Page - 61 - in The Power of Urban Water - Studies in premodern urbanism

4 Water, Social SpaceandArchitecture atSelinous: theCaseof theUrbanSanctuary 61 allymadeof terracotta and showed cylinder-stampeddecoration along the rim,56 but themost beautiful examplesweremadeofmarble. One of themhas ahuman-shaped stand (Fig.7) and is comparablewithArchaicperirrhanteria from themajorGreek sanctuaries.57 The location of water sources close to the entrances of the Selinous’ sanctuary, therefore, hadmainly a practical purpose, butmight have been related also to the idea that basinswith lustralwater represented symbolic borders in temeneandpublic spaces, to suchanextent that the termperirrhanterionwasused sometimes insteadof theword temenos.58 Thesanctuaryduring the first half of the 5th centuryBC Between the end of the 6th and the first decades of the 5th century BC, the east sector of the temenoschangedagain (Fig.8). Thepreviousnortheast entrancewascoveredbyearthandalso by the northwest/southeastwall running from the lower terrace to the northeast corner of the sanctuary.59 In the lower terrace, a tapereddoorwith a few low stepswas installed.60 It led to theupper terrace, througha flightof stairsnext to the retainingwall.Unlike theentrances from thewest and south sides, the sequenceof lowsteps in front of thedoor, the lower terrace, and the long stair introduced the visitor into the temenos via a progressive and slow ascent that prepared him or her to enter into the sacred space, possibly creating a sense of expectation. Fig. 8:Selinous, theurbansanctuary during the 5th cen- turyBC. 56 Terracotta perirrhanteria have been retrieved during excavations in the sanctuary, but their original location cannotbe retraced,because theyhavebeen found insecondarypositionsorbecauseof information lacking inold archaeological reports (see for example Gabrici 1929, 93). Selinous is considered to have been one of themajor production centres in Sicily of this kind of object. About them see: Allegro 1982; Farinholt Ward 2018. On the locationofperirrhanteriaand ritual ofperirrhansis inGreek sanctuaries seeKobusch, this volume. 57 The perirrhanterionwas retrieved in 1935 to the north of Temple D among debris fromprevious excavations, but itsoriginal location isunknown(Tusa1983129n.28,withprevious references). For similarmarbleperirrhante- ria fromOlympia andSamos, seePimpl 1997, 164–166. 169f. fig. 5. 58 Burkert 1977, 146; ThesCRA II (2004) 26f. s.v. Purificazione, Gr. (O. Paoletti). See also the literature quoted in n.52. 59 Mertens 2003,Beil. 4. 60 On theproblems related to someelements of the lower terrace, seeMertens 2003, 92–97.