Tarra, Crete

Tarrha (Greek Τάῤῥα, in Ptolemy Τάρβα Tarba ) was an ancient city on the southern coast of the Greek island of Crete. It was located at the southern exit of the Samaria Gorge, on the territory of present-day village of Agia Roumeli. In an ancient coastal Report ( Periplus ) Tarrha is mentioned as a " small town with a place to land ." The god Apollo is said to have experienced as Apollon Tarrhaios special devotion here. From the city came the grammarian Lukillos of Tarrha ( Λουκίλλος; Latin Lucius ), who lived in the 1st century AD.

Maybe was already in Minoan harbor on the ocean side of the Samaria gorge. In Greek mythology, Apollo fled after killing the Python at Delphi with his twin sister Artemis by Tarrha, where he was cleaned in a study conducted by the priest Karmanor ceremony of the blood debt. In Tarrha Apollon had a love affair with the nymph Akakallis. It is also described as the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae. From the union emerged depending on Sage Phylakis, Philander, Naxos or Miletus. The physician and classical antiquity scientist Ernst Assmann rule out names and mythology that the name Tarrha is of Semitic origin: " Taharah is ( tahar = clean, for purely explain the religious, moral sense) the priestly expression for cleansing from sin. "

Tarrha was a regional religious center of the Dorians. In the Hellenistic period were sent, as well as the neighboring cities Anopolis and Araden, holy Ambassador ( theoroi ) to Delphi. From the late 4th BC to the early 2nd century BC Tarrha was a member of the Federation of Oreioi ( Ὄρειοι, miners '), which also belonged to the cities Elyros, Hyrtakina and Lisos, possibly Kantanos, as well as ports and Poikilasion Syia. The alliance concluded in the first half of the 3rd century BC with Magas, king of Cyrene, a contract that 280-250 BC had stock. From the year 183 BC a treaty of alliance with Eumenes II of Pergamum is known, were among the signatories in addition to 28 other Cretan cities also Anopolis, Araden and Tarrha.

The city Tarrha flourished especially in Roman times. Here coins with motifs of goat heads and bees have been coined as an indication of milk and honey, the food of young children of the gods. Also was found in excavations a piece of imported raw glass, which today is in the Museum of Chania. Whether a glassworks was in Tarrha how the archaeologist and Ausgräberin the finds of burnt glass Gladys Davidson Weinberg suspected, or the glass is from a shipwreck, is not assured. In frübyzantinischen 5/6 Century was built on the foundations of a Hellenistic building, possibly a temple of the oracle of Apollo Tarrhaios, a three-aisled Christian basilica. From it up to three meters high walls and remains of a mosaic floor have been preserved. Later they built in their place a small chapel, the church of the Panagia. In addition to the remains of the early Byzantine basilica in 1959, pit -shaped tombs were discovered in the excavations with jewelry offerings, including those from the Archaic period (about 700-500 BC).