South Hill (Kerameikos)
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The remains of an archaeological structure on the Kerameikos , the most important and largest ancient cemetery in Athens , are called the south hill .
The south hill belongs to a group of sanctuaries and burial mounds that marked the end of a grave-free zone between the wall and the necropolis after the Athens city wall was erected . These included hill G , the rotunda on the Eridanos , the small burial mound of the myrtle , the burial mound west of the rotunda and the tumulus in front of the Dipylon .
The south hill is located south of the Eridanos , from it you have a good overview of the area of the archaeological park Kerameikos. It is the first funerary monument in front of the Holy Gate. The hill was raised on the site of a prehistoric grave in the late Archaic period. At the foot of the hill, oriented towards the street of the graves, there was a small sanctuary of a deity that can no longer be determined today. Opposite the hill, at the foot of hill G, was the sanctuary of Tritopatores . In archaic and classical times, the site was owned by the state.
The prehistoric grave at the site was a chamber grave from the Bronze Age with a dromos opening to the east . Another grave from the time between 575 and 550 BC Was created a little west of the chamber grave. Here a child was buried in a horse head amphora . In the third quarter of the 6th century BC Two shaft graves were driven about 2.5 meters deep into the marl rock, over which a tumulus of reddish earth was piled up. This had a maximum height of four meters and a maximum diameter of 34 meters, but is not completely circular, but slightly oval. One of the graves was robbed during the excavation. The second grave, on the other hand, was still intact and is a specialty among the graves on the Kerameikos, as there was no vessel from Attic production in it. However, were lekythoi from Samos and ointment vessels from Lydia found. The body, about two meters long and therefore extremely large at the time, with its head facing east, was buried on a kline that was decorated with ivory and amber . Such Klinen were often depicted on vase pictures of the time , but have seldom been passed down as well preserved as in this case. Apparently the deceased was not an Athenian, but a high-ranking guest of the Attic elite, which at that time had many contacts in other regions of the Mediterranean world. Around 510 BC The tumulus was covered with a layer of gray gravel and the slope towards the north was leveled.
Around this time, as on the opposite hill G, new graves were laid. Possibly it was a reaction within the framework of the Kleisthenian reforms , in the waters of which traces of the old peisistrate regime and its relationships were removed and a citizens' necropolis was established on the site. In the south and east there were graves of adults, in the north and west of the hill hundreds of children's burials, especially newborns, mostly in simple amphorae. Black- figure lekyths made especially for the burials were usually included as additions . These child burials ended around 425 BC. With the establishment of the south path. In the first half of the 5th century BC A water pipe made of large clay pipes was laid on the eastern edge of the hill. At the foot of the hill, by state roads on public land, the envoy stelae , state graves for envoys who died on a diplomatic mission in Athens, were erected. Over the next decades and centuries, the terrain level of the Kerameikos continued to rise, so that the hill disappeared over time. Towards the end of the 4th century, the south route east of the hill was abandoned. The whole area was changed a lot at the time and the street level was raised. Both the area of the former hill and the southern path continued to be used for burial sites until Roman times.
The first excavations took place in 1870 under the direction of Stefanos Koumanoudis . Valerios Stais recognized in 1896 that it was a burial mound. Alfred Brueckner continued his research from 1907 to 1910 . In 1932, under the direction of Richard Eilmann , some of the graves on the hill were examined. Final excavations were carried out from 1960 to 1963 by Franz Willemsen and Ursula Knigge .
literature
- Ursula Knigge : The south hill. (= Kerameikos , Volume 9), de Gruyter, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-11-004879-5 .
- Ursula Knigge: The Kerameikos of Athens. Guided tour of excavations and history. Krene, Athens 1988, pp. 156-158.
- Jutta Stroszeck : The Kerameikos in Athens. History, buildings and monuments in the archaeological park. Bibliopolis, Athens 2014, ISBN 978-3-943741-04-9 , especially pp. 101-103.
Web links
Remarks
Coordinates: 37 ° 58 ′ 41.9 ″ N , 23 ° 43 ′ 3 ″ E