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RichardEly — Capital with Griffins, Temple of Apollo, Didyma

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Published: 2018-04-24 01:16:39 +0000 UTC; Views: 608; Favourites: 21; Downloads: 0
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Description This capital sat atop a square column called a pilaster that projected from the interior of the cella wall.

The Temple of Apollo at Didyma is located near the ancient city of Miletus on the Ionian cost of Turkey. It was my favorite of the many Greek temples that I saw during my visit to Turkey in 2008. An older temple was destroyed by the Persians when they put down the Ionian revolt in 493 BCE.

From Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didyma
Didyma (/ˈdɪdɪmə/; Ancient Greek: Δίδυμα) was an ancient Greek sanctuary on the coast of Ionia. It contained a temple and oracle of Apollo, the Didymaion. In Greek didyma means "twin". Next to Delphi, Didyma was the most renowned oracle of the Hellenic world, first mentioned among the Greeks in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. Its establishment preceded literacy and even the Hellenic colonization of Ionia.  

After his capture of Miletus in 334 BCE, Alexander the Great reconsecrated the oracle and placed its administration in the hands of the city, where the priest in charge was annually elected. About 300 BC,[16] Seleucus I Nicator brought the bronze cult image back, and the Milesians began to build a new temple, which, if it had ever been completed, would have been the largest in the Hellenic world. Vitruvius recorded a tradition that the architects were Paeonius of Ephesus, whom Vitruvius credited with the rebuilding of the Temple of Artemis there, and Daphnis of Miletus. The peripteral temple[17] was surrounded by a double file of Ionic columns. With a pronaos of three rows of four columns, the approaching visitor passed through a regularized grove formed of columns. The door usually leading to a cella was replaced by a blank wall with a large upper opening through which one could glimpse the upper part of the naiskos in the inner court (adyton). The entry route lay down either of two long constricted sloping passageways built within the thickness of the walls and giving access to the inner court, still open to the sky but isolated from the world by the high walls of the cella. This was the location of an ancient spring, the naiskos—which was itself a small temple, containing in its own small cella the bronze cult image of the god—and a grove of laurels, sacred to Apollo. The inner walls of the cella were articulated by pilasters standing on a base the height of a man (1.94 m). Turning back again, the visitor saw a monumental staircase that led up to three openings to a room[18] whose roof was supported by two columns on the central cross-axis. The oracular procedure so well documented at Delphi is unknown at Didyma and must be reconstructed on the basis of the temple's construction, but it appears that several features of Delphi were now adopted: a priestess[19] and answers delivered in classical hexameters. At Delphi, nothing was written; at Didyma, inquiries and answers were written; a small structure, the Chresmographion featured in this process; it was meticulously disassembled in the Christian period.
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Comments: 2

charmeurindien [2018-06-17 19:09:15 +0000 UTC]

A beautiful piece of Art, thanks !!  

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

RichardEly In reply to charmeurindien [2018-06-17 21:14:04 +0000 UTC]

Thank you, and I will say the same about your models.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0