Persian rubble

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Finds from the Persian rubble, Acropolis of Athens , 1866. Angelitos-Athena (left), calf-bearer (center), Kritios boy (right).

As perserschutt the debris and planarization layers are referred to by the clean up after plunder and destruction of the temples on the Acropolis in Athens v during the Persian Cast 480/479. Were created.

Emergence

In the second war of the Greeks against the Persians , the Persian king Xerxes I moved to Greece with an army of over 100,000 men. When it came to the first battle at Thermopylae and at the same time the naval battle of Cape Artemision , the Spartan king Leonidas and his 300-man bodyguard and auxiliary troops fell on the side of the Greeks in the futile defense of the Thermopylae pass, which led to the withdrawal of the Greek army and the solution of the should ensure the Greek fleet from the enemy. Many Greeks were on the Persian side anyway. After the defeat, central Greece was open to the Persians, and with it Athens, their most important enemy in Hellas alongside Sparta. As a result, Attica and Athens were temporarily conquered and sacked by the Persians.

Athens was evacuated after the Battle of Thermopylae and most of the Athenians fled to Salamis Island. The Persians occupied the city and took revenge for the destruction of their own sanctuaries by Greek troops during the Ionian Uprising , when an Athenian contingent took part in the conquest and pillage of Sardis : the temples on the Acropolis in particular were now deliberately devastated or completely destroyed. The extent of the destruction in the rest of the city is unclear. After the departure of the Persians, the Athenians did not attempt to repair or repair the little remains of architectural remnants and votive gifts on the Acropolis. Rather, as the possession of the deity, the desecrated cult objects and works of art were solemnly laid down in the mighty filling layers, by means of which the previously irregular surface structure of the Acropolis was raised to a significantly higher, uniform level for the new buildings. These filling layers represent the so-called Persian rubble. Many of the temples and structures built later were built on this backfill, provided that the foundations of the previous buildings were not reused for them - as was probably the case with the Parthenon .

Even if the devastation was concentrated on the Acropolis, other important city districts were still affected. These include the destruction of the Telesterion and many buildings on the agora , including the Temple of Apollon Patroos , the Stoa Basileios and the old Bouleuterion , to name just a few.

Excavations

The first archaeological recordings of the 'Persian rubble' of the Acropolis were made between 1863 and 1866 by the French archaeologist Charles Ernest Beulé . Real deep excavations were carried out from 1885 to 1890 under the archaeologist Panagiotis Kavvadias , supported by the architects and building researchers Wilhelm Dörpfeld and Georg Kawerau . The investigations revealed many works and fragments of plastic art. Among the finds were numerous statues of girls, Koren , which were once set up as votive gifts on the Acropolis. The gable sculptures of several archaic temples, which presumably stood on the Acropolis, were also among the finds from the exposed layers of rubble. The torso of the Kritios boy , the famous calf-bearer and the so-called Angelitos-Athena , an archaic Athena statue in the peplos with aegis , are among the important finds from the relevant excavations.

The excavators, and subsequently the archaeologists, believed for a long time that they were looking at monuments that were firmly dated with the finds from the Persian rubble . After all, before 480/479 BC they had to. BC, the time the Acropolis was destroyed, so the argument goes. However, follow-up examinations and critical inspection of the excavation documentation revealed that the excavations were firstly carried out rather hastily and secondly poorly documented. For the Kritios boy in particular, membership of the class of destruction was subsequently questioned; a question that has not yet been answered, especially since the actual layer of destruction in the archaeological evidence can only be identified in places due to the later clearing-up work. There is also the fact that it is impossible to assess where all the material that was used for filling and terracing came from. Because the destruction had spread to all parts of the city, and in the agora alone the Temple of Apollon Patroos , the Stoa Basileios and the old Bouleuterion were replaced, and their rubble was therefore disposed of.

The terracing work on the Acropolis, which went hand in hand with an expansion of the castle area under Kimon , was probably not started before 468 BC. After the late phase of the Persian Wars ended in the Battle of Eurymedon . Now the financial means have been released to implement such an ambitious project. According to the archaeological findings, the works seem to have continued into the fifties of the 5th century BC. To have moved. When construction work on the Parthenon began in 447 BC. The leveling work had to be completed at the latest. It is only this date that represents the actual fixed date before which all works of art found in the so-called Persian rubble must have been created. How many decades before cannot be determined from the Persian rubble.

literature

  • Panagiotis Cavvadias , Georg Kawerau : The excavation of the Acropolis from 1885 to 1890. = Η ανασκαφή της Ακροπόλεως από του 1885 μέχρι του 1890 (= Βιβλιοθήκη της εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας. 13). Typographeion Hestia, Athens 1906.
  • Jens Andreas Bundgaard: The Excavation of the Athenian Acropolis. 1882-1990. The Original Drawings. Edited from the papers of Georg Kawerau (= University of Copenhagen, Institute of Classical and Near Eastern Archeology. Publication. Vol. 1). 2 volumes. Gyldendal, Copenhagen 1974, ISBN 87-00-54491-4 .
  • Astrid Lindenlauf: The Persian rubble on the Athens Acropolis. In: Wolfram Hoepfner (Ed.): Cult and cult buildings on the Acropolis. International symposium from July 7th to 9th, 1995 in Berlin. Archaeological Seminar of the Free University of Berlin, Berlin 1997, pp. 45–115.
  • Martin Steskal: The finding of destruction 480/79 of the Athens Acropolis. A case study on the established chronological framework (= Antiquitates. Archaeological Research Results. Vol. 30). Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-8300-1385-X (also: Wien, Univ., Diss., 1999).

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