Annals of Archaeology Volume 1, Issue 1, 2017, PP 1-12 Annals of Archaeology V1● I1● 2017 1 Orientations of Thirteen Apollo´s Temples: A Gnomonic Perspective Raul Perez-Enriquez 1 , Papaspirou Panagiotis 2 , Xenophon Moussas 3 1 Departamento de Fisica, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico 2 Department of Astrophysics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece 3 Department of Astrophysics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece *Corresponding Author: Raul Perez-Enriquez, Departamento de Fisica, Universidad de Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico, raul.perez@unison.mx Received Date: 29-08-2017 Accepted Date: 09-11-2017 Published Date: INTRODUCTION A couple of years ago, a broad study of ancient temples and oracles in Greece was published by M. Ranieri in 2014 [1]. In this interesting work, Ranieri describes a very special behaviour of the orientation for the majority of the studied temples, by identifying the diagonals of the temples to be oriented, mainly, towards one of the cardinal points. Furthermore, he establishes that the dimensions of each temple obeys a condition related to a Pythagorean triangle, as already identified in a previous study. [2] From these results, the main axis orientation of the temples fall in an apparent semi-arbitrary behaviour, confirming the assertion made few years before by Boutsikas [3], where she says: “[The] analysis demonstrates that there is no evidence to suggest a distinction in the orientation of the temples of … [semi-gods] deities towards the west. In the … [olympic] deities there is indeed a preference to the east, but the same preference exists also (to a lesser degree) for the… [semi-gods worship] temples... The general data analysis leads once more to the conclusion that we need to look at individual cults and temples”. However, while studying a sample of thirteen temples dedicated to Apollo, the Ancient Greek Solar deity, a special feature was found for the diagonals of the temples: they appear to be oriented towards one of the cardinal points. From this sample of the temples, eight temples‟ diagonals point towards the East; three of them point towards South; two to the North; and, none to the West (See Table 1). Castro and Liritzis in [4, 5], have argued that the scholars from 19th century assumed that the orientations of the buildings in Antiquity were mostly associated to celestial bodies and to the sunrise at one of the four solar stands, that‟s is the two equinoxes and the two solstices. ABSTRACT Apollo, the Sun God, is one of the most prominent deities in the Ancient Greek religion. The temples and the oracles dedicated to the cult of Apollo correlate the selection of their geographical site with their special orientation, as based on ancient astronomical practices of symbolic and ritual importance. By studying the Ancient Greek temples, as for example the temples of Apollo, various researchers in the field of Archaeoastronomy, as for example, Ranieri discovered their special, non-random orientation. In this paper the special orientations of thirteen temples of Apollo are studied by the application of a novel criterion, the criterion of the platonic gnomonic factor (fgp). The majority of the temples have special arithmetic values of their corresponding fgp, and this result leads us to suggest a hypothetical application of a methodology, relating to the value of the gnomonic factor and the orientation of the temple; implemented at the time of the definition of its construction. We find that for six out of thirteen temples of Apollo, a correlation between the gnomonic factors implied by the site selected for them, their specific orientation as well as the size of their basement, exists. This analysis of the sites and orientations from a gnomonic perspective could shed light to some cultural aspects of the ancient civilizations, and their symbolic relation with the cult of this Sun God.. Keywords: platonic gnomonic factor, summer solstice, pythagorean triads, oracles