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Modern Description: site is accessible (2018). The Sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos. It became known in 1803 by the inscribed plaques found during the excavations conducted by Lord Aberdeen near the bema of the Pnyx. The floor of the old sanctuary, the steps and a number of niches hewn in the scarp of the rock, are preserved. The big, rectangular niche in which the cult statue of the god was placed, probably dates from the Roman period.
[Judith Binder: Zeus Hypsistos, Theos Hypsistos, Hypsistos: Sanctuary 2nd-3rd c. A.C., with 58 rock-cut niches in the rock-cut scarp south of the Pnyx bema: B. Forsen, “The Sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos and the Assembly Place on the Pnyx,” Hesperia 62 (1993) 507-521, figs. 1-2, pls. 87-88; SEG_43 70 (1993); [non-evidentially] dated to the end of the 1st c. A. C., B. Forsen, “The Sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos and Pnyx III,” in Pnyx 1996, 47-55; for an [imaginary] open-air or roofed rock-cut cella, destroyed by [imaginary] quarrying operations ca. 330 B.C., with a [theoretical] cult statue, see Travlos, J. 1971, 466, 569 with fig. 595 (cella at lower right). [Since no epigraphical, literary or archaeological evidence supports the generally accepted founding date in the first century after Christ, the sanctuary may well have been founded in the late 2nd c. A.C. following the plague of 167-172 A.D.]]
Trismegistos Geo: 364

Info: Odysseus

(Odysseus, Greek Ministry of Culture)

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