The Temple at Samos was a large sanctuary to the Greek
goddess Hera Greece’s southern region of Samos. The sanctuary was located
around 6 km southwest of the ancient city in a marshy river basin of the nearby
sea. The core myth at the heart of the construction of this temple is the birth
of the goddess Hera. It is believed that the goddess was born under a lygos
tree (the chaste-tree). This explains the reason why the cult image of Hera
used to be ceremonially bound with the branches of lygo during the annual
Samian festival known as the Toneia. Today, this temple is treasured not only
by the Greek but everyone in the world. This came as a result of it being
designated as A JOINT UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992 together with the
nearby Pythagoreion (Whitley, 2001).
The Greek
built this temple at the mouth of River Imvrasos as they believed that the
region was connected with the worship of Hera. This was despite the fact that
the ground was not stable. The other factor that led to this temple being
constructed in this region was the belief that the goddess Hera was born and
raised in this area. Historically, this is the largest temple ever built in
Greece and was constructed in a faithful manner by Polykrates to replace the
previous model designed by Theodoros and Rhoikos of Samos that was destroyed by
an earthquake. The new temple was stronger than the previous one as in 500 BC,
it still posed on 115 columns close to the Ireon (Whitley, 2001). Today, the
temple stands on just a single half colossal octastyle dipteral column that has
been conserved on the northeastern corner. The fact that the temple barely
exists today has led to many Greeks believing that Hera has moved to another
place.
Despite the
temple barely in existence, a continuous frieze that adorned the top walls of the
cella and pronoas can still be seen today. Here, we can see that a triple row
of columns screened the short sides of the temple whereas the capitals of the
temple’s outer peristalsis were in the normal volute design. On the other hand,
the inner peristalsis of the temple was based on the Ionic Kyma model. At the
same time, the bases of columns and other blocks that belonged to the previous
Heraion can still be seen today. Through these architectural designs, we can
see that that the Temple at Samos exclusively belonged to people and its
development was inseparable with the city’s political history.
References
Whitley, J. (2001). The archaeology of ancient Greece.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
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