Bram and I next headed to the little uninhabited island of Delos. Delos was the second most sacred land (after Delphi, which we also visited) for the Greeks, and was home to an Oracle. It was also where the god Apollo was born.
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| On the boat to Delos |
Approaching the island, we could see that it was filled with ruins!
The water in Greece is always an amazing shade of green and blue. This picture seemed to come the closest to capturing the beauty.
On approach: more ruins.
It was really amazing to see the quantity and quality of the ruins. There were leftovers of a temple.
Our tour guide first took us down the residential neighborhood. The walls used to be covered in plaster. He points out some of the plaster that still remains on the wall.
The niches in the wall were used to hold oil lamps, since the rooms did not have windows.
Who knows what this is? Perhaps it was a butcher's table for filleting fish.
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| High end real estate of Ancient Greece |
In one of the richer households, we could see the beautiful mosaic floor, which was the floor for the open-air terrace. It was in the center of the house, with rooms on all 4 sides. The men lived on the bottom, the women on top.
Our tour guide demonstrates how they made wine - by stomping on a slab of marble with a grove that helped to drain away all that nice wine.
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| Smash those grapes! |
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| Pass the paper. |
We stand on either side of what used to be the communal bathroom.
The houses were close together, forming long, cobblestoned streets with walls on either side.
Delos has no water of its own. Therefore, collecting the rain was very important. They stored the water in giant underground cisterns, sealed with waterproof volcanic ash from Santorini.
At the end of the street was the giant theater.
Now we headed over to the temple part of the island, reserved for worshiping the gods.
Halfway up the slopes was a temple to Isis. We could see temples dotting the hill all the way to the top, where there was a temple to Zeus.
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| That's what happens when you mess with the gods! |
But the main temple was to Apollo, since this is the island where he was born. In the center of the island was a huge temple, with a statue, about 10 feet tall, of Apollo. Unfortunatly, the statue no longer remains in its entirity. It used to be one piece, but looters sawed it apart to transport it away. Something must have happened, because they didn't make it. The two large stones in this picture are the statues torso and shoulders. No one knows where the other pieces are.
Stone lions guarded the temple of Apollo.
Closeup of one of the mosaics.
An alter on Delos.
So cool Were these stones marble as well? When were these destroyed do you know?
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of the stone (especially the statues) were marble. I don't know when they were looted - I think most of it was a continuous process up until the late 1800s when people started to care about archeology.
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