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28-577: Gate in the city wall of Classical Athens [REDACTED] Layout of the gate complex of Kerameikos in c.  300 BC , including the Dipylon , the Sacred Gate, and the Pompeion The Sacred Gate ( Greek : Ἱερὰ Πύλη , Hiera Pyle ) was a gate in the city wall of Classical Athens , in the modern neighbourhood of Kerameikos . Its name derives from

56-560: A cairn or a long barrow . Several cists are sometimes found close together within the same cairn or barrow. Often ornaments have been found within an excavated cist, indicating the wealth or prominence of the interred individual. This old word is preserved in the Nordic languages as kista in Swedish and kiste in Danish and Norwegian, where it is the word for a funerary coffin. In English

84-498: A cist ( / ˈ k ɪ s t / ; also kist / ˈ k ɪ s t / ; from Ancient Greek : κίστη , Middle Welsh Kist or Germanic Kiste ) or cist grave is a small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead . In some ways, it is similar to the deeper shaft tomb . Examples occur across Europe and in the Middle East. A cist may have formerly been associated with other monuments, perhaps under

112-409: A pelike , and numerous lekythoi . All of these pieces are common in quality and use. The excavator, Baziatopoulou, further remarks that the offerings are surprisingly few considering the number of dead buried within the pit. She then notes that this is especially true when taking into account the probable loss of one or more upper levels from prior intrusions into the burial, which would have brought

140-516: The Plague of Athens , which was prevalent from 430 to 428 BC, followed by a recurrence from 427 to 426 BC. Pottery found within the grave was used to date the burial to between 430 and 426 BC based on the styles common during that time. The burial is considered to be related to the Athenian plague not only because of the dating of the burial, but also because of the nature of the burial. The chaos caused by

168-793: The Sacred Way that led from it to Eleusis , the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries . The site is uniquely well preserved for Athens, and shows clear evidence of the successive building phases from the 5th century BC to the 1st century AD. The Eridanos river passed through the gate in a channel. References [ edit ] Sources [ edit ] Knigge, Ursula (1988). Der Kerameikos von Athen. Führung durch Ausgrabungen und Geschichte [ The Kerameikos of Athens. Tour through Excavations and History ] (in German). Krene Verlag. External links [ edit ] 3d reconstruction of

196-503: The Dipylon courtyard; excavators have found heaps of bones in front of the city wall. The Pompeion and many other buildings in the vicinity of the Sacred Gate were razed to the ground by the marauding army of the Roman dictator Sulla , during his sacking of Athens in 86 BC ; an episode that Plutarch described as a bloodbath. During the 2nd century AD, a storehouse was constructed on the site of

224-686: The Panathenaic Way towards the Acropolis. The bulk of the area lies about 7–10 meters below modern street level, having in the past been inundated by centuries' worth of sediment accumulation from the floods of the Eridanos. As of spring 2007, Kerameikos is the name given to the metro station which belongs to Line 3 of the Athens Metro, adjacent to the Technopolis of Gazi . Cist In archeology ,

252-504: The Plague of Athens, as described by Thucydides , matches with the disordered nature of the pit. The pit is further thought to be a state burial, conducted for victims whose families could not afford proper burials. Bodies were found in five successive layers within the pit, with more care shown on the bottom levels and increasingly little care shown as the burial continued upwards. Bodies were thrown in haphazardly, their positions dictated by

280-510: The Pompeion, but it was destroyed during the invasion of the Heruli in 267 AD. The ruins became the site of potters' workshops until about 500 AD, when two parallel colonnades were built behind the city gates, overrunning the old city walls. A new Festival Gate was constructed to the east with three entrances leading into the city. This was in turn destroyed in raids by the invading Avars and Slavs at

308-555: The city square or dēmos (δῆμος) of the Kerameis (Κεραμεῖς, potters), which in turn derived its name from the word κέραμος ( kéramos , "pottery clay", from which the English word " ceramic " is derived). The "Inner Kerameikos" was the former "potters' quarter" within the city and "Outer Kerameikos" covers the cemetery and also the Dēmósion Sēma (δημόσιον σῆμα, public graveyard) just outside

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336-734: The city wall and two large city gates facing north-west were erected in the Kerameikos. The Sacred Way ran through the Sacred Gate , on the southern side, to Eleusis. On the northern side a wide road, the Dromos, ran through the double-arched Dipylon Gate (also known as the Thriasian Gate) and on to the Platonic Academy a few miles away. State graves were built on either side of the Dipylon Gate, for

364-757: The city wall in the Keremikos area , by Ancient Athens 3D Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sacred_Gate&oldid=1254457768 " Categories : City gates in Greece Classical Athens Ancient Greek buildings and structures in Athens Kerameikos City walls of Athens Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Articles containing Greek-language text CS1 German-language sources (de) Kerameikos The area took its name from

392-489: The city walls, where Pericles delivered his funeral oration in 431 BC. The cemetery was also where the Ηiera Hodos (the Sacred Way , i.e. the road to Eleusis ) began, along which the procession moved for the Eleusinian Mysteries . The quarter was located there because of the abundance of clay mud carried over by the Eridanos River. The area has undergone a number of archaeological excavations in recent years, though

420-603: The end of the 6th century, and the Kerameikos fell into obscurity. It was not rediscovered until a Greek worker dug up a stele in April 1863. Archaeological excavations in the Kerameikos began in 1870 under the auspices of the Greek Archaeological Society . They have continued from 1913 to the present day under the German Archaeological Institute at Athens . Latest findings in the Kerameikos include

448-405: The excavated area covers only a small portion of the ancient dēmos . It was originally an area of marshland along the banks of the Eridanos river which was used as a cemetery as long ago as the 3rd millennium BC. It became the site of an organised cemetery from about 1200 BC; numerous cist graves and burial offerings from the period have been discovered by archaeologists. Houses were constructed on

476-642: The excavation of a 2.1 m tall Kouros , unearthed by the German Archaeological Institute at Athens under the direction of Professor Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier. This Kouros is the larger twin of the one now kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York , and both were made by the same anonymous sculptor called the Dipylon Master . During the construction of Kerameikos metro station for

504-482: The expanded Athens Metro , a plague pit and approximately 1,000 tombs from the 4th and 5th centuries BC were discovered. In 1992, Greek archaeologist Efi Baziatopoulou-Valavani excavated these sites. The plague pit is located in the northwestern corner of the cemetery and is 6.5 meters long and 1.6 meters deep, containing 89 individuals' remains. The remains found belonged to adult males and females, as well as eight children. Many consider this pit to contain victims from

532-598: The fabric of modern-day Athens. Expropriation of these areas has been delayed until funding is secured. The area is enclosed and visitable through an entrance on the last block of Ermou Street, close to the intersection with Peiraios Street. The Kerameikos Museum is housed there, in a small neoclassical building that houses the most extensive collection of burial-related artifacts in Greece, varying from large-scale marble sculpture to funerary urns, stelae , jewelry, toys etc. The original burial monument sculptures are displayed within

560-580: The higher drier ground to the south. During the Archaic period increasingly large and complex grave mounds and monuments were built along the south bank of the Eridanos, lining the Sacred Way. The building of the new city wall in 478 BC, following the Persian sack of Athens in 480 BC, fundamentally changed the appearance of the area. At the suggestion of Themistocles , all of the funerary sculptures were built into

588-507: The interment of prominent personages such as notable warriors and statesmen, including Pericles and Cleisthenes . After the construction of the city wall, the Sacred Way and a forking street known as the Street of the Tombs again became lined with imposing sepulchral monuments belonging to the families of rich Athenians, dating to before the late 4th century BC. The construction of such lavish mausolea

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616-550: The museum, having been replaced by plaster replicas in situ . The museum incorporates inner and outer courtyards, where the larger sculptures are kept. Down the hill from the museum, visitors can wander among the Outer Kerameikos ruins, the Demosion Sema, the banks of the Eridanos where some water still flows, the remains of the Pompeion and the Dipylon Gate, and walk the first blocks of the Sacred Way towards Eleusis and of

644-475: The only ceramics found in the pit that are outside of the lower levels, and this caused Biazatopoulou to comment that the children “seem to have been treated with special care.” Notably, one of the children’s faces was reconstructed by professor Manolis Papagrigorakis and the child is now known as Myrtis . The skeletal remains found within the pit were submitted to Greek orthodontics professor Manolis Papagrigorakis for examination. Upon analyzing dental pulp from

672-475: The procession ( pompē , πομπή) in honour of Athena during the Panathenaic Festival . It consisted of a large courtyard surrounded by columns and banquet rooms, where the nobility of Athens would eat the sacrificial meat for the festival. According to ancient Greek sources, a hecatomb (a sacrifice of 100 cows) was carried out for the festival and the people received the meat in the Kerameikos, possibly in

700-523: The remains, he concluded that three subjects contained the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar typhi, which results in typhoid fever . The pathogen responsible for the Athenian plague is much disputed, and this DNA evidence has caused scholars to view typhoid fever as a likely culprit. These are the only remains in connection with the Athenian plague to be analyzed. Large areas adjacent to those already excavated remain in to be explored, as they lie under

728-403: The shape of the pit. There was soil placed between the bodies only on the lower levels, and most of the offerings were also found on the lower levels of the burial. The eight children’s bodies were found on the upper-most level, and were covered with large shards of pottery. Offerings for the dead consisted of roughly 30 small vases. Examples of the ceramics found within the pit include choes,

756-469: The total persons buried up to approximately 150. The offerings found were scattered on the lower levels of the pit, suggesting diminishing care as the burial continued upwards. The eight children found buried within the pit are an exception to the pattern of diminishing care as the burial progressed. Found on the upper levels, these children were not thrown in the pit haphazardly but were instead placed with care and covered with shards of pottery. These are

784-514: Was banned by decree in 317 BC, following which only small columns or inscribed square marble blocks were permitted as grave stones. The Roman occupation of Athens led to a resurgence of monument-building, although little is left of them today. During the Classical period an important public building, the Pompeion , stood inside the walls in the area between the two gates. This served a key function in

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