![]() Suda writes that the Greeks used the proverb "ᾌδεις ὥσπερ εἰς Δῆλον πλέων", meaning you sing as if sailing into Delos in reference to someone who is happy, light-hearted, and enjoying himself. Various regions operated agorae (markets). Limited water was exploited with an extensive cistern and aqueduct system, wells, and sanitary drains. The island had no productive capacity for food, fiber, or timber, which were all imported. ĭuring the Hellenistic period, a well-established Phoenician colony on the island had extensive trade relations. The league's common treasury was kept here as well until 454 BC, when Pericles removed it to Athens. Īfter the Persian Wars, the island became the natural meeting ground for the Delian League, founded in 478 BC, the congresses being held in the temple (a separate quarter was reserved for foreigners and the sanctuaries of foreign deities). Four years later, all inhabitants of the island were removed to Adramyttium in Asia as a further purification. Immediately after this purification, the first quinquennial festival of the Delian games were celebrated there. Prohibition of dying was then ordered, so that no one should be allowed to die (or give birth) on the island due to its sacred importance, and to preserve its neutrality in commerce since no one could then claim ownership through inheritance. In the fifth century BC, during the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War and under instruction from the Delphic Oracle, the entire island was purged of all dead bodies. ![]() ![]() The first took place in the sixth century BC, directed by the tyrant Pisistratus, who ordered that all graves within sight of the temple be dug up and the bodies moved to another nearby island. Eventually acquiring Panhellenic religious significance, Delos was initially a religious pilgrimage for the Ionians.Ī number of " purifications" were performed by the city-state of Athens in an attempt to render the island fit for the proper worship of the gods. By the writing of the Odyssey, the island was already famous as the birthplace of the twin gods Apollo and Artemis (although some confusion seems to exist of Artemis' birthplace being either Delos or the island of Ortygia).īetween 900 BC and 100 AD, Delos was a major cult centre, where the gods Dionysus and Leto, mother of the twin deities Apollo and Artemis, were revered. Thucydides identifies the original inhabitants as piratical Carians who were eventually expelled by King Minos of Crete. Investigation of ancient stone huts found on the island indicate that it has been inhabited since the third millennium BC. In 1990, UNESCO inscribed Delos on the World Heritage List, citing its exceptional archaeological site which "conveys the image of a great cosmopolitan Mediterranean port", its influence on the development of Greek architecture, and its sacred importance throughout Ancient Greece. From its Sacred Harbour, the horizon shows the three conical mounds that have identified landscapes sacred to a goddess (it is predicted that the deity's name is Athena) - in other sites: one, retaining its Pre-Greek name Mount Cynthus, is crowned with a sanctuary of Zeus. The excavations in the island are among the most extensive in the Mediterranean ongoing work takes place under the direction of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, and many of the artifacts found are on display at the Archaeological Museum of Delos and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.ĭelos had a position as a holy sanctuary for a millennium before Olympian Greek mythology made it the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. The island of Delos ( / ˈ d iː l ɒ s/ Greek: Δήλος Attic: Δῆλος, Doric: Δᾶλος), near Mykonos, near the centre of the Cyclades archipelago, is one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in Greece.
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