Rhenia or Megali Delos
Rhenia or Megali Delos is today a desert. The ancient city was in the NW. coast, where the sanctuary of Herakles (the finds in the Museum of Mykonos), while most of the country belonged to the sanctuary of Apollo of Delos. In the S. part there were the cemeteries of Delos until Roman times (relief columns, sarcophagi and a burial enclosure with an Ionic temple), after the cleansing of the sacred island by the Athenians in 426/25 BC, as well as the burials of of the tombs of Delos that the Athenians did at that time (Peisistratos had already done an earlier purification of the sanctuary of Apollo of Delos around 540 BC). This is the so-called "purification cistern", i.e. a square depository with bones, broken vessels, figurines and tools (8th century to about 430 BC) in Charoneia, near the church of Agia Kyriaki, on the east coast (the finds in the Archaeological Museum of Mykonos). Buildings for the accommodation of pregnant women and the dying are also preserved, as after 425 BC. birth and death were forbidden on the sacred island of Apollo. The tyrant of Samos Polycrates dedicated Rhenia to Apollo and connected it with a chain to Delos.
Editor: Fotini Anastasopoulou