Didyma

From one unfinished temple to another…

Not far from Euromos, relatively speaking, is the massive Temple of Apollo at Didyma. This temple truly took my breath away and it was the moment during the whole trip where I was utterly stunned into silence. The scale of this temple is such that no photos will ever do it justice, and only being there will bring the massive columns and the huge walls to life. But, like the Temple of Zeus at Euromos, the Temple of Apollo at Didyma was never completed…

The Temple of Apollo is a staggering 360 feet (120m) long and 84 feet (28m) high and is one of the largest temples ever built. Once all of the 122 columns were erected and the ‘roof’ applied, the temple never had a cornice or a pediment, many of the columns remained unfluted and much of the decoration was unfinished.

The temple was the largest ever built around a natural spring. Natural water sources were revered by the ancient Anatolians, like the religious complex at Letoon which is central to the cult of Leto, Apollo’s mother. Although Leto, Apollo and Artemis have been attributed to the Greeks, they may have been originally Lycian deities (see Perga). The “Naval of the World” – Delphi – was also built around a natural spring. Natural springs were also central to the cult of the oracle, the ancient world’s spiritual consultants, and these were the culmination of many thousands of years of shamanism. Despite what many scholars will say, the oracles were shamans, and certainly the idea that the oracle at Delphi was in an altered state of consciousness due to natural gas emanating from the ground is utter nonsense, but that argument will be given in the travelogue of Delphi (the Greece section is yet to be started). The Greeks, however, did believe that the spring itself was the source of the oracle’s power. It’s certainly an ongoing debate, but I believe that ancient secret rites were being adhered to – the oracles often spent days preparing for their advice giving through various, and often unknown, rituals and thus this implies shamanic origins. Either way, what we frequently observe is that gods connected with natural springs were in place in Anatolia long before the Greeks arrived.

According to Pausanias (160 AD) the original temple at Didyma was constructed prior to Greek colonisation in the 10th Century BC, and some even state it was built in the 2nd millennium BC. The original temple was built by the Carian culture (11th – 6th centuries BC) so Pausanias’ statement seems accurate. As stated above, the interesting thing is that the original temple was not of Greek origin but was built around a natural spring, so this kind of religious practise appears to be a universal one. Certainly in most cultures around the world the worship of natural water sources is as common as drinking water itself.

In the 6th Century BC the inhabitants of nearby Miletus started work on a second temple at Didyma (it is not written whether the first was destroyed or whether the second temple was simply a renovation). The first temple was rather simple and was built on the site of a Carian sanctuary, so technically we could argue that the second temple was actually the third. This second temple, however, was destroyed in either 494 BC or 479 BC, by the Persian King Darius or, respectively, by his son Xerxes. Either way, the Persians were proving to be a real pain in the behind for the Mediterannean cultures during the 5th Century BC.

In 334 BC Alexander the Great conquered Miletus during his campaign to drive out the Persians from Asia Minor, and later in 331 BC he re-consecrated the site and the oracle at Didyma. Although the year is not exactly agreed upon, the building of a new Hellenistic temple – the temple we see today – began sometime between 313 and 300 BC, almost 200 years after the destruction of the previous temple. Like most temples of this immense size, Didyma took many centuries to build, but even after 700 years, in the 4th Century, the temple was still unfinished. This length of time seems to be rather odd since the Parthenon, although smaller, took just nine years to erect, and a further six years to decorate, that itself a seeming miracle even by today’s engineering standards. Clearly conditions at Didyma were both political and economical for the temple to take so long. I do believe, however, that when it comes to building columns, one can apply the mathematics of exponentiality. In other words, if a column has a circumference of one metre and it takes one year to erect and decorate, for example, then a column with a circumference of two metres would not take two years – it would take many more years. The temple columns at Didyma are simply massive, but still the 700 years’ building project cannot be explained by exponentiality. Mind you, if British road workers were employed at the site, then all is comfortably explicable!

The Temple of Apollo at Didyma, also known as the Didymaion, was built to rival the Artemision – the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Their sizes were relatively similar, but while some elements were larger at Ephesus, other elements were larger at Didyma. To put it into perspective, since many people may have not visited Didyma and there’s nothing left of the Artemision, both of those temples were more than twice the size of the Parthenon.

The columns are a staggering 7.5 feet in diameter (2.5m) and have a circumference of 23.5 feet (7.85m), and the temple platform has an area 16,500 square feet (5,500 square metres). With most temples the adyton was always built on top of the temple platform, or floor, but at Didyma it was necessary to build the platform around the adyton as the central focus had to be the natural spring. In other words the platform had to be the same level as the adyton; the adyton could not be located on top of the platform. This created a real headache for the architects, but an ingenious solution was made – two vaulted tunnels were built into the front of the temple at an angle, both leading down to the floor level within. These tunnels are 63 feet (21m) long and more than 3 feet (1m) wide, and cut a steep angle into the main temple. It’s an astonishing feat, both for aesthetic and architectural reasons, and gives the temple a very unique design. Another unique element to the Didymaion was the roof, or in this case the lack of one. From the outside the temple looked like any other and the façade gave the impression of a fully covered temple, but once inside there was no inner roof – the sacred spring was open to the elements. This enabled the architects to plant a row of trees within the temple, giving the surroundings a very organic and natural feel to it, rather like an inner garden. One can imagine the scene: the oracle sat near the sacred spring, surrounded by flowers, plants and trees, and the entire area encased within massive walls. I can imagine this could have been quite a nerve wracking experience for those who sought the oracle’s advice.

The oracle herself rivalled that at Delphi and was the second most important and most revered in the ancient world, and many famous people sought her advice. Alexander the Great has been mentioned already, and others include Caesar and Julian, but the most devastating outcome of the oracle’s words were those given in the year 303 to the emperor Diocletian. Diocletian was concerned about the rise of Christianity, and the oracle’s prophetic words brought about a mass persecution against the Christians – the largest in the Roman world – and many thousands of them were killed in an attempt to bring back paganism to the ever-changing Roman empire. Later, Constantine the Great – the Roman emperor who finally converted the entire empire towards Christianity – closed down the temple and executed the priests. Not a particularly Christian thing to do but then that’s how religious organisations operate(d) in general.

Another ironic turn later occurred at the temple during the 5th and 6th centuries. While most temples were destroyed or simply abandoned, and Christian churches built right next to or on the edge of the original temples to provide elevation, at Didyma the Christian church was built right on top of the adyton, wiping out the sacred spring and thus destroying any last view of the oracle’s place of advice-giving. Thus the church was built within the temple walls and could not be seen from the outside, and this design clearly shows that eradicating the oracle was far more important that eradicating the temple itself; the Christians made a bold statement of intent, as if by this design the crimes that occurred because of the oracle’s advice under Diocletian’s rule would be forever forgotten and the dead ‘covered by God’s love’; the oracle was finally sent to the underworld forever.

Today another ironic turn; the Christian church is no longer visible as all traces of it were removed to reveal the adyton! What is left is a stunningly massive temple that can only leave the visitor in total awe. The Didymaion is a testament to ancient architecture and engineering. It baffles the observer – how were our ancestors able to build such massive temples without the aid of mechanised machinery? The determination to build such monuments is staggering, for most of those who may have spent a lifetime working on the building of the temple would never see its completion. The incredible Didymaion was finally destroyed not by the hands of Christians, but by a massive earthquake. The damage was such that only three of the 122 columns remain standing at their original height.

My visit to Didyma was the afternoon of the 22nd March, 2015, my last day of visits in Turkey before the flight home the following day. There were two more sites to visit but by now the sun was dipping and it was heading towards late afternoon, and it would be almost impossible to see both of them by sundown.

 

References:

http://www.ancient.eu/article/640/

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/turkey/didyma

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/greece/paganism/didyma.html

http://www.livius.org/mi-mn/miletus/miletus-didyma.html

http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/go/Aegean/Ephesus/prien_milet_didim/didim.html