Pleiades Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

BACKGROUND --- Pisistratos the Younger, archon of Athens 522/1 BCE, dedicated the Altar of the Twelve Gods in the Agora of Athens (Thucydides 6.54, 6-7). In 1934, American archaeologists excavated in situ an inscribed marble statue base set against the west opening of a stone peribolos enclosure in the Agora on the Panathenaic Way north of the Acropolis. The inscription reads “Leagros, the son of Glaukon, made the dedication /To the Twelve Gods”. Today, only the southwest corner of the peribolos foundation is visible, as the ISAP Athens-Piraeus railway right-of-way covers the remainder.
--- RESEARCH QUESTION --- Is the orientation of the Altar of the Twelve Gods simply random? Does it take “its orientation from the street” (Camp 1992, p. 45) or perhaps from an astronomical alignment of significance in the Archaic Athenian festival calendar?
--- DATA --- Four published archaeological site plans of the Agora show that the Altar has a 31° azimuth deviation from facing the adjacent curbing of the Panathenaic Way (Crosby 1949, Fig. 2, p. 85; Gadbery 1992, Fig. 1, p. 448; Camp 1992, Fig, 66, p. 89; Mauzy 2006, Fig. 10, p. 9). Preliminary astro-archaeological data was compiled from archival site plans curated by the American School of Classical Study at Athens (ASCSA), NOAA Magnetic Field Calculator (IGRF12), aerial/satellite imagery, and Google Earth’s Digital Elevation Model, viz.: Latitude = North 37° 58’ 32.89’; Elevation = 54 meters ASL, True Azimuth ≈ 72.5° ; Date = 522/1 BCE; and horizon Altitude = +1° 30’. A Ground Truth field survey with theodolite (for sun-shot corrected azimuths and horizon altitudes) is being planned for mid-2017.
--- RESULTS --- Analysis with Program Stonehenge (Hawkins 1983) and Starry Night Pro Plus-6 digital planetarium indicates that the northeast opening of the Altar’s peribolos wall was oriented to the point (+13° 29’ declination) on Likavitos Hill where the constellation Pleiades rose heliacally (apparent magnitude = 1.2), 1-7 May 522/1 BCE.
--- CONCLUSION --- If field survey confirms the peribolus azimuth error to the heliacal rise of the Pleiades is significantly less than the azimuth error to the curb facing the Panathenaic Way, then one may reasonably conclude that the Altar of the Twelve Gods takes its orientation from the Archaic Attic-Boeotian calendric tradition that, “When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising, begin your harvest….” (Hesiod, 380). Moreover, both the Old (+13° 21’declination, ca. 550 BCE) and New (+14° 00’ declination, ca. 350 BCE) Temples of Dionysos Eleutherios on the south slope of the Athenian Acropolis have the same Pleiades heliacal rise orientation (Boutsikas 2008, Table 1, p. 6). The redundant Pleiades orientation discovered in three sacred structures is almost certainly a consequence of the Cult of Dionysus having been introduced to Athens in Attica from Eleutherai in Boeotia (AFA 2004, pp. 10-12) and serves as a Classical example of astronomy in culture.
---
REFERENCES
---

Association of Friends of the Acropolis (AFA), South Slope of the Acropolis: Brief History and Tour, Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, First Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, 2004.
-
Boutsikas. Efrosyni, “Placing Greek Temples: An Archaeoastronomical Study of the Orientation of Ancient Greek Religious Structures,” Archaeoastronomy, vol. XXI (2008), 4-19.
-
Camp, John Mck., Athenian Agora: Excavations in the Heart of classical Athens, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992.
-
Crosby, Margaret, ‘The Altar of the Twelve Gods in Athens,’ Hesperia Supplements, Vol. 8, (1949), pp. 82-103, 447-450.
-
Gadbery, Laura M., "The Sanctuary of the Twelve Gods in the Athenian Agora: A Revised View", Hesperia 61 (1992), pp. 447–489.
-
Hawkins, Gerald S., ‘Program STONEHENGE’, Mindsteps to the Cosmos, New York:
Harper & Row,1983, pp. 328-330.
-
Hesiod of Boeotia (ca. 750 BCE), Works and Days, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation (Hugh G. Evelyn-White, trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hes.%20WD%20387
-
Mauzy, Craig A., Agora Excavations 1931-2006 A Pictorial History, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2006.
-
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Magnetic Field Calculator
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag-web/
-
Thucydides , History of the Peloponnesian War, 6.54,6-7 (Benjamin Jowett trans.) Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881.