But this area is also under great stress from agriculture and looting. Sardis is the only city of the Lydians, and in that important sense is not easily comparable to other sites.
We know more about the Phrygian remains at Gordion than the Lydian remains at Sardis, because Gordion was not as intensively built over in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and because intensive excavation since the s uncovered a large part of the citadel mound. But by the same token, since Gordion was not as important a place in the later Classical period as Sardis, it does not offer the opportunity to study the long trajectory of occupation of a major city and transformations of culture that Sardis does.
Lycian Xanthos in southwestern Turkey is another important Iron Age capital, although of a small city-state rather than a great kingdom and empire.
Like Sardis, it survives as a palimpsest of remains of different periods; the types of monuments that survive, however, are quite distinct from those at Sardis, reflecting the different cultures. Mylasa and Halikarnassos, capital cities of the Carians, are built over by modern towns, and very much less well preserved.
It is perhaps easier to compare Sardis to the major Greco-Roman sites of the region such as Pergamon, Ephesus, Miletus, or Aphrodisias. These sites often share many broadly comparable features: temples and theaters, baths and agoras, city walls and orthogonal plans.
In many respects Sardis compares favorably, or has the potential to compare favorably with these sites. The temple at Didyma is somewhat better preserved than that at Sardis, and much better than Ephesus; all of them are unusual buildings, the result of very long building histories and unusual cult practices.
The Sardis baths are much more easily understood and appreciated than, for instance, the excavated but largely unrestored Vedius Gymnasium at Ephesus. Other types of monuments are less well preserved at Sardis. Its theater, for instance, was largely robbed out in antiquity and in the 19th century; its agora and gymnasium, mentioned in inscriptions, remain undiscovered.
Although Miletus and Ephesus were very important cities in the Archaic period, when Lydian Sardis was at its apogee, the early phases of those cities are much less well known, and lack remarkable monuments such as the Lydian fortification or tumulus tombs of Sardis and Bin Tepe. Tumuli are attested in many sites inTurkey, theMediterranean, and around the world. The cemetery most directly comparable to Bin Tepe is that at Gordion in centralTurkey, which has approximately the same number of tumuli, although concentrated in a smaller area.
Those mounds are slightly older in date, and the largest, Tumulus MM, is slightly smaller than the largest at Bin Tepe, the tumulus of Alyattes. The chambers are made of wood, while Lydian tumulus chambers are usually built from cut stone blocks; and for various reasons, a number have been excavated unplundered, while very few unrobbed Lydian tombs have been excavated scientifically.
The famous Etruscan necropolis at Cerveteri inItalyis smaller in extent, and thanks to a much longer and more intense history of exploration, many more of its mounds have been opened; it is thus much better known than Bin Tepe. As the Lydians were believed in antiquity to be the ancestors of the Etruscans, there is an interesting cultural connection between these two sites.
But in its wide extent and the tremendous size of its tumuli, Bin Tepe is unparalleled. About us. Special themes. Major programmes. For the Press. Help preserve sites now! Join the , Members. Search Advanced. Criteria Criteria: with only with. On the E side the court was closed by a screen colonnade which opened into the palaestra. Early Byzantine restoration is attested by inscriptions. Between the palaestra and the main road, oriented E-W, is a large basilican building which was used as a synagogue from ca.
Now partly restored, the building comprises three parts: the entrance porch, which fronted on a colonnaded road, a peristyle forecourt, and a long main hall ending in an apse.
The colonnade of the forecourt has been re-erected and a replica of its krater fountain replaced. On the N wall above a marble dado is a restored sample from a redecoration dating in the 5th or 6th c.
In its earlier phase the masonry was covered with frescoes. Between the three doors leading from the forecourt to the main hall are two small shrines, one Doric and one Late Corinthian in style, which face the apse. The main hall was divided into seven bays by six pairs of piers; at the W end is an apse lined by three marble benches.
The ritual furnishings include a massive marble table supported by eagles in relief and flanked by two pairs of adorsed lions. The floors of both the forecourt and hall were covered with geometric mosaics of the 4th c. The walls were revetted with polychrome marble.
The architectural system, including donors' inscriptions, has been restored in one bay on the N wall and one on the S. Samples of restored marble panels are on the S wall. Roughly a hundred Hebrew and Greek inscriptions provide information about the Jewish community, which may have numbered between and 10, Along the S side of the gymnasium complex runs a continuous row of shops ca.
One had a marble tank decorated with crosses and fed by terracotta water pipes; apparently Christian and Jewish shopkeepers traded side by side. South of the Byzantine Pactolus bridge, above the Lydian gold refineries, are excavated ruins of a Roman bath and a small Middle Byzantine church. At the NW corner of the Artemis Temple is a nearly complete church of the 4th-6th c.
Major unexcavated buildings are remnants of the Roman civic center on a terrace S of the highway, a Byzantine fort farther S and uphill , tunnels to the citadel, the theater, stadium, and a Roman odeum. By the N side of the highway are piers of a large Justinianic church, perhaps a cathedral.
Farther down and N is a fine Roman basilica with apses at either end. First scientific excavations of the site were undertaken from to and resumed for one season in In excavation was again resumed. Finds are in the Archaeological Museum, Manisa, Turkey.
Hanfmann, ed. Sardeis or Sardis: Eth. The ancient capital of the kingdom of Lydia, was situated at the northern foot of Mount Tmolus, in a fertile plain between this mountain and the river Hermus, from which it was about 20 stadia distant. Arrian, Anab. The small river Pactolus, a tributary of the Hermus, flowed through the agora of Sardes.
This city was of more recent origin, as Strabo xiii. The town is first mentioned by Aeschylus Pers. The city itself was, at least at first, built in a rude manner, and the houses were covered with dry reeds, in consequence of which it was repeatedly destroyed by fire; but the acropolis, which some of the ancient geographers identified with the Homeric Hyde Strab.
In the reign of Ardys, Sardes was taken by the Cimmerians, but they were unable to gain possession of the citadel. The city attained its greatest prosperity in the reign of the last Lydian king, Croesus. After the overthrow of the Lydian monarchy, Sardes became the residence of the Persian satraps of Western Asia. On the revolt of the Ionians, excited by Aristagoras and Histiaeus, the Ionians, assisted by an Athenian force, took Sardes, except the citadel, which was defended by Artaphernes and a numerous garrison.
The city then was accidentally set on fire, and burnt to the ground, as the buildings were constructed of easily combustible materials. After this event the Ionians and Athenians withdrew, but Sardes was rebuilt; and the indignation of the king of Persia, excited by this attack on one of his principal cities, determined him to wage war against Athens.
Xerxes spent at Sardes the winter preceding his expedition against Greece, and it was there that Cyrus the younger assembled his forces when about to march against his brother Artaxerxes.
When Alexander the Great arrived in Asia, and had gained the battle of the Granicus, Sardes surrendered to him without resistance, for which he rewarded its inhabitants by restoring to them their freedom and their ancient laws and institutions. Arrian, i. Mitten, David Gordon. The Ancient Synagogue of Sardis. Ramage, Andrew, and Nancy H. Sardis: 25 Years of Discovery at Sardis, — Exhibition catalogue. Ramage, Andrew, and Paul Craddock. Visiting The Met? Marble column from the Temple of Artemis at Sardis.
Terracotta skyphos drinking cup. Terracotta lydion perfume jar. Under Roman rule the city flourished until it was devastated by the great earthquake in 17 CE called by Eusebius the greatest earthquake in human memory.
Some scholars feel that because of this great indebtedness to Tiberius, the city gave itself to the cult of emperor-worship, largely abandoning its historic love affair with the Cybele cult. In 26 CE, Sardis lost the competition with Smyrna for the coveted permission to build a temple to the emperor. Until the change in 17 CE, Sardis was a center for the worship of Cybele.
Nash provides us with a good summary of information about the Cult of Cybele: Cybele, also known as the Great Mother, was worshipped throughout much of the Hellenistic world. The cult of Cybele underwent a number of significant changes over a period of several hundred years.
Cybele undoubtedly began as a goddess of nature; the early worship of her in Phrygia was not unlike that of Dionysus. But it went beyond the sexual orgies that were part of the primitive Dionysias cult, as the frenzied male worshipers of Cybele were led to castrate themselves. Following their act of self-mutilation, these followers of Cybele became Galli, or eunuch-priests of the cult.
From her beginnings as a Nature-goddess, Cybele eventually came to be viewed as the Mother of all gods and the mistress of all life Nash, Christianity and the Hellenistic World, pp. Barclay points out that even on pagan lips, Sardis was a name of contempt. Its people were notoriously loose living, notoriously pleasure-and luxury loving. Sardis was a city of the decadence. In the old days it had been a frontier town on the borders of Phyrgia, but now it was a byword for slack and effeminate living The most splendid temple in Sardis was the one devoted to Artemis, the later memory of the Cybele worship.
It had apparently undergone three specific phases of construction beginning in the C3 BCE, and ending at the earthquake of 17 CE. Coins also depict sanctuaries to Aphrodite Paphia.
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