Xenokrateia Relief

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The Xenokrateia Relief is a marble votive offering, dated to the end of the fifth-century BCE. It commemorates the foundation of a sanctuary to the river god Kephisos by a woman named Xenokrateia.^[1]

The relief, currently on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (NAMA 2756), was found in Neo Phaliro in 1908, in the area inside the Long Walls, which in Antiquity connected the harbor of Piraeus with Athens proper, around the walls’ intersection point with the bed of the Kephisos river. It is dated on stylistic grounds to 410 BCE, and is made of Pentelic marble, while the pillar on which it stands is made of limestone.

The relief marks the foundation of a local sanctuary to the river god Kephisos. We have no knowledge of this sanctuary from literary sources, or any indication of archaeological structure in the area where the relief was discovered. This has led some scholars to propose that the sanctuary consisted of only a sacred grove and an altar. Thus, the only information we have comes from this relief and its inscription, as well as from two other finds excavated nearby – the Kephisodotos relief and an inscribed stele.