Zeus’ Temple Holds Secrets of Ancient Game
Athens already is preparing for the summer games of 2004. But today’s games offer a far different spectacle from the contests of ancient Greece, where naked young men with oiled bodies raced and wrestled and boxed to honor their gods. Those great Panhellenic events began more than 2,700 years ago, first in Olympia and later at Delphi, lsthmia and Nemea. And at Nemea, where the games began in 573 B.C., a Berkeley archaeologist has been patiently reconstructing a site whose legends helped inspire the modern Olympics. For Stephen G. Miller, exploring the site at Nemea, 70 miles from Athens, involves more than analyzing artifacts and ruins, dating ancient rock strata or patiently assembling broken pottery shards. It also means reliving the events he’s studying. For the last two summers, large crowds have flocked to an ancient Nemean stadium (capacity 40,000) to watch a modern re-enactment of the ancient Nemean games. Seven hundred runners from 45 nations–barefoot and clad in white tunics–raced around the reborn stadium in groups of 12. Winners of the races were crowned–just as they were in antiquity–with wreaths of wild celery. Miller is a professor of classics at the University of California at Berkeley, but he also has been a barefoot runner, a slave carrying water for the athletes and a priest presiding over the re-enacted rituals of the legendary Nemean games.
“Playing those roles gives you a deeper sense of antiquity and a feel for the spirit of the people who lived and worked and played there so long ago,” he said recently after returning ‘from this year’s field work. Excavating the site every summer since 1973, Miller and his crew have found and re-assembled limestone columns that once stood proudly around the Temple of Zeus. Exactly a decade after they began the excavation and just east of the temple, they found the remains of a great altar to Zeus where athletes and their trainers performed sacrifices and swore oaths just before competing. And from ancient Greek records, two years later, Miller’s team also learned that his Nemea sitehad once seen major horse races in a hippodrome that must have existed next to the great stadium. In an earthen mound his team could trace the patterns of faint wheel marks indicating that chariots must have raced there too.
In 1997 Miller and his crew, seeking more evidence of the hippodrome, dug down into a spot where four low rock walls indicate there might be a structure underneath. There they found a wine jug, drinking mugs, coins and a crude little figure of a centaur. The next summer, after digging down 20 feet, they still hadn’t reached bottom. Miller wondered what purpose this deep rock-walled pit might have served, and finally concluded it must have been a reservoir holding copious quantities of water from a river near the site that now irrigates vineyards.
“The reservoir is a phenomenal find,” Miller said, “We believe it provided water for as many as 150 horses who raced in the hippodrome during the games. But how were the horses fed? And what did they do with that much manure every day? Trying to answer questions like that is one of the joys of the whole project.”
Eight months after finding the reservoir Miller and his team uncovered an ancient chamber that served the Nemean athletes as a locker room — the apodyterion — where they anointed themselves with olive oil. They then would have walked 120 feet through a vaulted entrance tunnel — the krypte esodos –whose walls are still marked by graffiti scratched by the athletes on their way into the stadium.
The wine jug and cups unearthed in one layer of the buried reservoir may have been left by victors in one of the ancient Nemean races, but just what kind of wine they drank remains unknown. Today, the local red wine served in Nemean taverns is called the Blood of Hercules, honoring the hero who strangled the ferocious Nemean lion there more than 5,000 years ago. As in so much of archaeology, the discoveries that Miller has made at Nemea all seem to recall ancient legends and link them to reality. The Berkeley team, for example, has unearthed a tiny bronze figurine identified as the image of an infant named Opheltes, whose fate inspired the first of the Nemean games.
As Miller recounts the tale, Opheltes was the son of Lykourgos and Eurydike, who had tried for many years to produce an heir. When the Oracle at Delphi warned them that their child must not touch the ground until he had learned to walk, they ordered a Nemean slave woman to care for the infant day and night. One day, when seven warrior heroes passed through Nemea on their way to march against the citadel of Thebes — they were the legendary “Seven Against Thebes” whose bloody war was immortalized by Aeschylus — the nurse placed the child on a bed of wild celery while she offered drink to the heroes. Instantly, a serpent lurking in the vegetation killed the infant and the warriors re-named the boy Archemoros, the “Beginner-of- Doom,” and held the first Nemean games in his honor as a funerary festival. Wreaths of wild celery crowned winners of those games, as they did the modern winners at Nemea last summer.
As with all classical archaeologists, whose excavations shed so much surprising light on antiquity, Miller and his students are now ready to organize and classify their treasured finds from the summer season, and to plan for next season’s dig.
“In the earthen mound where we saw the imprints of wheel cuts, we also have a bronze vessel of the kind that was always used for pouring libations,” Miller said. That mound goes back to 600 B.C., so now we wonder what happened there in that complex of religion and athletics even before the Nemean games.”
Archaeology doesn’t come cheap, and each season at Nemea costs at least $150,000 for the team, the equipment, and the 35 local workers from the nearby town of modern Nemea, whom Miller calls “the core of the project.” The money all comes from private sources — and not the least of Miller’s jobs is lecturing to the public and combing the territory for contributions.
SECTION 3
Question 27-31
Complete the table below. Write a date for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 27 – 31 on your answer sheet
Question 27-31
Complete the table below. Write a date for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 27 – 31 on your answer sheet
Example
The time the Nemean games began 573 BC
The beginning date of the Nemea excavation …(27)…
The date that Miller found the altar to Zeus …(28)…
When Miller first learned there was a hippodrome at the Temple of Zeus …(29)…
When Miller finally concluded he had found an old reservoir …(30)…
When Miller found the ancient locker room …(31)…
The time the Nemean games began 573 BC
The beginning date of the Nemea excavation …(27)…
The date that Miller found the altar to Zeus …(28)…
When Miller first learned there was a hippodrome at the Temple of Zeus …(29)…
When Miller finally concluded he had found an old reservoir …(30)…
When Miller found the ancient locker room …(31)…
Questions 32 — 36
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer of the reading passage ln boxes 32 – 36 on your answer sheet write
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer of the reading passage ln boxes 32 – 36 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement reflects the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
NO if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
32. The author believes it must be also difficult for Miller to find funds for the excavation.
33. Miller goes far beyond what an archaeologist traditionally normally does.
34. Religion played a key role in the games.
35. The games were far more interesting in the past than now.
36. The Nemean games influenced the modern Olympic Games.
33. Miller goes far beyond what an archaeologist traditionally normally does.
34. Religion played a key role in the games.
35. The games were far more interesting in the past than now.
36. The Nemean games influenced the modern Olympic Games.
Questions 37 – 40
Complete each of the following statements with a name from the reading passage. Write your answers in lines 37 40 on your answer sheet.
Complete each of the following statements with a name from the reading passage. Write your answers in lines 37 40 on your answer sheet.
Miller’s excavations at _______37______ led him to look for a____ 38________ where horse races were held. He found a___ 39_______ , and eight months later he found an________ 40_______ ,which athletes used as a locker room.
