Corinth straddled the isthmus between mainland Greece and the Peloponnesus
and relied on two harbors. Lechaion,
faced the Gulf of Corinth and served the western sea routes to Italy,
Sicily, and beyond to Spain. Kenchreai,
in turn, was on the Saronic Gulf and received ships from the Aegean Sea, Asia Minor, Syria,
and Egypt.
Kenchreai was named after Kenchrias, twin brother of Lechis, son of Peirine
and Poseidon. The harbor took advantage of the natural capes that were extended
with two breakwaters and horseshoe-shaped piers to form a large basin and
create a separate commercial and military port. The greatest width of the
harbor was 280 meters
with a welcoming entrance of 120
meters wide. Recent excavations in the port exposed extensive warehouses, shops, and
public buildings, most of them belonging to Roman times. They included a Temple
to Aphrodite and Isis and an early Christian Basilica.
Kenchreai yielded many artifacts, the most remarkable of which is a series of
stained glass panels not unlike our modern stained glass windows, now in the Isthmia
Museum.
A wonderful Roman
cemetery, largely unknown to the general public has been explored also. Its
chamber and pit tombs cover the period from the 1st to the 7th
century AD. Some of the tombs have kept their original painted decorations. The
inside walls could be painted with architectural elements but also with
mythical creatures, garlands, dolphins, ibis, herons, etc.
The chamber
tombs of Kenchreai
were found inside a building that displayed a funerary inscription with the
name of the tomb's owner and the dedication to his family, descendants, and
sometimes to his freed slaves. Inside the tombs, niches could hold the body of
the deceased or the urns in case of a cremation. These cremations took place on
a pyre in a dedicated spot near the cemetery. It took a long time for the bones
to burn completely, apparently at a temperature as high as 700°C. In the end, the
remaining bones were removed from the ashes and placed inside the urn, which
the mourners then took to the grave. The deceased
were buried with the usual rich offerings such as gold jewelry, perfume
bottles, clay figurines, marble statuettes, as well as common household
utensils.
Based on the care
taken in the burial process and the decoration of the tombs leads scholars to
believe that the dead belonged to the local upper class who wished to present
themselves as members of a prominent society.
[Pictures from anagnostis.org]
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