INOPOS DISTRICT

It is one of the most beautiful and important of the site. One can only imagine the importance of this area, leaning against Mount Cynthe and slightly sloping. Famous for its mosaics, this district mixing housing blocks and oriental temples owes its name to the sacred stream, now dried up, which came down from Mount Cynthe. It may make you smile, but the ancient Greeks saw the Inopos as a resurgence of the Nile, even giving the only small stream of Delos the status of river-god. That alone...

House of Masks and House of Dolphins. A first beautiful stop leads you here. The path coming from the Theatre district passes between these two rich isolated houses with spectacular mosaics. The larger one, on your right, is the one known as the Mask House. It is actually an island of about 1 hectare with four houses built between 150 and 100 BC. Linger around the restored atrium of the main house: several rooms here are decorated with mosaics. Most of them have a theatrical theme, including masks of actors. However, there is also the dance of the satyr Silenus and a magnificent representation of Apollo taming a panther in India. On the way out, immediately to the left of the path, you should not miss the 315^m2

Dolphin House, which also dates from the 2nd century BC. Its walls preserve fragments of plaster and decorative paint. Its atrium houses a very rare mosaic representing four dolphins wearing the attributes of Greek gods. On the one hand, it is circular and not rectangular. And, above all, this rose window is one of six mosaics from Greek antiquity to be signed. The artist who made the work is a Phoenician named Asklepiades of Arados. Arados is the name of the Syrian island now called Arouad. Historians therefore imagine that the owner of the house was himself a Phoenician merchant, which is quite possible in this very "oriental" neighborhood.

Terrace of the foreign gods.

At the foot of Mount Cynthe and 70 m east of the Dolphin House begins a succession of ruined temples and sanctuaries honouring oriental deities. At the heart of this terrace, which stretches 220 m in length from south to north, is a single small Greek temple, the Heraion. It is dedicated to Hera, the wife and sister of Zeus. Dating from the 6th century BC, the building is marked by two columns raised on the façade. It remained isolated for a long time before Syrian, Phoenician and Egyptian merchants came to settle in the Inopos district from the 3rd century BC. The conquests of Alexander the Great (334-323 B.C.) had strengthened the ties between Greece and the East, and Delos, the hub of trade in the Mediterranean, attracted a new population whose customs were all the more accepted because of the development of a Greek-Eastern syncretism. From south to north, there are two mini-sanctuaries where Isis, Serapis and Anubis, Hellenized Egyptian deities, were honored. The second houses a temple of Isis whose façade has been restored. Then, on either side of the path, you will find two temples dedicated solely to Serapis (Sarapieion B and Sarapieion C). The terrace ends with the sanctuary of the Syrian gods Atargatis and Hadad. Here, in a small, still well-designed theater, the public attended ritual orgies given in honor of Atargatis, a fertility goddess likened to Aphrodite. In addition, not far from there, on the slopes of Mount Cynthe, the remains of two other "oriental" religious buildings remain: the Samothrakeion, erected as early as the 4th century BC, the sanctuary of the gods of Ascalon, where the small Arab community from Palestine, settled in Delos around 170 BC, honoured Palestinian Aphrodite and Poseidon of Ascalon.

To the museum or to Mount Cynthe. At the level of the terrace of the foreign gods, you have the choice: continue to the left towards the Archaeological Museum to discover the rest of the Inopos district or climb to the right towards Mount Cynthe. Note that Mount Cynthe is the "highest" point of Delos, even though it towers over the island from the top of its "only" 115 m, southeast of the sanctuary of Apollo. This promontory, where a sanctuary dedicated to Zeus and Athena stood, also earned the island the name Cynthia.

Inopos reservoir. Continuing towards the museum, the path runs along the Inopos valley, where a dam and a reservoir used to collect water from the intermittent stream. The reservoir itself dates from the end of the^5th

century. Built of blocks of poros, the local tuff, and sealed with lead, it was used to store water in summer, when the Inopos was dry. The complex was completed by a Roman aqueduct at the beginning of our era.

House of the Inopos and house of Hermes. Here you will find beautiful houses, most of which have been restored, making this a particularly interesting stop on the site. Built on either side of the Inopos valley, these two large houses date from the 2nd century. The Hermes house had three floors, two of which are still standing. It was named after the discovery in 1948 of a bearded head of the god. It is on display in the island's museum and is attributed to Callimachus, a great Athenian sculptor of the^5th

century BC