Posted on 08/03/2020 8:18:26 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
"I knew that scholars didn't really understand why it's called the Parthenon," says Utrecht University archaeologist Janric van Rookhuijzen, "so I started looking into a giant puzzle of ancient texts, inscriptions, and archaeological remains." His surprising, perhaps even heretical, theory suggests that "Parthenon" may not have originally referred to the structure we know today -- which is sometimes called the Great Temple of Athena -- but to part of an altogether different temple on the Acropolis.
For van Rookhuijzen, the crux of the issue lies in the meaning of the Greek word parthenon -- "a room for virgins or unwed maidens." The first use of this term in reference to a building on the Acropolis appears in inscriptions dating to 434 B.C...
...the enigmatic sacred complex known conventionally, but, says van Rookhuijzen, probably erroneously, as the Erechtheion. It includes six larger-than-life-size sculpted female figures called caryatids, thought to represent mythological maidens (parthenoi), that serve as the columns supporting the porch's roof. Archaeological evidence has shown that the Erechtheion was also once amply decorated with a number of carved female figures...
The Acropolis treasure inventories from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. document specific objects that were stored in the parthenon, including pieces of furniture and armor seized from the Persians after they were defeated in the 479 B.C. Battle of Plataea. Many hundreds of years later, the second-century A.D. writer and traveler Pausanias visited Athens and seems to have described seeing the very same objects that had centuries earlier been inventoried as "in the Parthenon," not in the building we call the Parthenon today, but in the caryatid building.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
Erechtheion (image search)
Thin gruel.
The site of the Erechtheion is well established for other cults.
Weak.
Don’t tell me, let me guess...Parthenon is a racist word
There is a full scale replica in Nashville....aka The Athens of the South.
If it’s Part henon, what is the other part?................
Shenon?
By the end of the century, *every* historical site will have either a Walgreens or a Starbucks on top of it.
Not racist, but obviously cisgendered!!! /s
Athena was the goddess of Wisdom and the Hunt. Those Greek men didn't stand a chance.
If any of you are in Nashville please visit the Parthenon. Not only is it a wonder unto itself; it houses Alan LeQuire's massive "Athena Parthenos", plaster casts of the remaining marbles that lined the original's eaves and an artwork exhibition.
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