A terracotta head of the goddess Athena re-emerged during an excavation at the temple D in Agrigento: the discovery opens up new religious scenarios and new working hypotheses. The discovery by a research team of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa would allow, in fact, to attribute the cult of the temple to Athena and not to Hera (Juno for the Romans) as happened up to now. The results of the latest survey campaign were presented today at the Archaeological and Landscape Park of the Valley of the Temples by the director Roberto Sciarratta.
An excavation essay opened in the southeastern corner of temple D, so far attributed to the Greek goddess Hera, has returned the first clay head of Athena with a helmet, datable between the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth century BC, and an arm with the aegis and the clenched fist in an attacking attitude (promachos): it is today a unique example in the panorama of the representations of the goddess in Akragas and allows us to glimpse – albeit as a circumstantial element – a new piece in the religious scenario of the city in the archaic and classical age.
It is the surprising conclusion of the third excavation campaign of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa with its Saet Laboratory in the Valley of the Temples, under the scientific supervision of professor Gianfranco Adornato and doctor Maria Concetta Parello, archaeologist officer of the Archaeological and Landscape Park of the Valle dei Temples.
“If supported by other archaeological evidence – says Professor Adornato, associate of Classical Archeology at the Scuola Normale – the cult of Athena in the sanctuary of temple D on the southern hill will definitively replace the title of the temple to Hera Lacinia, proposed by Tommaso Fazello in 1558 in the De Rebus Siculis Decades Duae, the first printed book on the history of Sicily, an attribution still in use today in manuals, but based on a literary source of dubious interpretation and not on material evidence “.
The excavations in that area, in which numerous students, graduate students and post-doc students of the Scuola Normale of Pisa participated, were conducted to investigate the stratigraphic and chronological relationship between the platform in front of the temple and the stereobate and revealed Corinthian materials. , Attic and local, mostly consistent with the altar deposits.
The privileged area of investigation was the altar – the place of the sacred and the rite par excellence – with its votive deposits and materials: this area continues to be an invaluable source of information for understanding the religious and religious practices of the devotees and marks the entire chronology of the sacred area through its stratigraphy.
The researches in the western area of the temple also made it possible to identify a foundation wall perfectly aligned with the altar, but not with the temple of the classical period, a further indication of the pre-existence of a sanctuary in the Archaic period. This sector provides information for understanding not only the entire building factory, but also the disposal and drainage system of the waters of the sacred area: the latter elements which are indispensable for the functioning and activities of such an important place in the life of the polis.
“The excavation campaign, this year more than ever, combines the field research activity with the didactic and dissemination requests of the third mission, which has always been the flagship of the Park and the Scuola Normale – explains the director Roberto Sciarratta – The Park’s vocation fully responds to the scientific needs of the Italian and foreign archaeological missions currently active within the Unesco universal heritage site, placing visitors at the center of this experience, in an atmosphere of total sharing of knowledge and on multiple levels “.