Didyma

Didyma (Ancient Greek: Δίδυμα) was an ancient Greek sanctuary on the coast of Ionia in the domain of the famous city of Miletus. Apollo was the main deity of the sanctuary (also called the Didymaion), and it included temples to both Apollo and his twin sister, Artemis; other deities were also honoured there. Didyma was known in antiquity for its famed oracle of Apollo, situated within the god's temple. The remains of this Hellenistic temple are among the best-preserved from classical antiquity. Other buildings from the sanctuary included a Greek theatre and the Hellenistic temple of Artemis.

Geography

The ruins of Didyma are located a short distance to the northwest of modern Didim in Aydın Province, Turkey, whose name is derived from the ruins. It sits on a headland that in antiquity formed the Milesian Peninsula. Didyma was the largest and most significant sanctuary on the territory of the great classical city Miletus. The natural connection between Miletus and Didyma was by way of ship. But during antiquity the sediments from the Meander River silted up the harbour of Miletus. A slow process which eventually meant that the nearby Latmian Gulf developed from a bay into a lake (today Bafa Gölü).

The linear distance between Miletus and Didyma measures some 16 km. As well as the simple footway there also existed a Sacred Way between the city and its sanctuary which measured some 20 km in distance. This Sacred Way, built in the 6th century BC, was used for festival processions. It touched the harbour of Didyma, situated 3 km northwest of the sanctuary called Panormos (today Mavişehir). Along this route were ritual waystations, and statues of noblemen and noblewomen, as well as animal and mythological beast figures. Some of these statues, dating to the 6th century BC, are now in the British Museum (Room 13), excavated by the British archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton in the 19th century.

The Milesians erected an altar dedicated to Poseidon 6 km southwest of Didyma. The altar was built in the first half of the 6th century BC at the southwest cape of the Milesian Peninsula. Here was the border between Ionia and Caria (according to Strabo). The remains of the altar are still visible and can be easily found due to the location of a nearby modern lighthouse. Architectural members of this famous altar can be seen in the Pergamon Museum of Berlin.

Names

In Greek didyma means "twins", but some suggest that it has Carian origin of the name. The Carians settled this area first and then Ionian Greeks settled in Didyma around 1000 BC. Didyma was first mentioned among the Greeks in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. But its establishment is supposed to precede literacy and even the Hellenic colonization of Ionia around 1000 BC. In contrary the first archaeological pieces of evidence of Didyma date in the 8th century BC.

Mythic genealogies of the origins of the Branchidae line of priests, designed to capture the origins of Didyma as a Hellenic tradition, date to the Hellenistic period. Greek and Roman authors laboured to refer the name Didyma to "twin" temples or to temples of the twins Apollo and Artemis, whose own cult center at Didyma had then only recently been established. Also, as Wilamowitz suggested, there may be a connection to Cybele Dindymene, the "Cybele of Mount Dindymon". Excavations by German archaeologists have lately uncovered the temple dedicated to Artemis, north of the temple of Apollo.

Apollo was worshipped in nearby Miletus under the name Delphinius (the same name was also used at Delphi). At Didyma, he was worshipped as Didymeus (Διδυμεύς). His other names in the area were Philesios (Φιλήσιος), Helios, and Carinus (Καρῖνος).

History

Both Herodotus and Pausanias dated the origins of the oracle at Didyma before the Ionian colonization of this coast. However, finds from this period are so scarce that the existence of the sanctuary cannot be archaeologically proven for the time before the late 8th or early 7th century BC.

It is supposed that until its destruction by the Persians in 494 BC, Didyma's sanctuary was administered by the family of the Branchidae, who claimed descent from an eponymous Branchus, son of Smicrus and beloved of Apollo. The priestess, seated above the sacred spring, gave utterances that were interpreted by the Branchidae. Clement of Alexandria quotes Leandrios saying that Cleochus, grandfather of the eponymous founder Miletus, was buried within the temple enclosure of Didyma.

Under the Persian king Darius, following the naval battle of Lade, the sanctuary was burned in 494 BC. The Persians carried away the bronze cult statue of Apollo to Ecbatana, traditionally attributed to Canachus of Sicyon at the end in the 6th century BC. It was then reported that the oracle spring ceased to flow and the archaic oracle was silenced. Although the sanctuaries of Delphi and Ephesus were swiftly rebuilt, Didyma remained a ruin until the time Alexander the Great conquered Miletus and freed it from the Persians in 334 BC. In between a complete break had been rent in the oracles' personnel and tradition, the Branchidae priests marched off to Persian sovereign territory. Callisthenes, a court historian of Alexander, reported that the spring began once more to flow as Alexander passed through Egypt in 331 BC.