From the magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America comes the story of an immense discovery 120 years in the making.
One of ancient Greece’s most hallowed sites has been found thanks to a determined Swiss archaeologist, a chatty local, and the stroke of luck that brought them together.
The story begins with Strabo, the Roman geographer who gave history’s first account of the Sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia near the Greek city-state of Eretria on the island of Euboea. Eretria was one of the earliest city-states and a prolific colonizer of the Mediterranean.
Several miles from the walls of the city lay a magnificent temple complex for the worship of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. It was one of the most important sites in ancient Greek religious activities, but despite its fame and Strabo’s precise location of seven stades—a distance equal to about eight-tenths of a mile—from Eretria’s walls, a flurry of excavation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries uncovered nothing.
Gradually, even the belief that there ever was a place called the Sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia came to be questioned, and the quest to find its hallowed walls diminished.
Enter a then-young doctoral student in classics named Denis Knoepfler, who joined a Swiss archaeological team working in Eretria in the 1960s. By now efforts to try and find the sanctuary had been ongoing for seven decades, and Knoepler, who told Archaeology Magazine’s contributing editor Jason Urbanus that he had been interested in the history of Eretria for years, decided a new approach was needed if this famous building was ever going to be found.
He started by investigating any structure in the surrounding countryside that had reused marble blocks from earlier periods and zeroed in on a 13th-century church built like a patchwork quilt of marble in a town called Vathia. Nearby, earlier excavations had yielded artifacts that depicted Artemis’ form and name, and Knoepfler believed the site of the sanctuary would have been near the sea on a hill called Paleoekklisies, or Old Chapels.
In 1969, he filed a report with the Swiss Archaeological Mission in Greece (ESAG). “As a result of my investigations,” Knoepfler said, “I believed that the sanctuary must be at the foot of Paleoekklisies Hill.”
So thoroughly did archaeologists working in Eretria believe in Strabo’s account that Knoepfler’s report was largely ignored and never even got published until 6 years ago. Knoeplfer never stopped following this lead. In the following decades, he demonstrated how medieval monks translating Strabo’s Greek into Latin may have confused the number 7 with 60, because of how Ancient Greek used letters to represent numbers.
Kato Vathia and the Paleoekklisies Hill lay 60 stades away from the walls of Eretria.
As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, a construction boom began at the base of the Paleoekklisies Hill, and because nobody had found the Sanctuary of Artemis Amarysia yet, Knoepfler managed to galvanize his department in Switzerland to take his theory seriously and apply for surveying permits before his hunch was buried by modern villas.
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This was done successfully, and in 2006 they began to excavate on the Paleoekklisies Hill only to find 5,000-year-old artifacts, rather than 2,800-year-old artifacts. The trail seemed to have gone cold, wrote Urbanus in a wonderful feature piece for the September edition of the magazine, but in literally the last hours of Knoepfler’s allotted time at the site, a lead appeared from the most unlikely place.
“A local resident approached Fachard in a car, rolled down his window, and pointed to a construction site near the base of Paleoekklisies Hill,” writes Urbanus, recounting Knoepfler’s colleague Sylvian Fachard, director of the ESAG who was there at the excavation. “‘You should have a look at that villa that they’re building over there. You’ll find interesting stuff,’” Fachard said quoting the motorist, who then drove away.
Among a big pile of pottery, they found a substantial marble block cut with sharp precise angles, which Fachard said was a sure sign the sanctuary must be there—this sort of masonry is seen only in the most substantial Eretrian structures.
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The story got more “Hollywood” when the two men returned the next day—the block had vanished, likely a result of construction culture all over Greece where ancient discoveries are often reburied to avoid government confiscation of the land. Knoepfler and Fachard secured another permit to dig nearby and found nothing. Much the way the motorist gave them hope when all else had seemed hopeless, however, the closing stages of their second excavation revealed another clue.
A big hunk of dirt dislodged itself from their excavation trench, and that’s when ESAG archaeologist Thierry Theurillat saw part of a large marble block protruding from the trench wall, nearly seven feet below ground.
“It was a second stroke of luck,” Fachard said “If we had put our trench just four inches away, we never would have found this thing.”
Fast forward 16 years and the Sanctuary of Artemis was found that day. ESAG bought more than a dozen properties to remove the restrictions on excavating imposed by the private landowners, and many important discoveries of the ancient Greek cult have been made.
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Three colonnaded structures made up the sanctuary, including one that was 225 feet long. In 2017, the first evidence of a temple was uncovered—a terracotta roof tile stamped with a tantalizing word “Artemidos,” meaning “of or belonging to Artemis” in ancient Greek. The next discovery was a makeshift staircase permitting the descent into a nearby well that had been assembled from ancient stelae and statue bases, one of which bore an inscription of an agreement made between the city-states of Eretria and nearby Styra “at the Sanctuary of Artemis at Amarynthos.”
Amarynthos was a Theban word for sanctuary.
Bingo.
The 120-year-old mystery had been solved, and as the years of joyful excavating rolled on, ESAG found the temple foundations in 2020, which was also the time when artifacts began to be pulled up.
“It’s an unimaginable discovery that impressed us all,” ESAG archaeologist Tamara Saggini told Archaeology Magazine, “on the one hand because of the state of preservation and, on the other hand, because of the size of the deposit, its exceptional variety, and the rareness of many of the objects discovered.”
The working hypothesis is that many of the artifacts were buried in the foundations of the sanctuary after an enormous fire destroyed much of the temple in the 6th century BCE. The builders erected a new temple atop the ruins, sealing all the votive offerings underneath like an ancient time capsule.
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The dizzying number of treasures include ceramic and bronze vases and vessels of every description, remnants of weapons and armor, jewelry in gold, silver, bronze, amber, ivory, and faience, small terracotta figurines, and there were even the remains of a trunk filled with textiles that were amazingly still preserved.
Another standout find was a 16-inch limestone statue of a woman holding a fawn, which might be a woman offering a sacrifice, or Artemis herself, who is often depicting with cervids due to her association with hunting.
“It was a window of literally just a few hours,” Fachard said, thinking back to the tip-off from the motorist, “and without that discovery, the sanctuary would probably still be buried underground.”
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