp. 616 ( online [accessed May 17, 2014]). ; Claude Brügger, Magdalene Stoevesandt, Edzard Visser: Lyktos . In: Joachim Latacz (Ed.): Homer's Iliad . Overall commentary (Basel Commentary / BK). tape 2 . de Gruyter, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-022495-5 , p. 210 ( online [accessed May 16, 2014]).
  8. ↑ Homer: Iliad , 17, 611
  9. ↑ Homer: Odyssey , 19, 177
  10. ↑ Strabo: Geographica , 10, 4, 15 (p. 480)
  11. ↑ Strabo: Geographica, 10, 4, 17−19 (p. 481−2)
  12. ^ Strabo: Geographica, 10, 4, 14 (p. 479)
  13. ^ Inscription Lindos II 13
  14. ↑ Diodor : Bibliotheca historica , 16, 62 ( online) (en)
  15. ↑ IC I xix 1 ; IC I xix 3
  16. ↑ IC III vi 11 ; IC III vi 12
  17. ↑ Polybios 4, 53-54.
  18. ↑ Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum: 627
  19. ^ Livius periochae 99.
  20. ^ Edward Falkener: A description of some important theaters and other remains in Crete: from a ms. history of Candia by Onorio Belli in 1586 . Trübner & Co., London 1854, p. 18-19 ( online [accessed May 4, 2018]).
  21. ^ Robert Pashley: Travels in Crete . London 1837, p. 268−9 ( online [accessed May 4, 2018]).
  22. ↑ Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt: Travels and researches in Crete . tape 1 . London 1865, p. 89−90 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  23. ↑ Lucio Mariani: Antichita cretesi . In: Monumenti antichi . tape 6 , 1896, pp. 237-239 ( digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de [accessed June 1, 2018]).
  24. ^ Antonio Taramelli: Ricerche archeologiche cretesi . In: Monumenti antichi . tape 9 . Milan 1899, p. 387−401 ( digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de [accessed June 1, 2018]).
  25. ↑ Angeliki Lebessi: Report on Excavations at Lyttos . In: Archaeologiko Deltio . tape 26 , 1971, p. 493-9 .
  26. ↑ Angelos Chaniotis, Giorgios Rethemiotakes: New inscriptions from the imperial Lyttos, Crete. ( online )
  27. ↑ Krzysztof Nowicki: Defensible sites in Crete C.1200-800 BC (LM IIIB / IIIC Through Early Geometric) . Kliemo SA, Eupen 2000, ISBN 978-1-935488-15-6 , p. 177−178 .
  28. ↑ Inscriptiones Creticae IC I xiii 58
  29. ↑ Angelos Chaniotis, Giorgios Rethemiotakes: New inscriptions from the imperial Lyttos, Crete.
  30. ↑ Inscriptiones Creticae IC I xiii 11
  31. ↑ Angelos Chaniotis: The Treaties between Cretan Poleis in the Hellenistic Period . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 978-3-515-06827-7 , p. 243
  32. ↑ Lyttos (Greece / Crete)