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Archeologists have found an interesting ruin in the ancient city of Hierapolis. According to Wikipedia, the city was founded in the second century BCE as a thermal spa. In Greek, Hiera means temple or sacred place and there are tons of them in the city.
For instance, the foundations of a temple of Apollo, the principle god of the city, remain within a peribolos (a court enclosed by a wall) on top of an active fault line that leads to the Plutonium (the gate to hell.) It is said that this chasm was the spot where the great mother goddess Cibele met with Apollo.
Historically, Cibele may be associated with Semiramis, the wife and mother (its a long story) of Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah and builder of the Tower of Babel. Interestingly enough the model of the Statue of LIberty, the goddess Libertas, may be another incarnation of Cibele.
In front of the Apollo temple there is a structure called the Nymphaeum. It was a shrine to the nymphs and included a large fountain that distributed water to the houses in the city through a system of pipes.
There are also a large necropolis (city of the dead) that extends for over two kilometers on either side of the old road from the city to Phrygia. The tombs in this city range from simple graves for commoners to large family graves with complex monuments resembling small temples. One of these tombs, that of Marcus Aurelius Ammianos, was engraved with the plans for a water-driven Roman sawmill, the earliest known machine to incorporate a crank and connecting rod mechanism.
For Christians, Hieropalis is the site of the Martyrium, the site where the apostle Philip was buried. Philip is said to have been crucified upside-down in Hierapolis and buried at the point that became the center of the Martyrium. The structure, built by a Byzantine emperor, contained a central octagonal building under a wooden dome surrounded by several chapels.
Now onto the gates of Hell. The Plutonium, the chasm mentioned as the building place of the temple of Apollo, is the most ancient holy site in the city of Hierapolis. A shrine was created here to Pluto, the god of the underworld. The main part of the Plutonium is a small cave that is just large enough to allow one person to descend down a flight of stairs and into a 32-square-foot chamber that was full of deadly carbon dioxide (suffocation not global warming.) In front of the cave was a 22,000-square-foot enclosed structure that also contained a lethal concentration of the gas. Priests would sell birds and other animals to visitors, who could release them into the enclosed area to see just how deadly it was. Priests of the goddess Cibele would descend into the cave, and return to show that they had divine protection and were immune to the gas. In truth they either held their breath or found pockets of oxygen (CO2 is heavier then oxygen and settles into hollows which would leave pockets of breathable air. People at the time thought that because the gas was so lethal, that it was sent to the surface by Pluto, the god of the dead. The famous Roman statesman Cicero referenced the cave as a portal to the underworld, a literal gateway to hell.
Digital recreation of what the Plutonium looked like. Photo Credit: Francesco D’Andria
While this temple was previously lost, as reported by several news agencies it has now been rediscovered by the Italian archaeologist Francesco D’Andria. He traced the route to the cave from a former thermal spring and found the ruins of a temple, pool, and the steps leading to the portal. According to D’Andria, the area is still very deadly:
“Any animal that passes inside meets instant death. I threw in sparrows and they immediately breathed their last and fell.”
