The Rotunda of Arsinoe II

The Rotunda, constructed between 288 and 270 BC, is the largest closed round building known in ancient Greek architecture. An inscription carved on the architrave identifies the building’s dedicator as queen Arsinoe II. The closed lower part of the building supported an exterior false gallery of Doric pilasters and an interior one of Corinthian half-columns. On the exterior, the parapets occupying the lower intervals between the pilasters are decorated with a rosette between two bucranes; on the inside, the lower intervals between the Corinthian half-columns take the form of altars decorated with alternating pairs of paterae and bucranes. A Doric entablature crowned the pilasters; a Corinthian entablature ran over the Corinthian capitals. The original roof was conical, and the entire building had a height of 12.65 meters. A single Doric doorway provided the only entrance.

Arsinoe II Philadelphos (“loving her brother”), ca. 316-270 BC, daughter of Ptolemy I and his mistress Berenike, was married first to the king of Thrace, Lysimachos; following his death (281 BC), she next married her half-brother, Ptolemy Keraunos, who murdered two of her three sons by Lysimachos. Afterwards, Arsinoe fled to Samothrace and then to Egypt, where she married her full brother Ptolemy II, king of Egypt. The monarchy was strengthened by the dynastic cult they instituted, into which the couple were incorporated as Theoi Adelphoi (“Sibling Gods”), and Arsinoe became the first example of a Ptolemaic ruler to enter the Egyptian temples as a “temple-sharing goddess.” A truly extraordinary woman in many respects, her importance in monarchic representation and in the ruler cult is quite clear.

The Hieron

The Hieron, as it was called by its last excavators in the 20th century, the couple Phyllis and Karl Lehmann, had been known since 1880 as “der neue Tempel” (“the New Temple”). It is one of the most impressive buildings in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods. Its construction began in the early 3rd century BC. The Hieron is a long narrow structure with porch, pronaos and cella. Both pediments contained sculptures and were crowned by sculptured akroteria: a central floral acanthus akroterion flanked by a Victory on each corner. Marble benches lined the side walls of the cella, in the forepart of which a small, square sacred hearth (eschara) was sunk into the floor. The building is distinguished in the interior by an apse, included in the rectangular cella.

The Altar Court

The Altar Court was a rectangular enclosure with a marble Doric colonnade between marble antae on the west side, and limestone walls on the three other sides. Inside, there was a monumental marble altar, which covered an archaic sacrificial place on top of a huge rock. The architrave bore the dedicatory inscription, Ἀ̣δαῖος Κ[ο] ρράγ̣[ου Μακεδ]ὼν θεο̣[ῖς │ μεγάλοις], referring to Adaios, the tyrant of the Thracian town of Kypsela near Ainos, who controlled the region in the mid-3rd century BC, and, based on the historical evidence, probably donated the Altar Court during the decade 253-243 BC.