Fortean traveller
111. Greece’s Oracle of the Dead
Greece’s Oracle of the Dead ULRICH MAGIN
ULRICH MAGIN follows in the footsteps of Ulysses and explores the ruins of the Nekromanteion, the ancient Greek Oracle of the Dead dedicated to Hades and Persephone. All photographs by the author.
Istood where Ulysses once had stood – under a heavy portal made of giant stones, erected with polygonal masonry in a cyclopean fashion; but I had not drawn my sword and I was not surrounded by the pale shadows of the departed, but exposed to the baking sun and clear blue skies of Greece. I looked up and saw the sea at a distance of a mile or so, where sheer cliffs ended the land.
It was here, at the Nekromanteion, the Oracle of the Dead at Mesopotamos, where the ancient Greeks evoked their dead in a temple of necromancy devoted to the god Hades and the goddess Persephone. And it was exactly here, too, that Homer had placed the hero of his Odyssey, questioning the seer Tiresias in the land of the shadows. Ulysses, says Homer in the
Odyssey (X, 513), is told by Circe what to do next:
“When your ship has traversed the waters of Oceanus, you will reach the fertile shore of Proserpine’s country with its groves of tall poplars and willows that shed their fruit untimely; here beach your ship upon the shore of Oceanus, and go straight on to the dark abode of Hades. You will find it near the place where the rivers Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus (which is a branch of the river Styx) flow into Acheron, and you will see a rock near it, just where the two roaring rivers run into one another.”
After Homer, the site where you could reach Hades was described by several authors, among them Herodotus (5.92) in the fifth century BC, and by Pausanias in his Travels in Greece (I, 17.5). The present building, although archaic looking, was erected in the late fourth century BC and was burned down and destroyed by the invading Romans in 167 BC.
The idea that this was the door to Hades, a place where one could get into immediate contact with the departed, must have been at least as old as Homer, probably even older. The region was first settled by Greek tribes around 2,000 BC – first by the Thesprotes, followed by the Molossians, who conquered part of their territory. In the 14th century BC two Mycenæan towns were founded in the river plains of the Acheron, Ephyra and Toryne. The sparse ruins of Ephyra can still be seen close to the Nekromanteion, and the city plays a major role in several myths about the land of the dead.
As Circe explains, at the time the Oracle was in operation, three rivers met below the rock on which the Nekromanteion stands, and formed a large but shallow lake. The large river was the Acheron, and, flowing into it, there was the Pyriphlegethon (today’s Vouvos), and the Cocytus (modern Mavros).
Where the Acheron runs
into the sea, we find Cape Cheimerion, the Cape of the Cimmerians, also mentioned by Homer.
Many are the myths that are located here: the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, Heracles dragging the Molossian dog Cerberus from Hades, the story of Theseus and Persephone (who was Queen of Ephyra). Since we often read these myths as if they were fantasy tales, it is always fascinating to see how firmly they are fixed to a definite geography. Possibly owing to some solar symbolism, Hades is in the far west of Greece, and Mount Olympus in the far east.
The Nekromanteion, even today, is an imposing site. Although built in the early Hellenistic era, at the end of the fourth and early third century BC, it was erected in the polygonal style we usually identify with the Bronze Age. It definitely looks megalithic – and it was made to impress. To create the present building, all older remains were cleared away and destroyed by the ancients who certainly were not site conservationists in our modern sense.
The Oracle – a square, towerlike affair of 22 by 22m (72 by 72ft) with a foundation of large stones, which would have had a second or several additional floors made of brick – was modelled after the giant grave monuments of Asia Minor, such as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The site spelled “dead” in a big way.
It is surrounded by an enclosing wall of 62 x 46m (203 by 151ft), which fences off a courtyard with several rooms. The central sanctuary has walls 3.3m (11ft) wide. Today, a 19th century fortified house sits in the courtyard, and a mediæval church crowns the former temple.
The modern visitor is guided through the complex by arrows, but this tourist route (through the fortified house, and then right down into a side aisle of the central nave) is completely counter to the convoluted path an ancient initiate would have taken. In antiquity, the pilgrims would have entered through the door in the north, and then have stood in the courtyard, where living quarters for visitors and priests alike where situated.
The seeker would then have moved into smaller rooms to the east, tiny cubicles the size of a working space in a cube farm. Here, he spent several days in complete darkness. The time was used for incubation sleep, ritual baths, and meals of pork, barley bread, fava beans and mussels. During this time, the priests gave him advice on how exactly to carry out the rituals and how to deal with the illnatured dead and the demons he would encounter.
After days of darkness and isolation, the pilgrim was most likely led to another room where he spent further time in isolation. When the priest decided he was ready for contact, the pilgrim had to go down a corridor and negotiate the so-called labyrinth, a meandering layout intended to confuse his sense of direction.
Passing through heavy oak doors under a massive lintel, he entered the inner sanctum, a long hall with a rough pavement. It was the central nave of the three naves of the building. Here, the priests called out for “Hecate and the horrible Persephone”, and the pilgrims poured libations. The side naves (containing three rooms each) held offerings, food and goods the pilgrims brought to the temple. In Book XI, Odysseus narrates: “I made a drink-offering to all the dead, first with honey and milk, then with wine, and thirdly with water, and I sprinkled white barley meal over the whole, praying earnestly to the poor feckless ghosts, and promising them that when I got back to Ithaca I would sacrifice a barren heifer for them, the best I had, and would load the pyre with good things. I also particularly promised that Teiresias should have a black sheep to himself, the best in all my flocks. When I had prayed sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of the two sheep and let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts came trooping up.” Later pilgrims will have done and said something similar.
Archæologists have found the remains of lupins and fava beans in the large vessels stored in the side naves. Both plants are hallucinogenic in character, and also cause wind, allergic syndromes, vertigo and stomach ache.
And, just to be sure that the pilgrim – weakened by darkness, fatigue and isolation, filled up to the armpits with hallucinogenic toxins – would really see his dead relatives or some demons, the central nave was equipped with a carefully crafted
The pilgrim had to negotiate the so-called labyrinth
automaton that provided an almost cinematographic apparition of the departed in an incense-filled atmosphere. Archæologists have excavated a number of metallic gears, counter weights and other mechanical remains of a complex machine.
But it may not all have been pious deceit, a spirit-exmachina, so to speak.
Below the central nave is an underground chamber that is exactly the same size as the nave, into which the libations would have dropped. It is hewn into the living rock, the ceiling held by monumentally large stone arches. This artificial grotto was hermetically sealed in ancient times, and was inaccessible to worshippers and priests alike. Here, we see that not all was fake, that even the cunning priests had created a sacred taboo for themselves. Perhaps, among all the machinery, they felt the ground was thin as ice, with the thirsty spirits lurking beneath the soles of their sandals. The pilgrim left the cult room by a different route, though still through the eastern corridor. Perhaps trapdoors and stairways to the second floor were used to further confuse the visitor.
The Oracle as we see it today was in use for less than 300 years. To build it, all earlier, and very possibly Mycenæan ruins, were cleared, and then the Romans burned down the whole complex in 167 BC when they invaded Greece. As the Oracle contained piles of sulphur, the site went up in flames like a volcano.
The Romans, as fond as they were of Greek myth, disregarded the place. They had their own Oracle at Cumæ near Naples (see FT346:32-37). Later Romans built living quarters on the hill; later still, the church of St John the Baptist was constructed over the central underground sanctum (though not in line with its axis) in the early 18th century. The strong polygonal walls were incorporated into a fortified house in the 19th century. Both are preserved, and the ancient ruins around them have been excavated, and recently restored, and explanatory posters have been installed.
Just a stroll away you see the Mycenæan city of Ephyra, of the late Bronze Age. Little remains but fallen-down enclosure walls, and the site was closed when I visited. Many archæological remains in Greece are fenced off, with an entrance hut, but the state has no longer the means to man them.
We finished our visit with a boat trip on the River Acheron (they leave from Ammoudia, and are signposted along the road with “Delta of the River Acheron”). The Acheron is the branch of the Styx that flows into the sea in our dimension. We pay the ferryman, and after a cruise of more than one and a half hours along the willow-framed, green-blue river where we are completely lost as to time and geographical orientation, we arrive safely at the banks, having crossed the Styx and lived to tell the tale.
It is hard to imagine the otherworldly, foggy atmosphere at the end of the world described by Homer in the neat and pretty little town of Mesopotamos, sitting beneath a clear blue sky, but as my partner Susanne points out, it might have looked completely different 3,000 years ago, with the large shallow lake, the swampland, and the overflowing rivers that meet below the rock. The terrain must have been far more difficult to negotiate then, and was actually in the far west: go further and you enter Corfu, the fairyland of the Phæacians, who have no contact with living people.
So, read your Homer, but don’t be put off by his description of the bleak, halflit landscape (“… the land and city of the Cimmerians who live enshrouded in mist and darkness which the rays of the Sun never pierce neither at his rising nor as he goes down again out of the heavens, but the poor wretches live in one long melancholy night.”). It’s quite idyllic these days, with its lakes, papyrus, and rushing water, and I can thoroughly recommend a trip to Hades and a cruise on the Styx.
Thirsty spirits lurked beneath the soles of their sandals