Ancient Cities Turkey

Ancient Cities

Aspendos
Aspendos was an ancient city in Pamphylia, Asia Minor, located about 25 miles (40 km) east of the modern city of Antalya, Turkey. It was situated on the Eurymedon River (now the Kopru River) about 10 miles (16 km) inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The Greek spelling of the name is Aspendos. According to tradition, the city was founded around 1000 B.C. by Greeks who may have come from Argos. The wide range of its coinage throughout the ancient world indicates that, in the 5th century B.C., Aspendus had become the most important city in Pamphylia. At that time the Eurymedon River was navigable as far as Aspendus, and the city derived great wealth from a trade in salt, oil, and wool.
In 333 B.C. Aspendus paid Alexander the Great a levy to avoid being garrisoned, but it ignored its agreements with him and later was occupied. In 190 B.C. the city surrendered to the Romans, who later pillaged it of its artistic treasures. Toward the end of the Roman period the city began a decline that continued throughout Byzantine times.

Afprodisias
An antique city situated near the Karacasu-Aydın province, was established in the name of Goddess Aphrodite. It continued to be a great center of inbatiance from the Bronze Age to the Byzantine Preiod (2800 B.C. - 220 A.D.).

During excavations, the Aphrodite Temple, Odeon, Statium and agora, and the city baths have been revaled. Aphrodisias was well known during the Early Age as a center of sculpture. The Aphrodisias Stadium is one of the best preserved stadiums among the antique city stadiums in Anatolia.

Lydia Treasures (Karun)
Lydia is a historic region of western Asia Minor, congruent with Turkey's modern provinces of İzmir and Manisa. Its traditional capital was the city of Sardis. However, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia was later the name for a Roman province. Coins were invented in Lydia around 660 BC.
History
Early history: Maeonia and Lydia
Lydia arose as a Neo-Hittite kingdom following the collapse of the Hittite Empire in the twelfth century BC.

In Hittite times, the name for the region had been Arzawa, a Luwian-speaking area. According to Greek source, the original name of the Lydian kingdom was Maionia (Maeonia): Homer (Iliad ii. 865; v. 43, xi. 431) refers to the inhabitants of Lydia as Maiones (???????). Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde (Iliad xx. 385); Hyde may have been the name of the district where Sardis stood.[2] Later, Herodotus (Histories i. 7) adds that the "Meiones" were renamed Lydians after their king, Lydus (?????), son of Attis, in the mythical epoch that preceded the rise of the Heracleid dynasty. This etiological eponym served to account for the Greek ethnic name Lydoi (?????). The Hebrew term for Lydians, Lû?îm (?????), as found in Jeremiah 46.9, is similarly considered to be derived from the eponymous Lud son of Shem; in Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were also famous archers.
Some Maeones still existed in historical times in the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town called Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder (Natural History book v:30) and Hierocles.

Lydia in Greek mythology
Lydian mythology is virtually unknown, and their literature and rituals lost, in the absence of any monuments or archaeological finds with extensive inscriptions; therefore those myths involving Lydia are mainly in the realm of Greek mythology.
For the Greeks, Tantalus was a primordial ruler of mythic Lydia, and Niobe his proud daughter; her husband Zethos linked the affairs of Lydia with Thebes, and through Pelops the line of Tantalus was part of the founding myths of Mycenae's second dynasty.[3]
In Greek myth, Lydia was also the first home of the double-axe, the labrys[4].
Omphale, daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler of Lydia, whom Heracles was required to serve for a time. His adventures in Lydia are the adventures of a Greek hero in a peripheral and foreign land: during his stay, Heracles enslaved the Itones, killed Syleus who forced passers-by to hoe his vineyard; slew the serpent of the river Sangarios; [5] and captured the simian tricksters, the Cercopes. Accounts speak of at least one son born to Omphale and Heracles: Diodorus Siculus (4.31.8) and Ovid (Heroides 9.54) mention a son Lamos, while pseudo-Apollodorus (Bibliotheke 2.7.8) gives the name Agelaus, and Pausanias (2.21.3) names Tyrsenus son of Heracles by "the Lydian woman".
All three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming descent from Heracles: Herodotus (1.7) refers to a Heraclid dynasty of kings who ruled Lydia, yet were perhaps not descended from Omphale. He also mentions (1.94) the recurring legend that the Etruscan civilization was founded by colonists from Lydia led by Tyrrhenus, brother of Lydus. However, Dionysius of Halicarnassus was skeptical of this story, pointing out that the Etruscan language and customs were known to be totally dissimilar to those of the Lydians.

Later chronographers also ignored Herodotus' statement that Agron was the first to be a king, and included Alcaeus, Belus, and Ninus in their list of kings of Lydia. Strabo (5.2.2) makes Atys, father of Lydus and Tyrrhenus, to be a descendant of Heracles and Omphale. All other accounts place Atys, Lydus, and Tyrrhenus among the pre-Heraclid kings of Lydia.
The gold deposits in the river Pactolus that were the source of the proverbial wealth of Croesus (Lydia's last historical king) were said to have been left there when the legendary king Midas of Phrygia washed away the "Midas touch" in its waters.

First coinage
According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coin, and the first to establish retail shops in permanent locations.[6]
It is believed that these first stamped coins were minted around 650-600 BC. The first coin was made of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. It was made in the 1/3 stater (trite) denomination, meaning that it weighed 4.76 grams. It was stamped with a lion's head, the king's symbol.
14.1 grams of electrum was one stater (meaning "standard"). A stater was about one month's pay for a soldier. To complement the stater, fractions were made: the trite (third), the hekte (sixth), and so forth, including 1/24 of a stater, and even down to 1/48th and 1/96th of a stater. The 1/96 stater was only about 0.14 to 0.15 grams.
The name of Croesus of Lydia became synonymous with wealth. Sardis was renowned as a beautiful city. Around 550 BC, Croesus paid for the construction of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Croesus was beaten by Cyrus II of Persia in 546 BC, and the kingdom became a satrapy.

Karain Cave
Karain Cave is a cave and a Paleolithic archaeological site located at Yağca village 27 km northwest of Antalya city in the Mediterranean region of Turkey.
Karain is a prehistoric cave, situated at a height of about 370 m from the sea and about 80 m up the slope, where the Western Taurus calcareous zone borders on the travertine plain. Evidence of human habitation dating back to the early Paleolithic age (150,000-200,000) years has been discovered in the caves.[1][2]
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations hosts an extensive collection of artifacts from the excavations at Karain. The people of Palaeolithic Age were hunting and collecting communities living in caves. The stone and bone tools of the people of that Age are exhibited in the museum.
Though the building itself does not have much historical significance, it is important today because it is one of the few remaining examples of an ancient Roman influenced library. It also shows how public libraries were not only built in Rome itself, but also all throughout the empire. After a massive restoration project, which is considered to be very true to the historical building, the front façade of the building was rebuilt and now serves as a prime example of Roman architecture on public buildings.
The building itself is a single hall that faces eastward toward the sun in the morning so as to benefit those who are early risers, as Vitruvius advised. The library is built on a platform with nine steps the full width of the building leading up to three front entrances. The center entrance is larger than the two surrounding entrances and all are adorned with windows above them. Along the entrances are four pairs of Ionic order columns raised by pedestals. Another set of Corinthian order columns stands directly above the first set, adding to the height of the building. The pairs of columns on the second level frame the windows as the columns on the first level frame the doors, and they also create niches where statues would have been housed. It is thought that a third set of columns may have existed as well, though today there are only two registers of columns. This type of facade with inset frames and niches for statues is similar to that found in ANCIENT GREEK (the stage building behind the orchestra), and is thus characterised as "scenographic". The other sides of the building are irrelevant architecturally because the library was surrounded by buildings on both sides.
The inside of the building, though today not fully restored, was a single rectangular room (55 feet wide by 36 feet long) with a central apse framed by a large arch at the far wall. A statue of either Celsus himself or of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, stood at the apse, and Celsus’ tomb lay directly below in a vaulted chamber. Around the other three sides were rectangular recesses that held cupboards and shelves for the 12,000 scrolls. Celsus was said to have left a legacy of 25,000 denarii to pay for all the reading material in the library. The second and third levels could be reached through a set of stairs built into the walls to add support to the building and had similar niches for scrolls. The ceiling was flat and there may have been a central square oculus to provide more light.
The style of the library, with an ornate, balanced, and well-planned façade, reflects the Greek influence on roman architecture. The materials used to create the building, brick, concrete, and mortared rubble, signify the new materials that came about in the Roman empire around the 2nd century A.D.

Sardes
Sardes modern Sart in the Manisa province of Turkey, was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times. As one of the Seven churches of Asia, it was addressed by the author of the Book of Revelation in terms which seem to imply that its population was notoriously soft and fainthearted. Its importance was due, first to its military strength, secondly to its situation on an important highway leading from the interior to the Aegean coast, and thirdly to its commanding the wide and fertile plain of the Hermus.
History
The earliest reference to Sardis is in the The Persians of Aeschylus (472 BC); in the Iliad the name Hyde seems to be given to the city of the Maeonian (i.e. Lydian) chiefs, and in later times Hyde was said to be the older name of Sardis, or the name of its citadel. It is, however, more probable that Sardis was not the original capital of the Maeonians, but that it became so amid the changes which produced the powerful Lydian empire of the 8th century BC.
The city was captured by the Cimmerians in the 7th century, by the Persians and by the Athenians in the 6th, and by Antiochus III the Great at the end of the 3rd century. In the Persian era Sardis was conquered by Cyrus the Great and formed the end station for the Persian Royal Road which began in Persepolis, capital of Persia. During the Ionian Revolt, the Athenians burnt down the city. Sardis remained under Persian domination until it surrendered to Alexander the Great in 334 B.C..
Once at least, under the emperor Tiberius, in 17 AD, it was destroyed by an earthquake; but it was always rebuilt. It was one of the great cities of western Asia Minor until the later Byzantine period.
The early Lydian kingdom was far advanced in the industrial arts and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was the manufacture and dyeing of delicate woolen stuffs and carpets. The stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place "carried golden sands" in early antiquity, in reality gold dust out of Mt. Tmolus; later, trade and the organization of commerce continued to be sources of great wealth. After Constantinople became the capital of the East, a new road system grew up connecting the provinces with the capital. Sardis then lay rather apart from the great lines of communication and lost some of its importance. It still, however, retained its titular supremacy and continued to be the seat of the metropolitan bishop of the province of Lydia, formed in 295 AD. It is enumerated as third, after Ephesus and Smyrna, in the list of cities of the Thracesion thema given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century; but over the next four centuries it is in the shadow of the provinces of Magnesia ad Sipylum and Philadelphia, which retained their importance in the region.
The Hermus valley began to suffer from the inroads of the Seljuk Turks about the end of the 11th century; but the successes of the Greek general Philocales in 1118 relieved the district for the time, and the ability of the Comneni, together with the gradual decay of the Seljuk power, retained it in the Byzantine dominions. The country round Sardis was frequently ravaged both by Christians and by Turks during the 13th century. Soon after 1301, the Seljuk Turks overran the whole of the Hermus and Cayster valleys, and a fort on the citadel of Sardis was handed over to them by treaty in 1306. The city continued its decline until its capture (and probable destruction) by the Mongol warlord Timur in 1402.

Midas City - The Great Monument
Historical
Historically, it is known that a Midas was king of Phrygia in the late eighth century BC. Phrygia had many kings who bore the name Midas. He may be identical with Mita, a king of the Mushki who is known from a list of allies of Sargon II of Assyria, dated to 709 BC. Herodotus[6] recorded the votive offerings at Delphi of Gyges and of his predecessor Midas "son of Gordias king of Phrygia... who dedicated for an offering the royal throne on which he sat before all to decide causes; and this throne, a sight worth seeing, stands in the same place with the bowls of Gyges. This gold and silver which Gyges dedicated is called Gygian by the people of Delphi, after the name of him who offered it."
Pausanias was aware that Midas, son of Gordias, was venerated as city founder at Phrygian Ancyra (Ankara).

The Great Thumulus
In 1957 Archaeologists connected with the University of Pennsylvania opened a chamber tomb at the heart of the Great Tumulus (height : 53 m, diameter : about 300 m) on the site of ancient Gordion (modern Yassihöyük, Turkey), where there are located more than 100 tumuli of different sizes and of different periods. They discovered an early eighth century royal burial, complete with remains of the funeral feast and "the best collection of Iron Age drinking vessels ever uncovered"[8]. This inner chamber was rather large : 5.15 by 6.20 m. The height of the ceiling was 3.25 m. On a wooden bedstead in the corner of the chamber lay a skeleton of a man of 1.59 m height and about 60 years old. In the room there were decorated tables and panels, and many vessels with grave offerings. Though no identifying texts were associated with the site, it is popularly dubbed the "Tomb of Midas" (Penn). But later investigations showed that this funerary monument couldn't have been constructed after the Cimmerian invasion in the early 7th century BC. Therefore it is now believed to be the monument for an earlier king than Midas.
A "tomb of Midas" identified in the nineteenth century at Midas Sehri on the basis of the word "Mida", identified in incompletely translated Phrygian inscriptions, is not today interpreted as a tomb, but instead a site sacred to Cybele.

Myth
Once, as Ovid relates in Metamorphoses X[9] Dionysus found his old schoolmaster and foster father, Silenus, missing.[10] The old man had been drinking wine, and had wandered away drunk, and was found by some Phrygian peasants, who carried him to their king, Midas (alternatively, he passed out in Midas' rose garden). Midas recognized him, and treated him hospitably, entertaining him for ten days and nights with politeness, while Silenus entertained Midas and his friends with stories and songs.[11] On the eleventh day he brought Silenus back to Dionysus in Lydia. Dionysus offered Midas his choice of whatever reward he wanted. Midas asked that whatever he might touch should be changed into gold. Midas rejoiced in his new power, which he hastened to put to the test. He touched an oak twig and a stone and both turned to gold. Overjoyed, as soon as he got home, he ordered the servants to set a feast on the table. "So Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold: but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold cursed his prayer" (Claudian, In Rufinem). In a version told by Nathaniel Hawthorne,[12] he found that when he touched his daughter, she turned into a statue as well.
Now he hated the gift he had coveted. He prayed to Dionysus, begging to be delivered from starvation. Dionysus heard and consented; he told Midas to wash in the river Pactolus. He did so, and when he touched the waters, the power passed into the river, and the river sands became changed into gold [Alternatively, Midas jumped into the water and immediately, the water turned into gold, killing Midas]. This explained why the river Pactolus was so rich in gold and the wealth of the dynasty claiming Midas as forefather, no doubt the impetus for this etiological myth. (Graves). Gold was perhaps not the only metallic source of Midas' riches: "King Midas, a Phrygian, son of Cybele, first discovered black and white lead."[13]

Midas, now hating wealth and splendor, moved to the country, and became a worshipper of Pan, the god of the fields.[14] Roman mythographers[15] asserted that his tutor in music was Orpheus. Once Pan had the audacity to compare his music with that of Apollo, and to challenge Apollo, the god of the lyre, to a trial of skill (also see Marsyas). Tmolus, the mountain-god, was chosen as umpire. Pan blew on his pipes, and with his rustic melody gave great satisfaction to himself and his faithful follower, Midas, who happened to be present. Then Apollo struck the strings of his lyre. Tmolus at once awarded the victory to Apollo, and all but Midas agreed with the judgment. He dissented, and questioned the justice of the award. Apollo would not suffer such a depraved pair of ears any longer, and caused them to become the ears of a donkey.[16]. The myth is illustrated by two paintings "Apollo and Marsyas" by Palma il Giovane (1544-1628), one depicting the scene before, and one after the punishment.
Midas was mortified at this mishap. He attempted to hide his misfortune with an ample turban or headdress. But his hairdresser of course knew the secret. He was told not to mention it. He could not keep the secret; so he went out into the meadow, dug a hole in the ground, whispered the story into it, and covered the hole up. A thick bed of reeds sprang up in the meadow, and began whispering the story and saying "King Midas has a donkey's ears." Some of his people heard and began to gossip about it. Midas found out who had told, and was going to kill him, but decided not to. Apollo then came and gave him normal ears again, as he had completely shown that he had changed his ways. Also, as a gift, Apollo gave Midas his daughter back. In glee, Midas grabbed his daughter, and she returned to her golden state. Angrily Midas dug his hands into the earth, and in some versions of mythology it is said that even Atlas himself was turned to gold. Midas then prayed to Cupid, begging him to get revenge on Apollo. Cupid came to him, and told him to touch and turn one of his arrows into gold. Upon doing so, Cupid went to Apollo and shot him with the Golden Arrow. Apollo didn't turn to gold, however. It is said that Apollo himself was given headaches for all of eternity with the overwhelming sense of love and greed (gold).

Sarah Morris demonstrated (Morris 2004) that donkeys' ears were a Bronze Age royal attribute, borne by King Tarkasnawa (Greek Tarkondemos) of Mira, on a seal inscribed in both Hittite cuneiform and Luwian hieroglyphs: in this connection the myth would appear to justify for Greeks the exotic attribute.

Ephesus Celcius Library
The library of Celsus was built for Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus and completed in AD 135 in Ephesus, Asia Minor (Anatolia) (now Turkey). Celsus’ son, Gaius Julius Aquila (consul AD 110), built the library in honor of his father who was consul in AD 92, former governor of Asia in AD 115, and a wealthy and popular local citizen. The library was built to store 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for Celsus. It was unusual to be buried within a library or even within city limits, so this was a special honor for Celsus.
Though the building itself does not have much historical significance, it is important today because it is one of the few remaining examples of an ancient Roman influenced library. It also shows how public libraries were not only built in Rome itself, but also all throughout the empire. After a massive restoration project, which is considered to be very true to the historical building, the front façade of the building was rebuilt and now serves as a prime example of Roman architecture on public buildings.
The building itself is a single hall that faces eastward toward the sun in the morning so as to benefit those who are early risers, as Vitruvius advised. The library is built on a platform with nine steps the full width of the building leading up to three front entrances. The center entrance is larger than the two surrounding entrances and all are adorned with windows above them. Along the entrances are four pairs of Ionic order columns raised by pedestals. Another set of Corinthian order columns stands directly above the first set, adding to the height of the building. The pairs of columns on the second level frame the windows as the columns on the first level frame the doors, and they also create niches where statues would have been housed. It is thought that a third set of columns may have existed as well, though today there are only two registers of columns. This type of facade with inset frames and niches for statues is similar to that found in ANCIENT GREEK (the stage building behind the orchestra), and is thus characterised as "scenographic". The other sides of the building are irrelevant architecturally because the library was surrounded by buildings on both sides.

The inside of the building, though today not fully restored, was a single rectangular room (55 feet wide by 36 feet long) with a central apse framed by a large arch at the far wall. A statue of either Celsus himself or of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, stood at the apse, and Celsus’ tomb lay directly below in a vaulted chamber. Around the other three sides were rectangular recesses that held cupboards and shelves for the 12,000 scrolls. Celsus was said to have left a legacy of 25,000 denarii to pay for all the reading material in the library. The second and third levels could be reached through a set of stairs built into the walls to add support to the building and had similar niches for scrolls. The ceiling was flat and there may have been a central square oculus to provide more light.
The style of the library, with an ornate, balanced, and well-planned façade, reflects the Greek influence on roman architecture. The materials used to create the building, brick, concrete, and mortared rubble, signify the new materials that came about in the Roman empire around the 2nd century A.D.

Packed Paradise Turkey 2010