Orchomenos is here, on the western edge of what was the Lake of Copais in Boeotia.
The town sits on the eastern end of a long narrow ridge called 'Akontion' because of its resemblance to a spear. (Here the vertical has been exaggerated.) The little town of Prosilio, where the chamber tomb was found, sits on the south side of Akontion. The arrow points to it.
How do we find out exactly where it was found?
First I looked at the photograph here:
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| Photo by Yannis Galanakis, Prosilio Excavation Project |
Here's the crew working on what looks like the dromos to the chamber tomb (I'm not certain of this).
I guessed that here the crew is standing on the south side of Akontion and somewhere near Prosilio. I then tried to recreate this photo in Google Earth. Here's what I came up with:
The fact that I was able to confirm so many identifying characteristics in the photograph (how many do you recognize?) made me feel certain that I had found the right spot. It is, in fact, the light-colored patch at the lower right. Google Earth tells me that at this point I'm just 40 m. above the surface. When we turn the view around we have this:
Here we're looking west towards the site which is the white patch in the upper center.
The actual site location is 38.501057 N, 22.932393 E In the Mycenaean Atlas Project it is now C5011.
And just to put the icing on the cake it turns out that Google Street View is available for the road between the site and the light colored house. Here it is:
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| The famous light colored house along with the identifiable tree. |
Honestly I never get tired of doing this. Google Earth is a lot more than just a set of maps.
If you enjoy this kind of photo recreation of Mycenaean sites you might like this previous post where I locate a tholos tomb in Arcadia.
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