DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7382#0108
XXVIII. SUNIUM
Sunium—the sanctuary of the seafarers of Athens—the site of the temple of
Poseidon, though having no separate existence apart from Athens and therefore to
be reckoned as Athens, was the natural place of dedication for the early merchant
adventurers. It is here rather than at Eleusis that we must look for traces of inter-
course between Athens and Egypt—live intercourse that is—for the dedications and
deposits here are the honest treasures and "lucks" of Attic sailors brought from a
far country, not amulets bought to place in a tomb with some hope of mysterious
benefits for the dead, but " curios " dedicated in thankfulness to Poseidon by the living.
They date chiefly from the middle of the seventh century, i.e. the early XXVIth
Dynasty, and are all from the Precinct of Poseidon, in a deposit in the Eastern Angle
of the Temenos. The rest of the objects found in this deposit, as will be seen below,
cannot be dated much before the middle of the sixth century.
82
Sunium—the sanctuary of the seafarers of Athens—the site of the temple of
Poseidon, though having no separate existence apart from Athens and therefore to
be reckoned as Athens, was the natural place of dedication for the early merchant
adventurers. It is here rather than at Eleusis that we must look for traces of inter-
course between Athens and Egypt—live intercourse that is—for the dedications and
deposits here are the honest treasures and "lucks" of Attic sailors brought from a
far country, not amulets bought to place in a tomb with some hope of mysterious
benefits for the dead, but " curios " dedicated in thankfulness to Poseidon by the living.
They date chiefly from the middle of the seventh century, i.e. the early XXVIth
Dynasty, and are all from the Precinct of Poseidon, in a deposit in the Eastern Angle
of the Temenos. The rest of the objects found in this deposit, as will be seen below,
cannot be dated much before the middle of the sixth century.
82