In antiquity, the fame of Samothrace, a tiny windswept island in the northern Aegean, emanated from its mystery cult of the Megaloi Theoi, the Great Gods, whose rites of initiation promised protection at sea and the opportunity to “become a better and more pious person in all ways” (Diodorus).
The Sanctuary itself has the unmistakable aura of sacred ground. Set facing the sea in a cleft at the base of Mt. Phengari, the Sanctuary of the Great Gods physically integrates the divine forces of earth, sky, and sea that played a fundamental role in the mysteria. Within its sacred landscape events occurred that shaped both the mythic and historical ancient world.
The island’s legendary family sired the Trojan race, gave form to the personification of Harmonia, and taught humans the sacred rites of the mysteria. Here, legend has it that the parents of Alexander the Great first met; here, the last Macedonian king held out against the Romans.
The nature of the rites of initiation was held in silent trust by the community of initiated. However, their power to transform is well attested by ancient authors, by the lists of initiates who came to the sanctuary, by the innovative architecture that sheltered the rituals, by the splendid dedications offered to the Gods, and by the humble but crucial detritus of cult—pottery and animal bones—that built up over centuries of use spanning from the 7th century BC to the 4th century AD. The sanctuary thus provides a key point of access into the spiritual, political, and cultural psyche of the classical world.
The transformative power of the Mysteries is most palpably signaled today by the deployment of the innovative buildings that once framed the rites within the sacred landscape—a dozen extraordinary monuments, each distinct within the history of Greek architecture, each deftly positioned within the terrain to heighten the experience of the initiate, each archaeologically well-preserved although no longer standing. In concert with the landscape, they justifiably make Samothrace one of the most important expressions of Hellenistic sacred space in the ancient Mediterranean.
Framing the Mysteries Research Project
With the support of the Collaborative Research in the Humanities Grant (CRitH) from Emory University, and in collaboration with the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and the ΙΘ’ Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Komotini, the Mysteries Research Project is working to develop new strategies for understanding how Samothracian architecture was designed and the way in which it acts in concert with the sacred space to craft the experience of initiation. Forging liaisons across the disciplines of Art History, Computer Science, Statistics, and the Carlos Museum, the principal investigators, Bonna Wescoat (Art History), Vicki Hertzberg (Biostatistics, Rollins School of Public Health), Elizabeth Hornor (Michael C. Carlos Museum), and Michael Page (Woodruff Library) and their students have developed three interrelated projects that engage the interconnectedness of architecture, landscape, and religious ritual:
* Recreate the pilgrim’s experience by building and then traversing a three-dimensional digital reconstructed model of the Sanctuary;
* Articulate the design principles of Samothracian architecture by developing statistical methods and computational tools to analyze the metrics of Samothracian buildings; and
* Develop the i-Site pilot program for communicating and contextualizing this work through a virtual exhibition and blog, www.isamothrace.org, in conjunction with the Michael C. Carlos Museum’s website.
The platform on which the research will be partially disseminated is the website, www.samothrace.emory.edu. The methods of inquiry developed here function both as research tools and as means of communication, with the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace serving as the paradigm.
In exploring new ways of understanding human action and the constructed environment in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, the hope is to develop a particular interface of archaeology, computer science, geospatial referencing, and statistics that will create an effective way to answer questions concerning spatial environments across other cultures and places.
Source: www.samothrace.emory.edu
