Piece of land assigned as an official domain or dedicated to gods
This article is about the term in Greek referring to a piece of land assigned as an official domain or dedicated to gods. For other uses, see Temenos (disambiguation).
Atemenos (Greek: τέμενος; plural: τεμένη, temenē)[1] is a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain, especially to kings and chiefs, or a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, such as a sanctuary, holy grove, or holy precinct.[2][3]
Atemenos enclosed a sacred space called a hieron. It was usually surrounded by a wall, ditch, or line of stones. All things inside of the demarkated area belonged to the designated god. Greeks could find asylum within a sanctuary and be under the protection of the deity and could not be moved against their will.[4]
The word derives from the Greek verb τέμνω (temnō), "I cut".[5][6] The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek𐀳𐀕𐀜, te-me-no, written in Linear B syllabic script.[7]
A large example of a Bronze AgeMinoan temenos is at the Juktas Sanctuary of the palaceofKnossos on ancient Crete in present-day Greece, the temple having a massive northern temenos.[10]
Another example is at Olympia, the temenos of Zeus.
There were temene dedicated to Apollo in many places, as he was a patron god of settlers.
There is a Temenos area in the Romano-British temple complex of the Roman town of CaerwentinWales[11]
The concept of temenos arose in classical antiquity as an area reserved for worship of the gods. Some authors have used the term to apply to a sacred grove of trees,[12] isolated from everyday living spaces, while other usage points to areas within ancient urban development that are parts of sanctuaries.[13]
A temenos is often physically marked by a peribolos fence or wall (e.g. Delphi) as a structural boundary.
Originally, the peribolos was often just a set of marker stones demarcating the boundary, or a light fence. The earliest sanctuaries appear to have begun as a peribolos around a sacred grove, spring, cave, or other feature, with an altar but no temple or cult image. Later, as Greek sanctuaries became more elaborate, large stone walls with gateways or gatehouses were built around important sanctuaries, although the most famous, the AcropolisofAthens, had an elaborate enclosure because it began as a palace and military citadel and was converted into a sanctuary.
Carl Jung relates the temenos to the spellbinding or magic circle, which acts as a "square space"[14] where mental "work" can take place. This temenos resembles among others a "symmetrical rose garden with a fountain in the middle" in which an encounter with the unconscious can be had and where these unconscious contents can safely be brought into the light of consciousness. In this manner, one can meet one's own animus / anima, shadow, wise old wo/man (senex), and finally the self.[a][15]
^Animus, ... senex are technical terms that Jung coined for archetypal personifications of (unpersonal) unconscious contents which seem to span all cultures.
^Reich, Ronny; Katzenstein, Hannah (1992). "Glossary of Archaeological Terms". In Kempinski, Aharon; Reich, Ronny (eds.). The Architecture of Ancient Israel. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. p. 321. ISBN978-965-221-013-5. Temenos: Holy precinct within a city or close by, separated by a wall from the secular parts of the city.
Molyneaux, Brian Leigh; Vitebsky, P. (2000). Sacred Earth, Sacred Stones: Spiritual site and landscapes, ancient alignments, Earth energy. London, UK: Duncan Baird. ISBN1-903296-07-2.
