Delphi: The Bellybutton of the Ancient World

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By the mid 4th century, this was

one of the most awe-inspiring

and spectacular places

in the entire ancient world.

Its combination of art, religion,

money made it, in modern day terms,

the equivalent of the wealth of the Swiss

banks, the religious power of the Vatican,

the advertising potential

of the World Cup

and the historical importance of

all the world's museums combined.

This is Delphi, on the slope of

Mount Parnassus in central Greece.

Home of the great Oracle of Apollo,

Delphi was the Omphalos,

the belly button,

the centre of the ancient world.

According to ancient myth,

Zeus sent two eagles

from opposite ends of the Earth.

And this is where they met.

It was several days' journey from the

main cities of the ancient Greek world.

Yet for centuries,

not just ordinary people,

but kings and ambassadors

from great cities and empires

struggled up here

in search of answers to

their most puzzling questions.

Fundamentally, they came here to ask the

Oracle of the god Apollo about the future.

But however unwelcome, unhelpful,

indeed awful, those responses

were, they kept coming.

Why? And why do we still

come here as tourists today?

For me, it was because Delphi told the

ancient Greeks something about themselves.

Indeed, above the entrance

to the temple of Apollo,

where they went to see the Oracle,

was a simple inscription.

It said, "Gnothi seauton".

Know thyself.

And that message, I think, isn't just

important to the ancient Greeks.

I believe that know thyself,

the message of Delphi,

and everything that was

incarnate in this place,

still has meaning

and importance for us today.

What the tourists see here at Delphi

has only been like this

for just over a century.

Before that, it was a lost world.

Scholars knew that Delphi had been

one of the most important

sanctuaries in ancient Greece.

But it was buried beneath earth,

rocks and centuries of legend.

The answer was to dig,

and just about everybody

had their shovels at the ready.

Ever since the Renaissance,

Europeans had looked

to ancient Greece as

the foundation of Western culture.

By the 1890s, American, French

and German teams were negotiating

with the Greek government

for the right to excavate.

Eventually, in 1892,

the French won the race.

They sweetened the deal by lowering tariffs

on imported Greek currants and olive oil.

Ever since, they have led

the search for ancient Delphi.

When I first began studying the

sanctuary as a young postgraduate,

French scholars like Dominique Mulliez

were an enormous inspiration.

The first problem for

the archaeologists was that there

were people still living right

on top of the ancient sanctuary.

Despite the difficulties,

the sanctuary and its lost treasures

gradually began to emerge

from the soil.

The legend became a real place,

with an iconic reputation.

In ancient times it had been

a communal sanctuary,

visited freely by people from

all over the ancient world.

Now, once again,

people flocked to Delphi.

It became a beacon for internationalism

just like the modern Olympic games,

which were founded

at the same time in the 1890s.

And, in fact, Delphi still is

a beacon for internationalism.

Here's how ICOMOS,

the UNESCO organisation,

described Delphi when they made

it a World Heritage Site in 1986.

"This reaffirms that one

of the enduring missions

"of Delphi is to bring

together men and women

who otherwise remain divided

by material interests."

But is that true?

And if so, how and why did

Delphi get such a reputation?

The only way to answer

that is to find out

what was really going on at this

site thousands of years ago.

At its height, the sanctuary at

Delphi covered more than 100 acres.

The temple itself was surrounded by

hundreds of votive buildings,

treasure houses,

porticoes and statues,

all of them built by

grateful visitors.

Some of them had come

hundreds of miles.

They included rulers from across

the ancient world,

from the legendary King Midas

in the 8th century BC,

to the Roman Emperor Hadrian,

1,000 years later.

And the visitors came

for the Oracle.

To ask the god Apollo for answers

to their questions about the future.

But what actually happened

when they got here?

Well, luckily, one of

the several accounts we have

is the writings of a real insider.

He was a priest at the temple

called Plutarch.

What Plutarch tells us

is that the Oracle operated

on only nine days each year.

On those days, crowds of worshippers

would queue to ask their question.

Now faced with the front of the temple of

Apollo and the inscription "Know thyself,"

the consultant had to decide

what their question would be.

Some examples. King Croesus

from Lydia in modern-day Turkey

wanted to ask whether he should

attack his next-door enemy empire.

Or the Athenians, when they were

faced with the Persian invasion,

asked what should they do?

But the thing is, we don't know exactly

how the consultation took place.

But if we can get inside the temple,

perhaps we can get a better idea.

And here we are,

inside the sacred temple of Apollo,

following in the footsteps of the people

who came to consult the Oracle.

Moving from the public, front end

of the temple, towards the back,

the inner sanctum,

the most sacred area.

It's here that

French archaeologists,

in their most recent plan

of the temple,

have discovered something new.

Here, this rectangular structure,

what they're calling an oikos,

which may well be what the literary

sources talk about as the adyton,

the home of the Pythian priestess

herself.

But the thing is, we still don't

know for sure the mechanics

of what actually happened

in this space.

What we do know

is that the Oracle was a woman.

The priestess was said to sit on

top of a tripod

set over a chasm in the rock,

from which vapours rose.

She was reputed to breathe in

the vapours and answer in a trance,

as if inspired by Apollo.

The priestess gave her answers to

the applicant's question

from within the trance,

and once she had spoken,

the applicants then had to try

to understand what she had said.

So what was the prophetic vapour

that induced trances in the priestess?

Well, we now know that Delphi's geology

produced hallucinogenic fumes.

The sanctuary grew up at a place

where two geological faults crossed.

And here on the temple floor

you can see the signs of subsidence

caused by the two faults.

And right beside the temple and

its Oracle, is a tell-tale deposit.

This is travertine, formed when

water releases hydrocarbons,

which it can only accumulate

if it exists around a fault line.

Another sign, another piece of

evidence that the geological

fault line runs right through

the temple at Delphi.

Recent tests showed that one of

those hydrocarbons

is the gas ethylene,

which is known to affect

the working of the brain.

That could explain the trance.

But geology can only explain why the

priestess was here in this exact position.

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