What is the sanctuary of Artemis at Amarynthos ? What does it mean to Hellenists ?
Denis Knoepfler :It's a sanctuary that we could trace in ancient sources, but whose exact location remained unknown to us. We knew that it depended on the city of Eretria in Evia, a considerable island in the Aegean Sea (the largest, in fact, of the Greek islands after Crete), to the north of Attica, not far from Athens. It's a region that, after a long period of neglect by archaeologists, is gradually proving to be of great interest in this respect. The ancient site of Eretria has been excavated since 1964 by a Swiss mission, which later became the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece (ESAG), a kind of little sister to the prestigious - and much older - French School of Athens (EFA).
In ancient Greece, a large sanctuary, such as the one dedicated to the goddess Artemis at Amarynthos, had more than just a religious dimension. The religious sphere could hardly be dissociated from the political sphere, for Artemis Amarysia was considered the tutelary deity of the polis, the city in all its components. For Amarynthos, we were fortunate to have a number of texts at our disposal, such as the relatively detailed text by the geographer Strabo (from the time of Emperor Augustus), as well as ancient inscriptions that mention the sanctuary and demonstrate its importance. The steles were used to display important public documents, including alliance treaties with other cities. In a way, it acted as a public archive for the city of Eretria (city and territory). We also know that important ceremonies were regularly held here, some of which might have involved the entire Euboean tetrapolis, i.e. the four cities that shared the island. It's understandable, then, that the Artemisia of Amarynthos has long attracted the passionate attention of researchers, both Greek and foreign ; for me, it was almost a mythical place, whose location - if ever realized ! - held out the hope of discovering not only significant archaeological remains, but also beautiful inscriptions of considerable historical significance.
When did it become part of your research ? What was your role ?
At the time, in 1966 and the years that followed, I was still a very young researcher who joined the Swiss archaeological mission with the sole aim of learning the trade. It was a very favourable situation. On the one hand, I was lucky enough to be able to spend time on the site in the company of researchers more advanced than myself, and in particular field archaeologists who knew the site of Eretria well. On the other hand, while I was being trained in the demands of excavation, I didn't have the heavy responsibility of one of the sites, and so enjoyed a much greater degree of freedom. And I didn't fail to take advantage of this to get out of town, for walks or bike rides. In 1968 and 1969 in particular, I began to carry out surface prospecting on a fairly systematic basis, although it was still a rather perfunctory task, and there was nothing unpleasant about it !
In orienting my research in this direction, I was simply following the example of one of my Parisian masters, Louis Robert, the famous epigraphist (and professor at the Collège from 1939 to 1974), for an understanding of Greek cities, to locate the fields that nourished their population, to pinpoint their borders with neighbouring cities and, if possible, to locate the towns and sanctuaries that must have developed outside the urban enclosure. For the city, the polis, is always made up of a town and a more or less extensive territory. Eretria's territory was considerable by ancient Greek standards, occupying almost the entire southern part of Evia. As a result, on these archaeological walks, I was not obsessed with finding the sanctuary of Artemis. Any ancient vestige seemed worthy of interest. But it's true that I had the nagging question of Amarynthos uppermost in my mind, because I was preparing a post-graduate thesis at the Sorbonne, in which Strabo's account of Eretria figured prominently.
In the end, you managed to find clues that suggested a possible location for the sanctuary. How did these clues lead you to locate and excavate the site ?
Strabo is undoubtedly one of the great geographers of antiquity. He produced a geography which, in his day, could be considered universal, stretching from the Iberian peninsula to Central Asia. On the Artemisia of Amarynthos, he provided us with two pieces of information of exceptional interest. On the one hand, he mentioned the presence of two inscribed stelaein theAmarynthion (as he called this hieron, a space dedicated to the divinity), one of which was a kind of " sacred law " relating to the great military procession that the Eretrians celebrated " formerly " in honor of Artemis. On the other hand, he located the village of Amarynthos seven stadia from the city walls, with a precision that apparently left nothing to be desired ! This is a very short distance indeed, since in ancient Greece a stadium is worth just under two hundred meters. So the sanctuary must have been a kilometer and a half from the enclosure. It's therefore understandable that, since the 19th century, everyone has been looking for it in the immediate vicinity, near the ruins of the city of Eretria. However, archaeologists, particularly American and then Greek, had made only unconvincing finds in this area.
In view of the results obtained in my prospecting campaigns (often undertaken with my wife, herself very interested in this question), I became convinced, especially from the years 1974-1977 onwards, that there must be some error in Strabo's otherwise invaluable testimony. Not that he himself was guilty of error, for that was difficult to admit, and even more difficult to have admitted, given the authority of this geographer. I have therefore been led to suggest that a small error must have occurred in the transmission of this numerical data through the handwritten copies of the text. Any work that comes down to us from antiquity - except for inscriptions, of course - has passed through more or less numerous intermediaries. When a text is copied manually, the risk of making mistakes here and there is quite high, even on the part of professional copyists such as the medieval monks charged with reproducing manuscripts identically.
So I thought of a very simple mistake, if you can call it that ! In ancient Greece, numbers were not always written in full : they were often written down, more economically, using letters of the alphabet with a numerical value. For example, heptá, which means seven in Greek, is often replaced by the letter ζ (zeta). This letter is made up of a loop at the top and a curved line at the bottom. However, there's another letter in the Greek alphabet that looks a lot like it, namely ξ (xi). This one's design is only slightly more complex, with two upper loops instead of one. On the other hand, the letter xi has a completely different value in the numeral system, being worth sixty ! So we were no longer in the order of units, but in the order of tens. And if you go sixty stadia from the rampart, you arrive at the foot of a coastal hill, called Paleoekklisiès, which was exactly where the archaeological and epigraphic clues led us to locate the sanctuary of Amarynthos..
However, it wasn't easy to convince your peers of this hypothesis..
Indeed, you can't claim to reject - or at least - an indication from an author such as Strabo without provoking reticence, or even opposition scandalized by such impertinence ! So I had to work on my arguments for a long time. Fortunately, my training was not exclusively archaeological: as an epigraphist, I had also been initiated into the methods of philology, i.e. the critical study of ancient texts. I was therefore obliged to present the results of my research, arguing as methodically as possible, to show that it might now be better to give up looking for the sanctuary just seven furlongs from the ramparts...
But it wasn't until 1988 that the first major turning point came. Thanks to the support of one of my masters at the Sorbonne, the Hellenist François Chamoux, who was a member of the Institut de France, I had the privilege of presenting a paper to the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. There, I was able to develop my arguments in front of an audience of scholars with a wide range of expertise. All the cards were now on the table, but we had to wait another fifteen years or so before we could actually start taking soundings and then actually digging in the field. The world of archaeology is not always the simplest in administrative terms..
Once you've started digging, what do you find that confirms your hypothesis ? What was your first thought at the time ?
The second major turning point came in 2007. In the middle of a large orchard (still untouched by any construction around 1970, but already occupied, a quarter of a century later, by a few modern buildings), we soon came across, at a depth of over two metres, a series of large blocks forming an imposing foundation made up of two courses. Here was something so large that it was impossible to imagine it as a private house, yet we were unable to understand what type of building we were dealing with. It was only later, as we continued the excavation from 2012 onwards, that we saw that this was the section of a large colonnaded portico that would have bordered the sanctuary on the side facing the rising sun. It then took five or six years to clear it almost completely. This portico, with its two wings perpendicular to the main body, gave us the general orientation of the sanctuary, and therefore the direction in which we had to look for the temple itself. Although theoretically it was still possible to have doubts about the accuracy of my hypothesis, the discovery of this monumental foundation was enough, in my eyes, to consider that we had crossed a point of no return !
But the final confirmation only came in 2017. That year, we uncovered a deep well in front of the portico, accessed by a double staircase. Now, these two staircases were built entirely of large marble blocks, including statue bases which, in the early days, must have been scattered around the sanctuary. I suspected that several of these blocks might have been inscribed. On the last day of the excavation, at 2 p.m., I made arrangements with the site manager, Tobias Krapf, to have the first step lifted by our Greek workers : the plaque bore an intact inscription of forty lines on the reverse, which turned out to be precisely of the type mentioned by Strabo ; and, in 2019, another stele from the same staircase indicated - without the slightest equivocation - that it once stood " in the sanctuary of Artemis at Amarynthos " ! From then on, there was no room for skepticism . The excavation director at the time, my colleague Karl Reber from the University of Lausanne, could be justly proud of what he had achieved.
After more than fifteen years of excavation, what remains to be discovered ?
We know that the sanctuary of Amarynthos is still far from having revealed all its secrets, despite all the discoveries made so far. However, the ESAG's new director, Prof. Sylvian Fachard (Lausanne), rightly considers that a pause in the exploration of the site is necessary to allow the restoration of the countless objects unearthed in recent years, especially , with a view to their publication as soon as possible. The site also needs to be gradually developed to make it accessible to visitors ! However, excavations are set to resume in the near future, as there are still many areas to be explored, both above and below ground. The sanctuary was, in fact, much larger than we first imagined. The gradual discovery, since 2020, of the temple itself and its treasures has marked a major new turning point, since we are now in a position to better understand not only the development of the cult of Artemis in this place since very ancient times (let's say around 800 BC, not to mention the protohistoric settlement currently being excavated on the neighbouring hillside), but also many aspects of the festivals celebrated there in honour of the goddess. But we have yet to find, for example, the propylaeum of Artemisia, the monumental entrance to the " sacred way ", sixty stadia long, which provided access to the sanctuary from the city. In addition, the entire road network around Amarynthos is the subject of a " survey ", a systematic prospection that has already yielded remarkable results.
This research has occupied a large part of your career. These discoveries are now the subject of a film. Is it a kind of consecration to see your life's work presented to the general public ?
From the outset, of course, all the actors had a desire to pass on their work to the public, who are always keen to learn about great adventures ! That's why the film's author, Sébastien Reichenbach, had already produced short videos about the excavation site for an exhibition in Lausanne in 2020. It was he who wanted to continue the operation on a larger scale, by making this documentary. Over and above the film, which I feel owes a great deal to his talent as a filmmaker, what I like above all is the enthusiasm of a close-knit team of archaeologists with diverse backgrounds and training, including many young people of both sexes . It is now a vast collective undertaking in which a huge number of people, in Switzerland as well as in Greece, France and elsewhere, are involved. The film is therefore a tribute to the work of each and every one of them. What's more, when you're an old professor like me, it's obviously very gratifying to see your research get some media coverage. Today's discoveries are, on the one hand, the culmination of a long-standing, individual and sometimes solitary scientific investigation ; on the other, they are the reward for all those who believed in the possibility of one day discovering the sanctuary of the great goddess of Amarynthos.
Interview by Aurèle Méthivier
