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Cyrene: A Survey of Certain Rock-Cut Features to the South of the Sanctuary of Apollo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. R. H. Wright
G. R. H. Wright
Affiliation:
Oriental Institute Excavations, Tolmeita
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Extract

Basic Structure: A broad flight of twenty-one steps leads up from the south-west angle of the Temple of Apollo to a partially paved court immediately in front of the lower face of the scarp. This is given a quadrilateral delimitation by the angular revetment of an irregularity in the scarp to the west, and by the monumental water tank to the east of the entrance to the grotto. The entrance was hewn in the cliff face in the form of three arches (now much destroyed), and was revetted with large well-draughted limestone blocks. Of these, only the lower two courses are now in situ, but individual blocks of the upper courses have been collected and amongst them are those with crowning mouldings and one bearing the fragment of a Greek inscription (height:of letters, 25 cm. approximately).

The interior of the grotto consists basically of a central oblong depression, paved and cemented, surrounded on the two sides and the back by a raised staging—thus giving rise to the term of reference ‘TRICLINIUM’—while between the staging and the walls are the tanks and channels: associated with the water supply and drainage.

Considered longitudinally, the interior may be divided into three entities. The first extends from the entrance to a pair of rock-hewn columns bearing rude inscriptions. Immediately above this compartment lay the terrace of an ancient rock-cut path and its collapse has breached the path and totally unroofed this section of the grotto.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , November 1957 , pp. 301 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1957

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References

1 It remains a bare possibility, on the analogy with the Mithraea, that these may have been the bases for cult figures.

2 Vermaseren, Corpus inscriptionum et monumentorium religionis Mithriacae, 106, 107.

3 An account of these appeared by Wright, G. R. H. in the Illustrated London News, July 14, 1955 Google Scholar. For any detailed study of the nature and purpose of these baths reference must be made to the strikingly similar structures being excavated by the French at Gortys in Arcadia and reported on in BCH lxxvi, 1952, pp. 246–7Google Scholar.

4 Presumably because certain aspects and analogies might suggest a late date for these features.

5 SEG ix. 266, 275–6, 289, 293 Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., 278, 284.

7 Oliverio, , Scavi Recenti di Cirene … in Bericht über den VI Internat. Kongressfür Archaeologie, Berlin 1940, p. 455 Google Scholar.

8 Cf. Oliverio, , Nohjiario Archeologico, Roma, fasc. iv 1927, p. 241 Google Scholar: ‘The second, upper part which is cut by man is sacred to the nymphs'. It is probably to this part of the fountain that the following inscription on the cliff face adjacent to the pedimental cutting refers: ( Corpus Inscriptionum iii, 5134)Google Scholar. Cf. Smith and Porcher, op. cit., p. 27.