Delos Synagogue

La comunidad judía

No ancient text mentions a synagogue on Delos, and very little is known of the people who used GD 80. The earliest literary reference usually cited for Jews on the island is 1 Maccabees 15:15-23. Josephus (Antiquities 14.213-216) preserves a letter of a Roman magistrate to the magistrates, council and people of the Parians, written after Jews of Delos complained that a decree stopped them following their ancestral customs; he allowed them to assemble, collect contributions and hold common meals. Grave stelae of the late second century BCE from the neighbouring island of Rheneia call on Theos Hypsistos in language close to the Septuagint. Two stelae found in 1979 about 92 metres north of GD 80 were set up by 'Israelites on Delos' who made offerings to 'holy Argarizein', that is Mount Gerizim. They honour Sarapion son of Jason of Knossos, awarded a gold crown, and Menippos son of Artemidoros of Herakleia, and are read as Samaritan. Whether Jews, Samaritans or both met in GD 80 is not settled; L. Michael White thought it most likely a Samaritan synagogue. The size of the congregation is unknown.

Arquitectura y diseño

GD 80 occupies a lot of 28.30 by 30.70 metres at the water's edge and faces east. Its core is a hall about 16.90 metres north to south and 14.40 metres east to west, which Trümper finds undivided through her first four phases. A cross wall of gneiss, rubble and reused marble, pierced by three doorways that were later blocked, divides it into room A on the north and room B on the south. Marble benches line walls in both rooms, and midway along the west wall of room A stands a carved marble throne with a footstool, found in place. Trümper assigns benches and throne securely only to the last phase. Her third phase reused inscribed bases from the nearby gymnasium, presumably abandoned after 88 BCE; Matassa notes that the benches too are reused pieces. East of the hall lay area C, about 18 metres square, with a north-south marble stylobate for a portico; its seaward part is lost. On the south, small rooms (D) give access to a water reservoir in a natural rock cleft 6.08 metres long, spanned by a marble arch. Part of the floor is paved with marble chips.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

What happened inside is known only from objects. Five small inscribed marble offerings were found in rooms A and B, some shaped like incense burners. Lysimachos set up a small column to Theos Hypsistos as a thank-offering; Laodike dedicated a base to Theos Hypsistos in fulfilment of a vow after being healed; Zosas of Paros and Markia made offerings to the 'Most High'; a fifth base records a manumission. Trümper dates the first two by their lettering to the early first century BCE and the others, following Bruneau, to the first or second century CE. A sixth text, in which Agathokles and Lysimachos give 'for a proseuche', a word meaning prayer or prayer-house, was found in a house of the Stadium Quarter about 90 metres away. About forty lamps came from the building. Supporters picture a congregation seated around a seat of honour, often called a 'seat of Moses'; Binder suggested in 1999 that the reservoir served as a ritual bath, which Matassa rejects. Critics answer that Theos Hypsistos was also invoked by pagans, that the dedicators' names recur in lists from pagan sanctuaries, and that similar benches stood in other Delian buildings.

Destrucción

No source records a single act that destroyed GD 80. Troops of Mithridates VI of Pontus sacked Delos in 88 BCE, and pirates under Athenodoros, his allies, attacked it again in 69 BCE; some accounts suppose that the synagogue perished then. The building evidence points the other way. Trümper places three of her five phases after 88 BCE, among them the reuse of stones from the abandoned gymnasium, and argues that the building served as a synagogue until it was abandoned at the end of the second century CE. Bruneau likewise found evidence of use into the late second or early third century CE. Matassa, who doubts any synagogue use, dates the benches to the years after the Mithridatic wars. Why it was given up is unknown. After abandonment the upper parts of the walls collapsed, which Plassart thought had buried the benches and so saved them. Later, perhaps in the third or fourth century CE in Matassa's view, a lime kiln about two metres across was built in room A. The sea, which has risen about 2.5 metres since antiquity, has destroyed the eastern part of the building.

El destino de la comunidad

What became of the people who used the building is unknown. Delos never recovered from the attacks of 88 and 69 BCE: accounts drawn from Appian and Pausanias speak of up to 20,000 dead in the first, and by the middle of the first century BCE the island had lost its place in trade. The letter preserved by Josephus shows Jews living on Delos under Roman rule and defending their right to meet, and Bruneau held that their worship continued after both sacks. The offerings of Zosas and Markia and the manumission text, dated to the first or second century CE, are the latest traces of those who used the building. In the second century CE Hadrian tried to revive the island's festivals and failed, and Pausanias described Delos as sparsely inhabited. No later record of Jews or Samaritans on the island was found. According to Matassa the island was abandoned around the fifth century CE; UNESCO describes it as uninhabited since the seventh.

El lugar hoy

The ruin lies within the archaeological site of Delos, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1990 and is managed by the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades. It stands on the north-east shore, just east of the stadium and north-east of the gymnasium. Photographs taken in 1992, 2013 and 2022 show stone walls standing roughly waist to chest high, the marble benches and the throne still in place against the west wall of room A, the marble arch over the reservoir, a patch of marble-chip floor, and fluted column drums and marble blocks lying in the hall. On the seaward side the ground drops sharply to the beach about a metre beyond the surviving stylobate.

Nombres destacados