"The Gates of Hades" are not located somewhere in a dark dungeon, but have a completely clear spatial localization in our world.
Gate of Emperor Domitian in Hierapolis.
The meeting place of chthonic and earthly forces, located near the Turkish city of Pamukkale, was excavated by Francesco d'Andria this winter. This area was notorious for the fact that hot springs rich in calcium carbonate and carbon dioxide come to the surface. There are no monuments of the Neolithic-paleometal era recorded here, at a later time the Hittites, Persians and Greeks avoided settling in the terrifying terrain. Only in the III century. BC. at one of the hot springs the Phrygians erected the temple of Hades, around which Hierapolis was built.
The statue of Eumenes II and the silver coin of Antiochus III.
According to one version, the name of the city is translated as "sacred city", according to another, it is named after Iera, the wife of Telephus (one of the sons of Hercules and the mythical founder of the Pergamon dynasty of Attalids), according to the third - in honor of the goddess Hera. In the winter of 190-189. BC. Pergamon king Eumenes II in the battle of Magnesia defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great with the help of the Romans. Eumenes considered the victory a sign of Pluto's benevolence towards him and dedicated all the riches received in this battle to the temple. With this money, the city has grown significantly.
Phrygians.
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After the last Pergamon king bequeathed his possessions to Rome, Hierapolis was famous both as a balneological resort for wealthy Romans and as a meeting place for the sacred. Excavations by Francesco d'Andria also uncovered the sacred cave, which housed the entrance to the Hades dungeons, and a pool with hot spring water, and adjacent buildings. Ionic half-columns, dedicatory inscriptions to Pluto and Kore were discovered here.
Image of Hades, Persephone and a rooster on a funeral stele.
Archaeologists note the accuracy of ancient descriptions of the temple. The geographer Strabo, who lived at the turn of the eras, described Plutonion as a "temenos" (fenced-in sacred site) filled with fumes emanating from the ground. Only the priests could breathe in these deadly vapors, while ordinary people and sacrificial animals (bulls and small birds), brought behind the sacred fence, choked from an excess of carbon dioxide and died. After the obligatory sacrifice, the pilgrims plunged into the pool and went to bed near the temple. It was believed that the gods of the underworld Hades and Kora can come in a dream, listen to and fulfill the request of the pilgrim. Such prophetic dreams in the late Roman Empire were considered more weighty than even the prophecies of the Delphic oracle. Modern scientists believe that the vapors rising from the crevicescould indeed have a hallucinatory effect.
The inscription on the roof of the crypt.
According to the excavations by Francesco d'Andria, Plutoion itself was a cave that descended into the depths of the rock. In this cave, steps were made leading to a small (about 3 sq. M.) Crypt carved into the rock, in which hot water flowed through a crack in the rock, emitting a large amount of vapor, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide. Since carbon dioxide is lighter than air, some oxygen remains at the very floor of the crypt. Therefore, the priests of Cybele, who penetrated there, could return to the surface without harm to their health, which was perceived by the superstitious Phrygians as a miracle of communication between the priests and the gods of the Kingdom of the Dead. Although in the 6th century AD. Christians and covered the cave with stones, vapors still come out of its depths.
Cybele as a cosmic goddess.
In front of the cave was a temenos with an area of 2,000 sq.m. with a pool in which the water of a sacred spring was collected and a round-planed temple-peripter. According to ancient testimonies, the entire space of the temenos was covered with such a thick steam that those who ventured to cross its threshold could not see their toes. Entry into the sacred limits of mere mortals was prohibited and indeed posed a threat to life. At the entrance to Temenos, the priests traded in sacrificial animals and (for a fee) accepted notes with questions to the oracle. The rich necropolises behind the northern and southern gates of the city suggest that it was considered prestigious for the Romans to lie in the ground near the temple.
Ruins of Nymphaeus.
In the immediate vicinity of Plutoion was the Doric temple of Apollo Lairbenos, the solar god and patron saint of the Carian oracles. Historians note that the ancient Greeks sought to locate the temples of Apollo in seismically active places, as Hierapolis experienced several major earthquakes in its history. Under the name Apollo Lairbenos, the Phrygian sun god, the son of the mother of the gods Cybele, was apparently revered. In Hellenistic times, the son of Cybele was often identified with Mithra, whose sacred animal was a rooster. In Hierapolis, Apollo Lairbenos remained an independent deity associated with the cult of nymphs, for whom a Nymphaeum (sanctuary of nymphs) with a monumental fountain and numerous statues was built in front of the temple.
Tholos necropolis in Hierapolis.
It should be noted that in the ancient Greek mythopoetics, several Kingdoms of the Dead coexisted, which, according to ancient authors, were located in different parts of the Ecumene. In addition to the "Gate of Hades" in Phrygia, located to the east of Greece, there was Tartarus, the entrance to which was in Tartary (Northern Black Sea or Azov region) and Elysium to the west of Greece, close to the ancient Egyptian "Fields of Ialu" and the Celtic "Islands of the Blessed" It can be assumed that each of the Kingdoms of the Dead corresponded to three main ethnic groups that took part in the formation of ancient Greek culture: Anatolians (Gate of Hades), Dorians (Tartarus) and tribes from the western Mediterranean, who brought the practice of burial in tholos to the Aegeis.
Springs of Pamuk-kale.
The location of the Lycian burial complexes on the 1947 military map.
Bonus: other Plutonions:
Plutonion at Eleusine.
Aeneas at the Kumskaya Sibyl (painting by W. Turner 1814-15).
