PANHELLENIC Literally “referring to all (pan-) the Greeks (Hellenes),” often used in connection
with the Panhellenic festivals and games, which were open to all Greeks and only to Greeks, or with
reference to Panhellenism, the idea that what distinguishes Greeks from barbarians outweighs what
divides Greeks from one another.The most prominent, and apparently the oldest, of these Panhellenic festivals was the Olympic festival,
celebrated at the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus, located in the northwestern Peloponnese, on the border of
the territory of the Eleans and their neighbors to the south (map 7). The Greeks must have worshipped
Zeus even before they entered Greece during the Mycenaean Period, as his name is Indo-European
(compare Sanskrit dyaus, “sky, day,” and Latin Jupiter, from the same root as Zeus + pater, “father”). The
festival celebrated at Olympia followed an eight-year cycle of Babylonian origin, with the festival being
held at the beginning and mid-point of the cycle. There is evidence of cult activity at the site of Olympia
as early as the end of the tenth century BC, but the importance of the sanctuary increased in the course of
the Geometric Period to the point that, by the seventh century, thousands of dedicatory offerings had been
made there in the form of TERRACOTTA and bronze figurines, arms and armor, and valuable bronze
cauldrons and TRIPODS (figure 20), from various Greek poleis and even from Italy and western Asia.
These dedications are likely to have been made in connection with the festival which, like ancient Greek
festivals generally, included large-scale animal sacrifices that took place at the altar within the sanctuary
of Zeus.