The marble statue of Zeus sitting on a throne was discovered on an altar of what is believed to be a sanctuary of the chief Olympian god found at Dion, an ancient Macedonian city in central Greece. The sanctuary was discovered by chance, as it was below the surface of a river that was being drained as part of anti-flooding works. [more]

Athens - Diggers accidentally discovered a temple to Zeus at the foot of Mount Olympus in an indicating that ancient Greeks switched away from polytheism to the faith of a single God even before Christianity appeared in Greece, archaeologists said on Friday.





The sanctuary was found during works to broaden the bed of the Vaphyras river running through the Dion temple complex at the foot of Mount Olympus, northern Greece - the seat of Greek mythology's twelve Gods.





The findings include the sanctuary's foundations, 14 marble blocks with marble eagles engraved on them - Zeus's symbol - and a slightly smaller-than-life-size, headless marble statue of Zeus, said archaeologist Dimitris Pantermalis who supervises the Dion site.





The sanctuary dates to the centuries preceding Christ's birth. Insignia found on it refer to Zeus as "the highest".





"It is a special version of Zeus as a single God residing in heaven... we know that 'Zeus the Highest' played an important role in the transition to monotheism," Pantermalis said.





"The findings are dated before the birth of Christ, that's what's important," he added.





It is the first time that a sanctuary to 'Zeus the Highest' is found, Pantermalis said.





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Temple to Zeus unearthed at Mount Olympus

Apologies (and thanks) to those persistent souls who have been visiting this site during this extended period of hiatus. It's been nearly a whole month since my last post and really things have not been too flash around here for the best part of two month before that. Blogging has been extremely disrupted by a combination of factors like: "being really busy", "running out of steam a bit", "disruptions to the working environment". It started back in May when we rashly decided to put our house on the market only to pull it off again a week before auction. We haven't regretted either decision, it gave us an opportunity to spruce the joint up and in the process realise that we actually liked the place a lot more than the places we'd been looking at. The next thing that happened was a major work project which has been keeping me fully occupied, time to surf research has been severely curtailed of late.

Any way, Spring has sprung finally (and thankfully, I've reached the "enough" stage when it comes to Winter) and the pace at work has slackened to a slightly less hectic pace and so I hope to be able to get things back into some kind of shape here at the LapLog™ over the next week or so. Stay tuned.

A Real Estate Sky This image was taken on a drab and overcast Winter's day so it was decided that the sky was to be photoshopped into something nicer for the sales brochure. An unexpected side-effect was that the two white chimneys on the roof became completely transparent, mere ghosts of their former selves.