The Greek Pyramids: Historical, But Not Impressive

Here’s a fun game: try and list as many things Greece has given the world.

Architecture. Astronomy. The idea of a modern legal system. Mathematics. Yogurt. The Olympics. Philosophy. Pericles. Disney’s Hercules.

The list is almost endless in just how amazing they were at some things. Building pyramids wasn’t one of them though.There are roughly 16 pyramids spread across the whole of Greece. From lovely Lemnos to historic Athens to the sandy beaches of  Rhodes Greece you should expectedly have a number of great looking old forts and monuments. But when you want to see a true Greek pyramid you get this:

Pyramid_in_HellinikonThis is the Pyramid of Hellinikon, sitting rather majestically on the outskirts of a town called Peloponnese, roughly 70 miles west of Athens. It looks rather majestic, doesn’t it? Well this photo is doing something of a service for the pyramid as it actually looks like this:

It stands at a majestic height of just 3.5m at the tallest side and slopes upwards at a 60 degree angle. When the pyramid was first looked at by archaeologists, they actually believed it was simply a tomb due to how small it was. This theory was quashed some time around the 1930 by the American School of Archaeology when they dug down in and figured out the layout of the building, concluding that this mini pyramid was something of a fort for those living in it. The location was prime for seeing far in many directions and would’ve been a great point of attack for anyone trying to take over land or steal anything.

While archaeologists to this day still argue about how old the pyramid is (and whether or not it can be called a pyramid) most believe that it was built sometime between 2400-2500 BC. The big sticking point for many experts is whether the original research citing it around this time was written under the belief that the building was erected around the same period that Ancient Greece became very pro-active in building and theory.

Others argue that the date should line up more with what was going on in Egypt around the same period, and the pyramid’s sloped design was obviously influenced by this. With the first known reference to the pyramid made by geographer Pausanias in the 2nd century, who wrote a series of journals that essentially acted as maps of country. He sounds like a very old school version of James Joyce or Hunter S Thompson (who obviously seen this pyramid on his travels in Las Vegas)

If you’re interested in learning more about the pyramids in Greece there aren’t many resources out there, although we did find two pages of worth:

Wikipedia has a nice summation of pyramids around all the islands

Crystalinks has a very detailed, although scattered, guide to life in Ancient Greece.

And if you’re looking for pyramis from this part of world, you should read our articles on pyramids in Albania and Kazakhstan.