The Delphic Oracle

The ancient Greeks believed that the oracle at Delphi went back to immemorial antiquity. But were they right? The history of the site has been traced through excavations that are among the greatest achievements of modern archaeology. The interest of the French school in Delphi goes back to 1861, but for political reasons systematic excavation could not begin till 1893; since 1902 the series of volumes of the Fouilles de Delphes has appeared regularly. Mycenaean Delphi has been shown to have amounted to very little; and the chief centre seems to have been not on the site of the great temple, but at Marmaria, near the temple of Athene Pronaia. A few clay figurines may pertain to a private, but hardly to a public cult; an isolated Minoan marble drinking-horn shaped like a lion's head proves little. By the beginning of the Dark Age the settlement seems to have been destroyed by fire; before its life resumes during the Protogeometric period, there seems to have been a complete break in continuity. Only when the Dark Age is over does Delphi become important.