The rock sanctuary of the Theoi Patrooi Meter, Zeus &Apollon

The rock sanctuary at Panayirdag in Ephesos is one of the largest of its kind in the East Aegean-West Anatolian interface. It is characterised by niches for dedicatory reliefs carved into the natural rock surfaces. This extensive sacred landscape unites several cult sites for the Theoi Patrooi, the "deities inherited from the fathers". In Ephesus these included Zeus, Apollo and above all the mother goddess Meter, to whom most of the inscriptions and all of the surviving votive reliefs and terracotta figurines are dedicated. The rock sanctuary flourished in the late 4th and 3rd centuries BC. This volume presents not only the results and finds of the 1926 and 2009 excavations, but also all the objects that can be indirectly linked to the rock sanctuary. The 91 marble dedicatory reliefs of the type Ephesus represent the largest known corpus of sculptures of Meter from a single production site. The analysis of the dedicatory inscriptions provides insights into the cult community of the mother goddess. In 2009, in niche area VII, an undisturbed in situ deposit was uncovered, which is rare in rock sanctuaries. It dates from the decades prior to the abandonment and ritual burial of the site in the mid 3rd century BC. The closed context includes dedicatory reliefs, terracotta figurines, pottery, a small hoard of coins and animal bones. The analysis of the assemblage allows conclusions to be drawn about the cult of Meter. For the dedicatory reliefs, this context provides an important new point of reference for dating. It shows that different stylistic variants and levels of quality, which have often been interpreted chronologically, existed in parallel.