11 September 2022. The Sanctuary of the Cretan Artemis
We all had a decent night’s sleep last night, waking up around 8 am. My CPAP battery bank lasted just long enough to get through the night. We cleaned up before heading to the restaurant for a light breakfast and to recharge respective phones and battery banks. We weren’t able to fully charge things before we finished breakfast, but we managed to in the car to and from the beach. Our American English vernacular tipped off another group of fellow guests – two couples from Ohio, one from Cincinnati and the other from Cleveland – who were staying there to decompress after marrying off their children in Chania that week. Honestly, even up in the remote wilds of the Western mountains of Crete we still trip over fellow Ohioans. I finished breakfast first and headed off to the office to clarify our route to today’s goal – the Hadrianic Temple of Diktynna on the Rodapos Peninsula.
We headed back the way that we came last night north on the road running along the top of the Topolia Gorge, eventually stopping at a supermarket in Kolymvari to pick up drinks for the road trip before heading onto the Rodopos Peninsula. We also purchased stuff for a light lunch when we arrived at our destination. Additionally, I picked up some offerings for Diktynna for when we reached the sanctuary. I decided to try a bottle of mastic soda, which turned out to be pretty goddamn unpalatable. I think that it needs more sweetener.
We headed west on Palaia Ethniki Odos Kissamou Chanion until it intersected with Epard. Od. Aspron Neron-Rodopou. Turning right, we headed north and eventually onto the Rodopos peninsula. Rodopos was the driest place that we had encountered on Crete or in Greece in this trip. My advice to anyone wishing to take this journey is to make sure that your vehicle is in good shape. Although the road wasn’t that bad, it’s dirt and gravel for the most part, so an SUV or 4WD/AWD vehicle is recommended. Expect your vehicle to be covered in dust (ours was). And TAKE PLENTY OF WATER, as you will encounter none north of the village of Rodopos. You are entering a desert. I wouldn’t count on cell service, either. You are on the edge of the world here, a liminal, holy, and desolate place. The video below shows the entire drive between Rodopos village and our goal, Paralia Menies on the far northeastern edge of the peninsula – a trip of a bit over an hour.
The landscape is not devoid of life. Far from it. It is a land of dry, brutal beauty filled with plants and animals adapted to survive under the harsh conditions present there.
We at first mistook the spiky flowering stalks that appear in a number of my photos as Asphodel, noted by Homer in The Odyssey as covering the Underworld plain where most of the dead reside. I’ve since identified them as Sea Squill (Drimia maritima), a poisonous perennial bulb that has been used in medicine (and as a rat poison) since the time of ancient Greece. Pythagoras and Dioscordes recommended hanging the sprouted bulbs outside the doors of homes in springtime to ward off evil spirits.
Even though we got there around 11-ish, there were already a few other tourists at the beach when we arrived, including some Germans (I think) with their kids. Good thing we brought swimsuits! We parked our dust-covered BMW SUV, praying that the goats didn’t jump up onto the hood and roof, and then made for the archaeological site via a dirt path up the hill on the east side of the beach.
The site is dedicated to a Minoan Goddess Who has been interpreted to be cognate with the Greek Goddess Artemis and the Roman Goddess Diana. On the western side of Crete, She was known as Diktynna, while on the eastern side of the island She answered to Britomartis. Diktynna was worshipped as the patroness of hunters and fishmen. A temple had stood on this site since Minoan times. The final phase of construction at the sanctuary had been a Roman temple erected by the Emperor Hadrian. Even though I knew that that it had been destroyed with the advent of Christianity, I hadn’t been prepared for just how utterly smashed & disorganized everything was. And this was a site which had already been excavated. It was a very sad ending to a temple devoted to a Goddess Who had been worshipped on this site since Minoan-Mycenaean times.
Pan may also have been worshipped here as another God of the wilds. The remains of a low relief carving of Pan on a column base can be seen in a photo below (top right).
I had brought wine and fruit to make an offering to the Goddess. I located a large stone which others have identified as a possible foundation to the temple’s altar. There I placed a pomegranate and nectarine and poured out wine in Her memory.
“Whence in after days the Kydonians (Cydonians) call the Nymphe Diktyna (Dictynna, Lady of the Nets) and the hill whence the Nymphe leaped they call the hill Diktaion (Dicte, Of the Nets), and there they set up altars and do sacrifice. And the garland on that day is pine or mastich, but the hands touch not myrtle. For when she was in flight, a myrtle branch became entangled in the maiden’s robes; wherefore she was greatly angered against the myrtle. — Callimachus, Hymn 3 to Artemis 188 ff (trans. Mair)
After we examined the sanctuary site and made offerings, we made our way back down to the beach and changed into swimsuits. Menies is a beach of deep gravel, and that gravel can get mighty hot under the Cretan sun, so swim shoes or, in my case, my trusty pair of Keens hiking sandals are necessary. The water was crystal clear, and we could watch little fish swimming around us. We swam to a shallow sea cave and lounged like nymphs out of the direct sun. It was a gloriously relaxing couple of hours, so different from the frantic pace we had set for ourselves throughout the trip. We had a light lunch of fruit, juice, and water on the beach, swam again for a bit, and then packed up and headed back to Milia.
Back at the resort, Paul still hadn’t run out of energy, so he hiked up a neighboring hill and made friends with a goat. The red circle shows the rock he climbed atop to wave at us. I chose to shower off the salt and change clothes.
We were all ravenous after the day’s adventure and dug into dinner at the restaurant. I had the rabbit, which I had never eaten before. My dad refused to eat rabbit as an adult because he had eaten so much of it growing up. It wasn’t bad but probably won’t ever be my go-to. As we feasted, the planet Jupiter and the second night of the full moon rose overhead. It was a magical evening. Well, at least until we got back to our room and spent the next two hours wrapping our accumulated purchases in bubble wrap to ready them for the trip home.
— Να εχεις μια ωραια μερα. —
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