Panionion
The Panionion (Πανιώνιον) was the central shrine of the Ionian League , to which, presumably in the 7th century BC. BC, twelve Ionian cities on the west coast of Asia Minor had united.
Famous in antiquity and mentioned in several sources, it was only discovered in September 2004 by archaeologists from the Bochum Ruhr University . It is located around 100 km from İzmir , north of Priene at an altitude of 750 meters in the Mykale Mountains, which roughly corresponds to the information provided by Strabo .
The Ionians were after 1100 BC. Immigrated to Asia Minor from the Greek mainland and subsequently founded a number of important cities, which came to prosperity and political power as ports and trading centers as well as the mother poles of numerous other colony foundations. In the middle of the 7th century, a war over the city of Melia broke out in the settlement area of the native Karer . The city was destroyed, but they took over the cult that the Ionians found.
Already Homer mentions the worship of Poseidon Helikonios "on the Mykale airy crest," the bull sacrifices were offered. And here, on the site of the Carian cult site, according to Herodotus, the cities of the Ionian League of Twelve built their “all-Ionian” sanctuary, the Panionion. All sacred ceremonies, but also the political deliberations of the Probulen, the Ionian city representatives, took place in this temple.
The lonely location in the Mykale Mountains not far from Priene has always been known. An inscription was also found in 1673 that mentions the Panionion. Nevertheless, scientists were wrong for almost a century when they believed the remains of a semicircular staircase and an altar, discovered by Theodor Wiegand in 1904 near the village of Güzelçamlı, to be the Ionic sanctuary. Only the research campaign of the Bochum archaeologist Hans Lohmann confirmed what the classical philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was already convinced of in 1900 : the Panionion must be searched for in direct connection with older Carian finds. And these could not be proven at Wiegand's site, even through subsequent excavations.
What Lohmann's team discovered during the 2004 survey were the extensive ruins of a fortified Carian hilltop settlement. Here they also found the foundations and badly damaged walls of a younger temple of Ionic architecture from the 6th century BC. Its length of about 30 meters shows it as a Greek Hekatompedos ( temple one hundred feet long). According to initial investigations, it was around 540 BC. And later fell victim to destruction and fire , presumably during the Persian Wars .
The discovery of the Panionion now also enables an assignment of the remains previously thought to be near the village of Güzelçamlı. According to Diodorus , they wanted to move the sanctuary at a later time. Lohmann was able to confirm this hint: the temple and the altar were never completed. The plan, around the turn of the 4th to the 3rd century BC. To revive the Ionianism once more had obviously been given up.
In the summer of 2005, further research was carried out in the form of an emergency excavation in cooperation with the Aydın Museum - the vandalism of robbery graves makes it necessary to secure the remains quickly.
Lohmann's identifications and interpretations are not without controversy in the professional world. Alexander Herda, for example, denies the thesis that there were two Panionia and has instead suggested identifying the newly discovered hilltop settlement with Mykalessos / Mykale - a Boiotic foundation that gave the mountain its name. According to local legends, there was a sanctuary of Zeus Mycaleus founded by Perseus in the city, which could be the newly discovered Hekatompedos.
literature
- Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff : Panionion . In: Meeting reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (1906), no. 3, 38–57. ( Internet Archive )
- Gerhard Kleiner , Peter Hommel , Wolfgang Müller-Wiener : Panionion and Melie . de Gruyter, Berlin 1967.
- Hans Lohmann : Survey in Theben an der Mykale, 1st campaign 2001 . In: 20. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı 2. Cilt, 27–31 Mayıs 2002 Ankara. Ankara 2003. pp. 247-260.
- Hans Lohmann: Mélia, le Panionion et le culte de Poséidon Héliconios . In: G. Labarre, J.-M. Moret (ed.): Les cultes locaux dans les mondes grec et romain, Lyon, 7 - 8 June 2001 . Lyon 2004. p.
- Hans Lohmann: Survey in the Mykale, 2nd campaign 2002 . In: 21. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı 2003. Ankara 2004. pp. 251–264.
- Hans Lohmann: Melia, the Panionion and the cult of Poseidon Helikonios . In: E. Schwertheim, E. Winter (ed.): New research on Ionia . (= Asia Minor Studies 54.) Bonn 2005. pp. 57–91.
- Hans Lohmann: Survey in the Mycale, 3rd Campaign: The Discovery of the Archaic Panionion . In: 23. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı 2005. Ankara 2006. I pp. 241–252.
- Alexander Herda: Panionion-Melia, Mykalessos-Mykale, Perseus and Medusa. Reflections on the settlement history of the Mycale in the early Iron Age . In: Istanbuler Mitteilungen 56, 2006, pp. 43-102.
- Hans Lohmann u. a. Research and excavations in the Mykale 2001-2006 . In: Istanbuler Mitteilungen 57, 2007, pp. 59–178.
- Hans Lohmann u. a .: The roof of the archaic Panionion. (= Research in the Mycale 3; = Asia Minor Studies 70) Habelt, Bonn 2013, ISBN 978-3-7749-3741-3 .
Web links
- Panionies . In: Die Zeit , October 21, 2004
- Press release from the Ruhr University Bochum
Remarks
Coordinates: 37 ° 42 ′ 14.1 ″ N , 27 ° 19 ′ 48 ″ E