The consumption of sacrificial meat was a central part of ancient Greek cult festivals: The people of a polis had the special opportunity to have a big meat meal, which was not an everyday occurrence. After the ritual sacrifice people used to dine outdoors or in temporary structures specifically built for the festivals. Several sanctuaries, however, also included permanent buildings furnished with dining couches to accommodate the sacred meal for a special group of worshippers. The monograph treats the subject of sacred banquet halls in its entirety and yields new basic research about the architectural equipment of Greek sanctuaries in its multifunctional context: How can you recognize such a banquet hall, even if the structure is in bad condition? Which position do these builidings have within the sacred architecture? Which importance do they have during the cult festival? And who was admitted to dine in those rooms? Christina Leypold analyses these varied questions completely, meticulously but still clearly. She examines previous methods of identification of architectural remains as sacred banquet halls and gives clear criterions to determine this function for new archaeological structures. Founded on the extensive material of sacred banquet halls starting from the seventh century B.C. to the Hellenistic period the author illustrates the remarkable architectural diversity of these buildings, in which both functional demands and local specific features find expression. The reader understands to what extend the architectural form of the sacred dining buildings was developed specificly for this special purpose. In order to examine the so far hardly known ritual context of these buildings Leypold uses new methods: The placing of the banquet halls within the sacred space is considered as indicator not only for the spatial but also for the functional connection to the ritual, which makes it possible to distinguish between several occasions for ritual dining. By connecting her results with the information given by literary and epigraphic sources, the author identifies the users of these buildings and clarifies their importance as an integral part of the infrastructure of the sanctuaries. weiterlesen