Analysis of the documentation and writing the publication/habilitation thesis »The archaic temple of Apollo ('Temple II') at Didyma and the genesis of the monumental Ionic sacral architecture«

• Applicant: Dr. Uta Dirschedl
• Subject Area: Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology ; Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 287526296

The Archaic temple of Apollo ('Temple II') at Didyma belonged with both the dipteroi in the Heraion of Samos ('Theodoros - ' und 'Polykratic temple') and the older Artemesion at Ephesos ('Kroisos-temple') to the four Archaic Ionic dipteroi. They were built in a small region in Ionia on the Asia Minor coast and on the offshore island of Samos within a few decades in the middle of the 6th century BC.At these giant exemplary sacral buildings were designed types developing architectural and sculptural forms, especially column elements, which significantly influenced the Ionic architecture from Late Archaic to Hellenistic times. The temple of Apollo is characterized by specifics as e. g. a hypaethral court, the so called adyton with its cult monuments (sacred spring and laurel), and by excellent architectural sculpture: two pieces of the almost life-size korai of the columnae caelatae can be viewed in the permanent exhibition of the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.The Archaic temple stands in a 1000 year long ritual and architectural continuity of increasing and increasingly splendid sacral buildings. Cult monument, heart and nucleus of these buildings was the sacred spring within the adyton. The monumental Archaic temple ('temple II') followed a small Late Geometric court ('sekos I') and was substituted in the fourth c. BC by the huge Hellenistic successor ('temple III').In eleven working campaigns in the magazines of the excavation house of Didyma (2003–2007, 2009–2013, 2017) and three in the Antikensammlung in Berlin (2005, 2012, 2014) c. 800 architectural and sculptural fragments of the temple and its altar are catalogued and documented by drawings and photographs. First results are published in preliminary project reports, a first detailed report and an article in a colloquium publication. They were and are presented also in lectures within international colloquia.The aim is to analyze precisely the documentation of architectural and sculptural fragments and the remains of the foundation of the Archaic temple of Apollo and to publish it, to classify the work pieces typologically, stylistically, technically and chronologically, to reconstruct the ground plan and elevation and to put this singular sacral building in the typological and in the art historical and architectural context of Ionic sacral architecture and represent it corresponding to its importance.Additionally, in an annex the role and importance of the dipteroi und the two-phase Archaic temple of Apollo will be examined in the genesis of monumental Ionic sacral architecture, and this experimenting, types developing, for Greek architecture significant phase of monumentalization and ›marble-fication‹ will be outlined against the background of the development of the Cycladic marble architecture and technique and the little older monumentalization of Greek sculpture and Doric architecture, considering also Egyptian and oriental influences.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants