Legendary Helike – Uncovering Lost City of Poseidon

MessageToEagle.com – Helice (Helike), an ancient city of Achaea, N Peloponnesus, long stood as a legendary lost metropolis. It was once located on the sothern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, about 93 miles west of Athens.

Helike, which became the principal city of Achaea, was founded in the Mycenaean period by Ion, the leader of the Ionian race. Helike subsequently became the capital of the Twelve Cities of ancient Achaea.

The city was widely discussed in literature by many ancient Greek and Roman writers and visitors such as Strabo, Pausanias, Diodoris, Aelian and Ovid, and has been suggested by some scholars to be the inspiration for the story of Atlantis.

However, like a legendary Atlantis, the true whereabouts and evidence of Helike’s remains have eluded scholars and explorers for 2,000 years.

According to the ancient historical records, more than 2300 years ago, invading Achaeans, the neighbors of the Ionians, entered the Holy Temple of Poseidon in Helike. They had driven a group of people out of the temple and murdered them.

One day, suddenly a violent earthquake occurred, it shook the city of Helice so it disappeared at night in the winter of 373 BC. Apparently, this time, the great god Poseidon didn’t protect his sacred city.

“The sea was raised by an earthquake and it submerged Helike [in Akhaia], and also the temple of Poseidon Helikonios (of Helike)… the submersion took place by night in his time, and, although the city was twelve stadia [185 meters (607 feet)] distant from the sea, this whole district together with the city was hidden from sight,” reported Strabo (63/64 BC- c. AD 24), a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.

Through the years a number of archaeological expeditions have searched the area for the ruins of the Helice – but in vain. For centuries after the city was destroyed, ancient writers reported that its submerged ruins could still be seen.

Later the site was silted over and lost.

First in 1988, an underwater sonar survey was carried out in collaboration with the oceanographer Paul Kronfield. The results showed no evidence of ruins of a city underwater. Consequently, since 1991 the search was shifted on land by using bore hole drilling.

Since 1994, reasearchers employed geophysical surveys in collaboration with the University of Patras, the Radar Solutions International, the University of Oklahoma and the University of Thessaloniki.

In 1995, excavations in the Klonis Field in Rizomylos brought to light a large Roman building, the first ever found in the coastal plain of Helike since the earliest research began in the middle of the 20th century.

Systematic excavations of the Helike Project started in 2000. The first trial trenches opened on the basis of evidence from topographical studies, bore holes and geophysical surveys, revealed buried remains in various locations along the plain.

In the summer of 2003, the Helike Project to continued its excavation of the Early Bronze Age site. At a depth of 5 meters, the team then discovered a remarkably well-preserved corridor house, with rooms containing dozens of complete pots, bone tools, spindle whorls, animal bones and seashells.

Some vases contained organic contents, including seeds.

Extensive excavations between 2001-2011 resulted in a number of important discoveries in the Helike area.

Helice was originally established 4,500-years ago, but the first settlement of the Early Bronze Age (2600-2300 BC) also disappeared underwater about 2,000 years before the complete destruction in 373 BC, along with ten Spartan ships anchored in the harbor was no longer visible on the ground.

In 1861, German archaeologists visited the area where Helike existed once. They found only a bronze coin originating from Helike with a head of Poseidon on one side and a trident flanked by two dolphins on the reverse side of the coin.

During excavations in 2001, a silver coin was also found, with depiction of Apollo, the Sun god, wearing a laurel wreath and the reverse of the coin shows a flying dove.

Still a major part of the lost city must be found and it will of course, take time but finally the historical records of the ancient city have been confirmed.

The Gulf of Corinth, in central Greece, is one of the most tectonically active regions in Europe. There must have been many ancient cities that vanished underwater in this region. Helike also shared their fate.

Poseidon was angry and promised revenge. It came a few days later. Buildings collapsed and “the ground rose and fell like molehills come up from the bowels of the earth.”

“The sea flooded a great part of the land, and covered up the whole of Helike all round. Moreover, the tide was so deep in the grove of Poseidon that only the tops of the trees remained visible.

What with the sudden earthquake, and the invasion of the sea that accompanied it, the tidal wave swallowed up Helike and every man in it…” we read in Pausanias, Guide to Greece 7.24.5.

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source: Helike Project

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