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| Delos |
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I went to Delos by myself. We had all gone out dancing the night before, and nobody else really seemed interested in the place, but I wasn't about to let the man get me down. I took a boat ride ~30 minutes to Delos. Delos is an island, the most sacred island of ancient Greece. Its a tiny, barren little wasteland. Mythology says Delos was floating, so it was not technically "earth"-- meaning it was exempt from a curse Hera (Zeus' wife) put on the land to keep Leto (a minor goddess that Zeus knocked up) from giving birth. She came to Delos, a tiny barren floating thing, and was able to have her children, twins named Apollo and Artemis. You may have heard of them. Hence, the island was blessed, grew roots, grew trees and a sacred lake showed up where the twins were born. People moved to Delos and spent lots of time living there as merchants, became very rich. Delos was also the location of the Greek treasury, more reason for money. Since then, the island has been abandoned, and is uninhabited. It is the largest open-air museum in the world, and it closes daily at 3:30 except to archeologists. The sacred lake was dried up in the 1920s due to malaria, but a tree is there to mark the boundries. |
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Now that the background information is out of the way, this is what's leftover at Delos. A bunch of walls, some houses, and some temple remnants. There used to be lots more marble here, but like the Colosseum in Rome, Delos was used as a source of stone and marble for many centuries. The walls are still standing though- a sign of well-constructed architecture, if you ask me. |
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Delos also has the distinction of being one of the few places on earth where archeologists can easily see which houses belonged to the super rich, and which belonged to the rest of the people. The rich houses have column-accented rooms with open tops and floors like the one above with crazy-awesome tile mosaics. This one is in the place called the House of Dionysos, due to the center of the mosaic- look hard, its a leopard with the god Dionysos on his back. Super cool. Also, as I said before, this is a little barren island. Rich people built their own cisterns to collect rainwater to drink, this house's is under the mosaic floor. |
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Another house with a cool mosaic- this one's red and black diagonal patterns. |
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This is the only house on the island where the owners are known for sure- because they had statues of themselves built. Also, these folks were quite nuveau-riche, because their columned room is pretty small. They were just showing off, not actually rich people. Bill Gates much? haha. |
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There are also neighborhoods on the island of Delos. The previous houses were in the "Theatre District" because all the rich people and their houses were near the theatre. In front of the theatre was this cistern, one of two public places to collect water. As you can see, it still works today. Greeks kick ass. |
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Here's the theatre. Its pretty destroyed, but the front row you'll see here is the only one with a seat back. The most important people, such as priests and princes and such got to sit here. Everybody else had nothing to lean on. |
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| Theatre- slightly different angle. Yeah, shambles... sad. |
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Though here is the side of the theater, they had to build up around it to hold the seats in. This is still very well preserved, and super cool. |
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One more house in the Theatre District. This one is very well preserved, with huge columns and windows and such. The little owls are symbols of twin brother Assyrian gods- Delos was a truly multi-cultural, multi-faithed community, which is super-duper cool. More on that later. |
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An altar with the head of a cow chilling on it. Pretty cool. |
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These are called the Naxian Lions. They're made from marble from nearby island Naxos. These are actually replicas. Four of them are in the museum on Delos, the others were stolen by Lord Byron, and are in England. |
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| This is from a temple for Hermes. Hermes is the god of merchants, and Delos being a trade island made a lot of stuff for him. Hermes is frequently depicted as a god of fertility as well, and they pictorialize this as a phallus. Yes, those are penises slightly broken off on pedastals. Rock on, Greeks! |
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This is a temple to Isis, an Egyptian goddess. Multi-cultural, sweet. |
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| One last shot of the island of Delos. This is from above the Theatre District, hence all the columns and such. |
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