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Modern Description: Of greatest archaeological significance, however, is the extensive area of necropolis on the east coast, opposite Delos. This was in effect the cemetery of Delos in the centuries following the sacred prohibition of death and burial on the island after the purification of 426 BC. The purification involved the exhumation of all previous graves on Delos and their transference all together to a prepared purification pit on Rheneia. This is the rectangular enclosure located below the church of Aghia Kyriakí on the eastern shore. This pit, which was excavated in the last years of the 19th century, was predictably a gold-mine for archaeological studies, because it contained an unprecedented quantity and variety of pottery dating from Geometric times up until the early 5th century BC: it is this valuable assemblage which constitutes the collection of the Mykonos Archaeological Museum. The area further to the south along the coast continued to be used as the cemetery for Delos after 426 BC. A large number of tombs, altars, sarcophagi, and several hundred carved stelai and inscriptions have been unearthed in this area. In the midst is an underground, two-level complex of loculi tombs, entered by means of a staircase and central corridor. The hills to the north were intensively cultivated in antiquity with farmsteads belonging to the sanctuary on Delos.
Trismegistos Geo: 38026

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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