Oikoi_Building

Behind the temple, to the west, is a small building with two rooms behind a porch. Its 13-meter-wide marble front had four Doric columns. In the sides of the columns and the antae there are cuttings for a metal grille between the columns. The front part of the building could thus only be entered through a gate in one of the intercolumniations.

At present the south anta has been rebuilt with seven blocks, which all come from the northern anta; some of them are placed upside down; originally the anta had 9 blocks and the column next to it had four column drums, giving a total height including the capital, of ca 4.33 meters. The columns carried an architrave, the blocks of which now lie behind the stylobate. They still preserve a long inscription, informing us that:

IΔPIEYΣ EKATOMNΩ MYΛAΣEYΣ ANEΘHKE TOYΣ OIKOYΣ ΔII ΛAMBPAYNΔΩI

Idrieus, son of Hekatomnos, of Mylasa, dedicated the Oikoi

(i.e. the rooms) to Zeus Lambraundos

ΔII ΛABPAYNΔΩI

TITOΣ ΦΛABIOΣ NEΩN IE

PEYΣ THN ΣTOAN EΣKE

ΠAΣEN TH OIKOΔOMH

KAΘ A YΠEΣXETO

To Zeus Labraundos. The Priest Titus Flavius Neon sheltered the stoa, building it according to his promise

The Oikoi Building from the east

On the front of the architrave, above the inscription, large swallow-tail-shaped cuttings can be seen at all joints between the blocks. In these cuttings, which served no functional purpose, metal decorations in the shape of double axes were once placed.

Architrave block of the Oikoi building with inscription:

TOYΣ OIKOYΣ ΔII

One is reminded of the symbol of Zeus at Labraunda, the double axe. Above the Doric architrave with the inscription there was no normal triglyph frieze. This is shown by the positions of the dowel holes in the top of the inscribed blocks. Instead the building must have had another kind of frieze, possibly of smooth marble blocks decorated by painting. At the top, under the roof, was a geison, which also was irregular in being smooth and not decorated with the usual Doric mutules (rectangular discs with 3 rows of 6 protruding little cylinders, or guttae). The saddle-shaped roof of the building was sloping towards the front, and there were plain pediments on the sides of the building.

The function of the Oikoi Building is not evident. It has been supposed that it served as a building for the priests of the sanctuary and as an archive, maybe a prytaneion (council house). It may also have served for ritual meals, in the same way as the two andrones and the East Stoa. A main purpose of the Oikoi Building may, however, have been as a treasury for the safe-keeping of valuable gifts to the god.

Restored front of the Oikoi Building (T. Thieme).

The frieze above the architrave is missing, but cuttings for end dowels on the top of the architrave show where seven frieze blocks in the middle began and ended.

Bronze clamps joining two stylobate blocks of the Oikoi building. The clamps are set in elegant cuttings of double swallowtail shape, which were originally filled with lead hiding the bronze clamps.

An inscription, which was found at the entrance to the southern room, can now be seen in front of the building, to the north. The text may document the construction of a new roof of the porch by a priest at Labraunda in the late 1st century AD. It is cut on the top of a reused block, which on all four sides has the same profile as the anta capitals of the Oikoi Building; it probably originally belonged to a free-standing pillar.

Later, possibly in the Early Byzantine period, the larger, southern room of the building received a brick dome resting on piers in the corners of the room, and a base of brick with a marble facing was built in the northern room. An apex block from the roof, found in the northern part of the room, near the entrance, now rests on the base.

15.The Spring House 16.The Temple Terrace and the North Stoa 17.The Temple of Zeus 18.The Oikoi Building 19.Andron A