The discovery of the ancient Greek city of Tenea (BBC)
By Jessica Bateman
16 September 2019
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Korka is one of the country’s top archaeologists. A Greek American, she recently made the biggest discovery of her 40-year career. The lost city of Tenea, which is mentioned in multiple Greek myths and historical texts, such as the ancient legend of Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, was uncovered by her and her team last October, buried under the fields we’re now driving past.
According to myth, the city was founded by the Trojans sometime around 1100BC and built by prisoners of war. They chose this spot because it was on the road between Corinth and the ancient settlement of Mycenae. Oedipus was said to have been raised here after being sent away as a baby. And it was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the ancient region of Corinthia in the northern Peloponnese. Until now, however, no-one could work out exactly where it was – or why it disappeared.
The search for Tenea began in 1984. Korka was just five years into her career when she received a call from some local villagers digging a water channel. They had hit an ancient sarcophagus and broken it in half. Korka went to look. “The minute I saw it, I understood it was something unique,” she said. “Sometimes, a find connects with someone. It’s almost spiritual.” The vase-shaped coffin had delicate paintings of lions on the interior and contained a skeleton and offerings to the deceased. “We don’t have another one with drawings like that,” she explained. “We also do not know what ancient paintings looked like… We have no other sample from the Archaic period.”
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A geophysical survey of the area was carried out by a third party using technology. But when they started to dig, they found nothing – the shapes seen during the survey had been created by the limestone soil. “So we went back to where the first sarcophagus was found,” she said. “Nearby we found about 40 others… they just kept coming out of the ground one after the other. It was like [the folk tale of] Ali Baba.”
Next, they discovered part of an ancient road, which lead the team to a Roman mausoleum from around 100BC in which several generations of a family were buried, plus a cistern that would have been used for rituals and sacrifices: “We knew this was outside of the city, so we decided to dig north instead.” Last October, houses were discovered, and the team realised they had finally found the city itself. “Most of the surface level findings had already been taken by looters,” Lagos said. “But most of the actual city is 2m or 3m below ground.”
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more: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190915-the-discovery-of-the-ancient-greek-city-of-tenea
