Shrine to earthy love at riding venue
Archaeologists investigating an eastern Attica site earmarked for an Olympic horseriding venue have come across the remains of a 2,500-year-old shrine where the rites of love were celebrated and performed, as well as a cluster of Mycenaean graves. The discovery – one of the chief nightmares of officials racing to complete lagging preparations for the 2004 Games – on the 2.1-hectare Markopoulo plot, some 15 kilometers southeast of the capital, could cause construction delays but is not expected to force a change of venue. Archaeologist Olga Kakavoyianni, who supervises excavations at the site in the Mesogeia plain played down the significance of the find, which is linked to Aphrodite, goddess of love. «It is a small shrine, by no means a temple,» she told Kathimerini’s English Edition. «It consisted of an external wall enclosing a series of small rooms.» These stone structures, tentatively identified as bath and relaxation rooms, would have been used by priestesses of Aphrodite – who combined the attributes of celestial love and sexual passion – to offer sexual services to visitors. A much larger sanctuary of Aphrodite, the famous temple on Acrocorinthos above ancient Corinth, was described by the Roman geographer Strabo as «so wealthy that it possessed as temple-slaves more than a thousand prostitutes who were dedicated to the goddess.» The fourth-century-BC Markopoulo shrine, discovered in 2001, belonged to the ancient agricultural settlement of Myrrhinous, on much of which the riding center is being built. Working since 1998, archaeologists have also discovered several Mycenaean chamber tombs whose contents have not been investigated.
