The cult of Dionysus

was deeply rooted in Thracian culture in the Rhodope. Another tradition for which the mountain was famous in ancient times was the mining of gold, silver and precious stones. One of the largest mines in Antiquity was located near the present-day village of Stremtsi, about a mile and a half from Perperikon. What remains of it are about a dozen entrances and more than 500 metres of galleries. The entire hillside was cut through by a thick network of tunnels and caverns. During the Pleistocene, the site must have been the bed of a subterranean river carrying gold-rich alluvium. In subsequent geological periods, the upper layers of rock must have collapsed and, as the river bed dried up, the alluvial deposits became consolidated. The ancient gold-diggers crushed the rock into gravel and then washed away the lighter sands with water from the nearby river.

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The gold-rich deposit was crushed in the underground galleries and the gravel was brought to the surface through dozens of vertical shafts. Those still have the holes in their walls which must have served to fix the hoisting mechanism. The shafts were also the only air inlet for the mining galleries. The gravel was then taken to the river to wash the sand away from the gold. Heaps of the rock which remained after processing can still be found in the area today. Most of the small rivers which run in the foots of Perperikon are gold-bearing themselves; and the only surviving ancient toponym is that of the gold-bearing Perpereshka.

The name Perperikon itself is strangely associated with gold-mining. The archaeological finds suggest that the mines at Stremtsi were developed in the last centuries BC and were then abandoned. During the Middle Ages, however, 11th-13th century, they were reopened. And the only surviving name of the holy city, i.e., Perperikon, dates from that period. The original version was Hyperperakion but the ancient scribes shortened it to Perperakion or Perperikon. In Greek, hyperperos or hyperpyros means fiery beyond fire or above or over fire. The word was non-existent in Byzantine Greek but had existed in Aristotle’s Greek in connection with sacrifice on an altar. The place-name then could be associated with the Dionysian rites. There is however an alternative hypothesis: In 1082, the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus introduced a monetary reform to strengthen the gold monetary unit of the Empire. A considerable gold deposit was found and soon a new coin of 21? carats was struck, its name: hyperpyron or perpera. Some believe that the name came from an association with the technology of melting the gold to concentrate it. Alexius, however, was a scholar of Classical Antiquity and might have proposed the name with reference to the ancient cult.

Whether the Emperor named the city after the new gold coin because of the goldmines near Perperikon or whether the coin was named after the ancient holy city of Dionysus (whose name does not exist in earlier sources), is a question still to be answered by archaeological research.

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