Perachora

The city of Perachora is northwest of Corinth, along the stretch of land that connects the Peloponnese Peninsula to mainland Greece. “Perachora was first excavated by Humfry Payne in the early 1930s. Since then, the excavation has mainly focused on the public buildings by the harbor,” (Doughty, “Sanctuary”).

Unfortunately, there is a lack of written sources about the Sanctuary of Hera, so most of the sources are analyzing the pottery’s shape and deigns and other remaining artifacts (Salmon “Heraeum,” 161). One of the few primary sources, according to Euripides’ Medea, states the mother Medea killed her children and buried them at Hera’s temple, thus creating a cult at the site. (Holland, “Last,” 407). While the temple was used as a religious site to worship Hera, since the eight century B.C., the temple expanded in the 400s B.C.

At the altar, women would making offerings, so Hera, as a goddess of women and childbirth, would protect them through the difficult aspects of womanhood. “The site is made up of two main complexes: the lower complex by the harbor is the earlier one, generally known as the Heraion Akraia, and where most of the ritual activity seems to have taken place; whereas the upper complex, built later, seems to have held overspill,” (Doughty, “Sanctuary”). There was a pool near the temple, that could have been used for purification of the or for the oracle of Hera Akraia (Dunbabin “Oracle,” 62). Ultimately, the sanctuary of Hera was forsaken in 140 BC, when the Romans destroyed Corinth (“Archaeological,” Greek Travel Pages).