Corpus of the Inscriptions of Artemis Sanctuary at Brauron

The sanctuary was excavated by Ioannis Papadimitriou from 1948 to 1963 when work ceased because of his sudden death. Immediately, all activities stopped and the storerooms, with a plethora of findings, closed. The newly constructed "Museum of Brauron" remained empty until its inauguration in the summer of 1970. The Museum came to house many finds belonging to several other excavations from various areas of Attica.
The toponym of Brauron has remained the same with the exception of an old popular pronunciation "Braona". Brauron is situated close to Athens; 8-9 Km from Marcopoulo and 4 km from the new airport "El. Benizelos" at Spata. The prehistoric settlements in the surroundings and on the south slope of the Acropolis, the rock-cut stairways and the so-called "Iphigeneia's tomb," and the remains of the 6th c. B.C temple justified the fabulous description of this site by Euripides in "Iphigeneia in Tauris" v. 1446-1467 concerning the destiny of the virgin to be the first priestess at Brauron. It is well testified that "Brauronia" was one of the five "penteteric" festivals announced previously by Theoroi. At the very beginning of the excavations, the arkteia, a "rite of transition" where the arktoi, girls devoted to Artemis, received a kind of guidance to their future marriage has provoked enormous scholarly interest. The literary tradition on the rite was combined with the imagery on the various vases found at the excavation and subsequently the so-called crateriskoi by Lili Kahil, who first studied them. Until now, this remains the only completed study concerning the vases of the excavation; however, it is missing a "Corpus Vasorum".