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The Parthenon, in Ancient Greek Παρθενών, is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC.
Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art, an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy and Western civilization.
The Parthenon was built in thanksgiving for the Hellenic victory over Persian invaders during the Greco-Persian Wars.
Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon also served as the city treasury.
More information: History
Construction started in 447 BC when the Delian League was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438; work on the decoration continued until 432. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the final decade of the 6th century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
After the Ottoman conquest in the mid-fifteenth century, it became a mosque. In the Morean War, a Venetian bomb landed on the Parthenon, which the Ottomans had used as a munitions dump, during the 1687 siege of the Acropolis. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon.
From 1800 to 1803, the 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the surviving sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles, reportedly (but controversially) with the permission of the Ottoman Empire.
The Parthenon replaced an older temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon, that was demolished in the Persian invasion of 480 BC.
Since 1975, numerous large-scale restoration projects have been undertaken to preserve remaining artefacts and ensure its structural integrity.
More information: Smart History
The origin of the word Parthenon comes from the Greek word parthénos (παρθένος), meaning maiden, girl as well as virgin, unmarried woman. The Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon states that it may have referred to the unmarried women's apartments in a house, but that in the Parthenon it seems to have been used for a particular room of the temple.
Although the Parthenon is architecturally a temple and is usually called so, some scholars have argued that it is not really a temple in the conventional sense of the word. A small shrine has been excavated within the building, on the site of an older sanctuary probably dedicated to Athena as a way to get closer to the goddess, but the Parthenon apparently never hosted the official cult of Athena Polias, patron of Athens.
The cult image of Athena Polias, which was bathed in the sea and to which was presented the peplos, was an olive-wood xoanon, located in another temple on the northern side of the Acropolis, more closely associated with the Great Altar of Athena.
The colossal statue of Athena by Phidias was not specifically related to any cult attested by ancient authors and is not known to have inspired any religious fervour. Preserved ancient sources do not associate it with any priestess, altar or cult name.
More information: Smithsonian Magazine
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