---

Modern Description: In 1952, while the Athens water company was digging to place the pipes that would transform the Ilissos river into a concrete sewer with major roadways on top, it was forced to interrupt its labors for a year while the Archaeological Service did a rescue excavation of a substantial sanctuary discovered on the S bank of the Ilissos on the line of modern Vas. Konstantinos Blvd where it is crossed by Vas. Georgiou St. beside the Truman Statue. On a raised bank between the Ilissos main channel and a side branch running E under Amynta St., Meliadis found a rock cleft, rock-cut seats, 300 lamps, and more than 50 votive reliefs, dedicated to Pankrates (sometimes as Herakles, SEG 44:139) or Palaimon. Pankrates (almighty) is an epithet of Zeus, but there is no literary record of the worship of a god or hero of this name worshipped in Athens. The adjoining suburb of Pankrati manifestly derives its name from the shrine, but as that name exists in the Kaupert maps printed 60 years before the sanctuary was discovered, a mystery remains to be solved.
[Judith Binder: Pankrates: sanctuary on the Ilissos with a cleft and rock-cut seats, Vasileos Konstantinou Blvd. and Vasileos Georgiou B' (formerly Diocharous) St.: Travlos, J. 1971, 278-280; E. Vikela, Die Weihreliefs aus dem Athener Pankrates-Heiligtum am Ilissos (AM 16. Beiheft), Berlin, 1994 [a work which would have benefitted greatly had the author been allowed to see the texts of the inscriptions from this sanctuary]; SEG 41 (1991) nos. 10, 82-84, 171-172, 247; SEG 44 (1994) nos. 139-159]
Trismegistos Geo: 37797

Info: ToposText editors

(JBK)

---