The Acropolis hill with the magnificent Parthenon at its top is one of the most visited places in the world, a site that signifies the birth of the Western Civilization.
But what was standing on the sacred hill before the Parthenon was built to honor Athena, the goddess of wisdom and patron of the city named after her?
Before the Parthenon was built on the Athens Acropolis hill, a Mycenaean palace was standing on the same place.
Mycenaean Greece flourished in the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100 BCE) and reached its peak from the 15th to the 13th century BCE. Its capital was Mycenae, in the Argolid of the northeast Peloponnese, and the kingdom stretched through the rest of the Peloponnese across the Aegean, to include the Cyclades and all of Crete.
The Mycenaeans were early Greeks who came in contact with the Minoans and were influenced by the earlier Minoan civilization (2000-1450 BCE) on Crete which covered the wider Aegean Sea region. The Mycenaeans were likely stimulated by their contact with Minoan Crete and other Mediterranean cultures and developed a more sophisticated sociopolitical culture of their own. Major Mycenaean centers included Mycenae (home of Agamemnon, one of the Iliad protagonists), Tiryns, Pylos (home of Nestor), Thebes, Midea, Gla, Orchomenos, Argos, Sparta, Nichoria and Athens.
The Mycenaean civilization‘s decline started c. 1230 BCE as several sites were destroyed between 1250 and 1200 BCE and the centralized system of palace control ceased. Some sites were reinhabited later but on a smaller scale and with less wealth than previously. By around 1100 BCE, most Mycenaean sites had been reduced to mere villages.
Early Acropolis
The Acropolis—literally meaning the highest of the farthest point (acro) of the city (polis) in Greek—is a 150-meter (470 feet) tall hill with a relatively flat top with a surface area of 7.4 acres. There is documentation to show that Attica was inhabited in the 6th millennium BCE, while some archaeologists estimate that the Acropolis—and Athens in general—was inhabited in the 3rd millennium BCE, based on pottery finds.
During the late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans built a palace on the Acropolis in Athens. As the Mycenaean civilization spread north, they started establishing fortified palaces in Tiryns, Midea, Athens, Thebes, Iolcus, Gia and other cities. On the Acropolis hill there are remains of Mycenaean walls and excavations have brought to the surface artifacts of their civilization.
Nothing of the Mycenaean palace has survived except for a limestone column base and pieces of several sandstone steps. However, there are remains of a massive wall that was 760 meters long (2,493 feet), up to 10 meters high (33 feet) and ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters thick (11.5 to 19.5 feet). The wall defended the city of Athens until the 5th century CE.
In typical Mycenaean style, following the natural contour of the terrain and its gate, the wall consisted of two parapets built with large stone blocks and cemented with an earth mortar called emplekton. A parapet and tower overhanging the incomer’s right-hand side was used to facilitate defense. On the north side of the hill there were two lesser approaches with steps cut in the rock.
A place of worship
Later, in the Geometric and Archaic periods, temples were built on the Acropolis hill in Athens, making it a place of worship overlooking the city. The most important was the Hekatompedon or Hekatompedos (Ἑκατόµπεδον, Ancient Greek for εκατόν [hekaton] πούς (foot)) meaning one hundred feet. It was built in the Archaic period, and placed in the position of the present Parthenon.
The temple was built around 570–550 BCE. It was a Doric limestone structure dedicated to Athena Polias, the guardian goddess of the city.
A new publication in the American Journal of Archaeology by historians Merle Langdon of University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Janric van Rookhuijzen of Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands, speaks of a number of recently discovered carvings on rocks found in the hills to the north and east of Vari in Attica.
Among these, there is a drawing of a temple with the inscription “Hekatompedon,” signed by an individual named Mikon. The alphabet used is dated to the 6th century BCE.
The newly discovered work is a rough rock-cut drawing of a building. Though the details of the drawing are not fully understood, it can be identified as a temple due to the columns and steps.
The carved inscriptions dated to 485/4 BC, mention rooms within the Hekatompedon used to store treasures. The temple priests normally stored treasures offered to the gods in some rooms. These documents confirm, therefore, that the term was already used to designate a specific and sacred part of the Athens Acropolis.
It is likely that Mikon who signed the carving wanted to depict a building on the Acropolis of Athens. However, because the alphabet he used can be firmly dated to the 6th century BCE, the drawing must be at least 50 years older than the Parthenon.
Archaeologists disagree over dates and precise location
While archaeologists agree that there were other temples on the Acropolis in the place where the Parthenon stands, they disagree on the dates, the appearance of the temple and the precise location.
There is a historical event that makes it difficult to understand the exact date today’s Parthenon structure on the Acropolis was built. When the Persian army invaded Athens after the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE, they destroyed not only the buildings on the Acropolis hill, but they obliterated the whole city.
The Persians looted the rich sanctuaries at the Acropolis summit, but also burned buildings in Athens, overturned statues, and smashed pots.
Before the structures ordered by Pericles were built on the Acropolis hill in the middle of the 5th century, Mikon’s inscription sheds light on the meaning and application of the term Hekatompedon.
Archaeologists believe that Mikon’s drawing’s recently discovered graffito holds great significance. Given that Mikon referred to his sketched temple as a Hekatompedon in the Athens Acropolis, it is probable that the decree’s use of the term Hekatompedon also applied to a temple. Indeed, the Parthenon that stands on the Acropolis hill today was once called the Hekatompedon.
Mikon’s graffito is a unique document from the second half of the 6th century BC that represents the earliest epigraphic attestation of the term Hekatompedon. The use of the definite article τό (it) implies that a specific building is represented, probably on the Acropolis of Athens.
The engraving can provide information for future studies on the architectural history of the Acropolis in the archaic period, as it sheds new light on the term Ἑκατόµπεδον used in the second Hekatompedon decree of 485/4 BC. In particular, it reinforces the view that this term referred to a temple, with a probable, though uncertain, location on the south side of the Archaic period Acropolis.
Additionally, they add, that beyond its archaeological importance, the inscription is also significant because it shows that, contrary to what is normally thought, shepherds could read and write, even at this early date when literacy in the Greek world was still spreading.
The Parthenon rebirth
By 450 BCE, the Athenians under Pericles finally decided what to do with the ruins of the city and their desecrated sanctuaries. For 30 years they were mulling over the problem. They had to consider not only how to commemorate the destruction they had suffered, but also how to rebuild and celebrate their definitive victory in the Persian Wars.
In those 30 years the Acropolis continued to be a working sanctuary. The Athenians rebuilt the walls of the Athens citadel, incorporating within them some fire-damaged materials from the destroyed temples. They also created a new, more level surface on the Acropolis through terracing. In the infill they buried all the sculptures damaged by the Persian sack.
In the mid-5th century BCE, under orders from Pericles, the Athens Acropolis and the Parthenon were rebuilt. On the site of the great marble temple burned by the Persians, they constructed a new one: the Parthenon we know today. They set it on the footprint of the earlier building, with minor alterations. In rebuilding they used every block from the Older Parthenon that had not been damaged by fire. By recycling materials, the Athenians saved time and expense.
At the same time as they rebuilt on the footprint of the damaged temple and re-used its blocks, the Athenians could imagine the rebirth of the Older Parthenon, now larger and more impressive, but still intimately connected to the earlier sanctuary.
