The Pan-Rhodian Sanctuary of Zeus Atabyrios on Rhodes

Pavlos Triantafyllidis of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Lesbos presents his excavations at the pan-Rhodian sanctuary of Zeus Atabyrios on Mount Atavyros, the highest peak on Rhodes at 1,215 metres. The lecture is given in Greek.

After outlining the 408 BC synoecism of Rhodes, Triantafyllidis places the sanctuary among the island's three pan-Rhodian cult centres alongside those of Athena Lindia and Apollo Erethimios. He reviews the literary and epigraphic testimonies to the cult, its foundation myths involving the Cretan hero Althaemenes and the Telchines, and its spread to the city of Rhodes, Akragas, the Rhodian Peraia and the Black Sea. Giulio Jacopi carried out the first excavations on the summit in 1924, clearing the peribolos and a treasury deposit of over 2,000 mostly bronze votives, though the ancient stratigraphy had been heavily disturbed by an Early Christian basilica, a Middle Byzantine chapel and the monastery of Agios Ioannis.

Triantafyllidis then presents the 2009–2014 survey and excavations conducted with architects from the Polytechnic of Bari. Trenches and roughly 500 surviving blocks allow the reconstruction of a stepped limestone altar of the late 4th century BC, contemporary with the three-room treasury building. Pits and a sacrificial ash layer yielded around 4,000 further metal finds from the 9th century BC to the Roman period: cast bronze bulls, cut-out sheet-bronze cattle for poorer worshippers, lead rodents, bronze locusts, inscribed vessels and statuettes of Zeus. He concludes that Zeus Atabyrios was worshipped as a weather, agricultural and chthonic deity, with bronzeworking taking place at the site. The discussion afterwards addresses the absence of pottery, on-site casting, Cretan peak sanctuaries and modern looting.