The temples on the Acropolis of Athens
By Janric van Rookhuijzen
Rising majestically above the Greek capital, the Acropolis (“high city”) is regarded as the iconic site of both ancient and modern Greece and western civilization – no wonder that it is among the world’s most visited archaeological sites. The citadel is essentially a limestone outcrop, already in Antiquity extended with massive artificial terraces. The honey-colored marble buildings built on top are largely the product of a magnificent rebuilding by the general Pericles, in the second half of the fifth century BCE. This period has come to be regarded as the Classical period par excellence: the heyday of the Athenian city state, known for its massive artistic, architectural, and intellectual output. Pericles’ buildings, however, were not the first temples on the Acropolis: they replaced earlier ones, which stood here in the so-called Archaic period, until 480 BCE, when they were burnt down by an invading Persian army led by king Xerxes I. The destruction of the citadel was a shock to the Athenians. In subsequent centuries, they would strongly engage with the Persian attack in the visual arts, theater, and literature. On the Acropolis itself, ruined, blackened buildings and objects seem to have been deliberately left in place as perpetual reminders of the calamity.
Figure 1. The Acropolis of Athens from the west, showing the Propylaia (gatehouse) in the center and the Parthenon on the top right (photo by Spirosparas / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0).
That the destruction of the Acropolis was such a blow to the Athenians is understandable: the citadel was the sacred domain of Athena Polias (‘of the [Acro]polis’), the city’s supreme deity. Other deities were also revered on the Acropolis, yet the principal temples – the magnificent Parthenon and the smaller temple adorned with iconic sculptures of maidens known today as ‘caryatids’ – were both dedicated to Athena Polias. Today, tourists circumambulating these awe-inspiring structures typically hear various narratives associated with them, including their mythological origins, the architectural restoration projects undertaken over the centuries, and the numerous political controversies, particularly concerning the sculptures now housed in London’s British Museum, referred to as the “Elgin Marbles” or “Parthenon Marbles”. However, such questions about the reception and display of the Acropolis sculptures sideline the central issue of the temples’ functions in Antiquity.
Figure 2. Caryatid statues (replicas) at one of Athena’s temples on the Acropolis (photo by Jebulon / Wikimedia Commons / CC0 1.0).
The Acropolis temples, like other religious edifices in Ancient Greece and worldwide, were repositories of dedications and treasures. As in Paestum, archaeological investigation of the Acropolis has revealed many objects which were dedicated here, some of which are by their inscriptions known to have been dedicated to Athena. Many are on display in the Acropolis Museum and the National Museum of Athens. A striking example is an extraordinary bronze lamp shaped like a warship, discovered inside the Caryatid Temple and inscribed hieron tes Athenas (“holy item of Athena”), now in the Acropolis Museum.
Figure 3. Bronze lamp in the shape of a warship (late 5th century BCE), inscribed hieron tes Athenas (‘holy item of Athena’). Acropolis Museum, Athens. (Photo by Tilemahos Efthimiadis, Flickr / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0).
Archaeology, however, gives only a small window onto the Greek practice of treasure collecting in temples, especially because the more precious items have typically not survived to the present day. This also applies to the Acropolis: during its many religious transformations and sieges, most valuable treasures have disappeared. Nevertheless, thanks to the ancient habit of record-keeping, we are relatively well informed about these treasures. The Classical Athenians produced many inventory inscriptions on marble slabs. Some of these inscriptions, which scholars have painstakingly pieced together from fragments found in excavations, are on display in the relatively little-visited Epigraphical Museum of Athens.
Figure 4. Three fragments of an inventory inscription of the Hekatompedos Neos dating to 403 or 402 BCE (Inscriptiones Graecae II² 1370+1371+1384). Photo by Furius / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0).
The inventories were annually compiled by a board of treasurers known as the tamiai (singular tamias). The practice of inscribing the slabs started in 434 or 433 BCE (when the Parthenon and possibly the Caryatid Temple were ready to receive treasures) and would continue to the end of the fourth century BCE. However, before and after the period when inventory inscriptions were produced, treasures were certainly also stored here. We know this from a crucial inscription recording the so-called “Hekatompedon decrees” of 485 or 484 BCE, produced at a time when the old temples were still standing – until the Persians burnt them down in 480 BCE. The inscription stipulates that the tamiai open the doors of a building called the Hekatompedon – in all likelihood the predecessor of the Parthenon, which itself was also originally called Hekatompedon – to reveal the treasures for inspection at set times. In the context of the Gods’ Collections project, we can compare such practices across time and place. The Classical Athenian practice bears resemblance to record keeping at Mut’s temple in Egypt or at Japan’s Hōryūji.
The Athenian inscriptions list and count hundreds of items along with their weights in gold or silver (if applicable). The treasures listed in the inventories were extremely varied and included vessels, crowns, armor, weapons, figurines, lamps, incense burners, furniture and musical instruments. The most common type of treasure was the silver phiale, a shallow bowl normally used for offering purposes. In the treasuries, however, it seems to have represented something like a gold bar convertible into cash. Although the inscriptions are a good guide as to the most valuable items, it is just the tip of the iceberg, as treasures of lesser material were not usually recorded. We have to imagine many more items – in bronze, stone, terracotta, and wood – crowding the sanctuary landscape inside and outside the temples.
The system of record keeping seems designed to control what was coming in and out of the Acropolis. It was religiously important, because the wealth belonged to the gods, usually Athena Polias (“of the Acropolis”) or Athena Nike (“Victory”), beside several other divinities. The ancient Athenian author Thucydides (2.13.3–5) explains that on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, the total value of treasures (excluding money) on the Acropolis amounted to 500 talents, which is the equivalent of 13 metric tons of silver! Thucydides explains that the items on the Acropolis also had a practical function: they could be borrowed by the state in times of need, for example to finance war – as long as the money would later be repaid to Athena or any of the other gods to which they belonged. The system can be regarded as a product of the Athenian democracy, which demanded transparency from administrators. The annual inscriptions ensured that the accumulated riches could be calculated and checked for theft. In fact, we have some evidence that treasures could disappear: in the fourth century BCE, the mischievous tamias Glauketes was accused of having stolen a fabulous gilded Persian sword (akinakes) that had belonged to a notable enemy of the Athenians: the Persian general Mardonios. To us, the inventory inscriptions document the astounding wealth on the Acropolis of which we would otherwise not be informed – the recorded precious treasures have all disappeared.
The greatest treasure of the Acropolis was arguably Athena herself. She was present in the form of a colossal statue, made from ivory and gold by the famous sculptor Phidias. It stood in the great eastern chamber of the Parthenon, where the base of the pedestal survives to this day. It has disappeared since Antiquity, but, fortunately, descriptions and small-size copies survive to give us an idea of its awesome appearance. Athena stood some 12 meters tall and was dressed in her typical military garb with mythological figures and scenes sculpted on her helmet, shield, and sandals. She held a life-size statue of Nike in her hand, seemingly offering victory to approaching devotees. For all the divine awe it inspired, the statue belonged to the general treasure system of the Acropolis, because Athena’s gold dress could be removed in times of need! If even the goddess could be undressed, it is no wonder that many modern commentators have classified the Parthenon as a bank instead of a true temple – although to state it so bluntly is to miss the point about the basic function of Greek temples as treasure stores.
Figure 5. A recreation in modern materials of Pheidias’ lost colossal statue of Athena by Alan LeQuire (1990) in a replica of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, United States (Dean Dixon / Wikimedia Commons / Free Art License).
Where did all these riches come from? They were accumulated over the centuries, arriving on the Acropolis as dedications by the Athenian state or by private individuals, with participants in religious athletic games a notable group. The inscriptions sometimes record the name of the dedicant. Among them was such a famous person as Roxane, a Central Asian princess who became the wife of Alexander the Great. She apparently felt the need to dedicate a silver drinking horn (rhyton) to Athena – if the tamiai were correct in recording that this item was dedicated by her. It is, in any case, very plausible: there was a certain attraction to dedicate precious items to Athena on the Acropolis, even for people who lived far away. After all, this was the world’s most prominent sanctuary of Athena.
The inventory inscriptions are also interesting for us because they reveal where on the Acropolis the treasures were stored – a type of information that can give some insight into the topography of the Acropolis temples, which, despite centuries of archaeological investigation, is still today not perfectly understood. In location headers in the inscriptions, the names Hekatompedos Neos (‘Hundred-foot Temple’), Proneos (‘Fore-temple’), Opisthodomos (‘Backroom’), Archaios Neos (‘Ancient Temple’), Parthenon (‘Place of the Virgins’), Chalkotheke (‘Bronze-store’) appear as the names of rooms or buildings where the treasures were kept. There is much discussion about the archaeological identifications of these rooms or buildings, although it is universally agreed that the Hekatompedos Neos is – confusingly for us – the eastern chamber of the building called Parthenon today (but, as indicated above, in Antiquity often called Hekatompedon or Hekatompedos Neos). The clincher for the identification is that the inscriptions mention the colossal statue of Athena, which certainly stood in the eastern chamber, as standing in the Hekatompedos Neos. Scholars have surmised that the treasury called the Parthenon was a smaller room in the same building, but in my assessment the Parthenon treasury is more likely the western part of the Caryatid Temple, for which there are indications that it was a part of the Temple of Athena Polias that was specifically devoted to the mythical virgin princesses of Athens – for which the name Parthenon, ‘Place of the Virgins’, is a very apt name.
Beside the treasures’ financial value, several other uses are imaginable. Unfortunately, the inscriptions do not give details about the use of the items or why they were deemed special in the first place. However, as Thucydides writes in the passage cited above, some treasures constituted ‘holy objects for the processions and the games’. He probably alludes to the Panathenaia, Athens’ biggest religious festival featuring sport competitions in honor of Athena. In fact, among the relief sculptures of the Parthenon frieze (which in all likelihood depicts a procession in honor of Athena as part of the Panathenaia) appear women carrying vessels and incense burners like those recorded in the inscriptions.
Some treasures may have been old relics holding some sort of historical, rather than strictly material (metallic), value. At least this would be the easiest explanation for several peculiar items, particularly in the treasury room called the Parthenon, for example a gilded mask (reminding us of Bronze Age burial practices in Greece), a mysterious gilded wheat field, and an ivory object with “Phoenician” letters. These may constitute ancient “archaeological” objects that held value in part because of their real or perceived antiquity. The collection of antiquities on the Acropolis can seem akin to the practice of guarding objects of nearby archaeological excavations in Thai monasteries. Another interesting comparison is furnished by the temple of Athena at Lindos on the island of Rhodes, where the treasures that had over the years arrived in the sanctuary were listed in an inscription along with more (legendary) information about who had dedicated the object, such as a cuirass that had belonged to Amasis, a pharaoh, and a mixing vessel that had belonged to Daedalus, the mythical inventor.
Confirmation of the idea that ancient treasures were kept on the Acropolis is the account of Pausanias, a traveler and author of a guidebook to Greece. Writing in the 2nd century CE – five centuries after the time of the inventory inscriptions – he selectively listed some of the treasures he saw in the temples during his tour of the Acropolis. In the Caryatid Temple (known to him as the “Temple of the Polias”), he saw three treasures which he deemed worthy of recording: a folding chair, a cuirass, and a Persian sword (1.27.1). Surprisingly, the folding chair was reputed to have belonged to Daedalus; but just how the Athenians had gotten hold of a chair made by such a celebrity is unknown. The cuirass was that of the Persian general Masistios. The sword had belonged to Mardonios – this must be the same weapon that the disobedient tamias Glauketes had stolen in the fourth century BCE, and it apparently had returned to the treasury where it belonged. Both the cuirass and the sword had (allegedly) been picked up at the battlefield of Plataea, where the Greeks had triumphed over the Persians in the year 479 BCE. Other sources detail that the stool on which the Persian king Xerxes sat as he watched the sea battle of Salamis in 480 BCE was also stored on the Acropolis. We do not need to doubt that there were such objects on the Acropolis, because the inventory inscriptions of the Parthenon treasury mention multiple folding chairs, cuirasses, Persian swords, and stools; but tradition could easily have attached fabulous stories to these items.
Pausanias’ remarks about the Caryatid Temple (and others elsewhere in Greece) show that Greek temples could function somewhat like museums, collecting treasures with real or invented historical value – although the comparison with museums should not be pushed too far, because it is not known whether the treasures were actually on display for the average ancient visitor. We can say, however, that some objects in the Acropolis temples had a historical value, stressing the antiquity and prestige of the sanctuary, as well as offering tangible testimony to past events. In this case, the link with the Persian Wars was important. The battles to which the items were associated – Salamis and Plataea – were victories for the Greeks (including the Athenians) and ensured the independence of the Greek city states from the Persian Empire. It was fitting that these items were stored on the Acropolis, which, as indicated above, had itself fallen victim to the Persian invasion. The storage of ‘Persian’ items in Athena’s hallowed sanctuary stressed the Athenian victory and its resurrection from the ashes.
It is important to note that ancient Athenians were not the only people to collect treasures for the gods on the Acropolis. With the arrival of Christianity in Athens, the Parthenon became an Orthodox and later Catholic church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. As such, it would surely have housed precious religious items like those found in other churches (for example, the Virgin of the Pharos in Constantinople). Unfortunately, we are generally not informed about the objects in the Parthenon church; but some medieval travelers noted a holy light, burning without wood, and a golden dove hanging above the altar and mysteriously spinning in a golden circle or in the form of a cross. In the fifteenth century, as the Acropolis became a Turkish garrison town, the Parthenon church was converted into a mosque, complete with a minaret. Seventeenth-century writers report that the temple was held in high esteem by the dervishes (Islamic Sufi clerics), and that cloths of taffeta, colorful banners and foreign curiosities hung on the walls. There were also two rectangular luminous stones that no one was allowed to touch, surrounded by ostrich eggs, lamps and crystal balls. Treasures thus continued to be stored inside the Parthenon, which had remained largely intact throughout the centuries; but the unique system of treasure collecting of the Classical Athenian state, combining political and religious functions, was long gone.
The Acropolis was devastated in 1687, when the Venetians laid siege to the Turks on the Acropolis and shot the Parthenon mosque and other buildings to pieces. However, the Turks returned soon afterwards and built a small mosque inside the ruin of the old one, which stood until well into the nineteenth century. From 1833, when Athens was added to the new, independent Greek kingdom, the Acropolis was systematically purified from now-reviled Turkish accretions to become a beacon of Classical Greece. The sacrality of the Acropolis was then not erased, as the site developed into a nearly holy site of the Greek nation and western civilization at large. These ‘gods’ were also given treasures: in the nineteenth century, archaeologists used the small mosque inside the ruined Parthenon as the first museum for excavated objects on the Acropolis. Perhaps this use was merely a practical solution – there was no museum building yet – but the storage of ancient Greek items in a former Turkish mosque, itself encapsulated in the ruin of the Classical temple, can easily be thought of as having symbolic insinuations. Between 1864 and 1874, a new museum building was built on the southeast side of the Acropolis, which served until 2009, when a magnificent new museum for the Acropolis was built in the lower city. It is only then that the history of treasure collection on the Acropolis itself finally came to an end.
Figure 6. Watercolor depicting the Turkish mosque built in the ruins of the Parthenon, by Pierre Peytier. Ca. 1830–1840 (public domain).
Today, none of the ancient and later practices of collecting may be apparent to the casual visitor to the Acropolis, who typically comes in admiration for what has remained from Antiquity: the camera-friendly marble shells of the iconic buildings. Yet, in the vitrines of Athens’ museums, objects and texts continue to testify that treasures were central to the ancient religious experience on this sacred citadel, intertwining financial, ritual, and commemorative functions.
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Janric van Rookhuijzen is a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His research interests encompass Greek history and archaeology, cultural heritage and reception history, with a special focus on Herodotus, the Acropolis of Athens, and the Seven Wonders of the World. This article was made possible through the generous support of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
