Site of Greek settlement in north-west Turkey at Nemrud Kalesi, 35 km south of Pergamon. It is situated on a steep-sided hill easily accessible only from the north, about three hours walk inland from the modern coast road. Its foundation date is uncertain: although Herodotus (, I.cxlix.1) listed it among the 12 Aeolian Greek cities in the region, there are few traces of it in either the historical or the archaeological record until the 3rd century, when Attalos I Soter of Pergamon (241–197
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Aigai (i)
R. A. Tomlinson
Article
Aizanoi
William E. Mierse
[Lat. Aizani]
Site of Hellenistic and Roman city, 54 km south-west of Kütahya in Turkey. Its remains comprise a Temple of Zeus, two agoras, a heroön, a macellum (market), a round structure with the Edict on Prices of Diocletian (
The temple is particularly significant because of its excellent state of preservation and its combination of Greco-Anatolian and Roman architectural forms. Inscriptions on the exterior walls of the cella attest to the date of construction. They also record a gift of land to Zeus made by the Hellenistic rulers Attalos I Soter (reg 241–197
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Alexandria
Judith McKenzie, R. R. R. Smith, Wiktor A. Daszewski, A. H. Enklaar, Dominic Montserrat, C. Walters, and Wladyslaw B. Kubiak
revised by Gordon Campbell, Sheila S. Blair, and Jonathan M. Bloom
Egyptian city situated on the Mediterranean coast west of the delta of the River Nile, capital of Egypt from c. 320
Judith McKenzie
Alexandria was founded in 331
With the defeat of the last Ptolemaic monarch, Cleopatra VII (51–30
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Amuk region
R. T. H. Dornemann
[‛Amq; Plain of Antioch]
Area in Turkey covered by a rich agricultural plain, watered by the Orontes, Afrin and Kara Su rivers, in a strategic location for routes connecting Syria with Turkey, the coast and Mediterranean maritime trade. In the 1930s a series of ruin mounds of varying date were investigated by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, IL, under the direction of R. J. Braidwood, and a chronological sequence for the region was established, extending back to c. 6200
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Antioch (i)
M. Rautmann, Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, and Mine Kadiroğlu
[now Antakya]
Greek and Roman city on the River Orontes in south-east Turkey (ancient Syria), which flourished from c. 300
Its advantageous site on the edge of the Amuk Plain at the foot of Mt Silpius, commanding important trade routes linking Anatolia with Palestine and the Mediterranean with inland Syria, attracted the attention of Seleukos I (reg 305–281
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Antioch (ii)
Stephen Mitchell
[‘Pisidian’]
Greek and Roman city in western Asia Minor (now Turkey) on a plateau above Yalvaĉ. It was founded by the Seleucids in the 3rd century
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Apameia
Jean Ch. Balty and Janine Balty
[Lat. Apamea; Arab. Afāmiya, Fāmiya; now Qal‛at al-Muḍīq]
Hellenistic and Roman city in northern Syria, on a plateau on the south-west tip of Jebel Zawiye overlooking the valley of the Asi (formerly the Orontes). It was founded in 300–299
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Aphrodisias
Kenan T. Erim and Kalinka Huber
Hellenistic and Roman site in south-west Caria, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), on a plateau in the Baba Dag mountains above a tributary valley of the Maeander (Büyük Menderes).
Kenan T. Erim
As its name suggests, Aphrodisias was a major cult centre of a goddess of nature and fertility, originally of local character but eventually influenced by other similar Anatolian and Near Eastern divinities. She was identified with Aphrodite only in late Hellenistic times, so the use of the name Aphrodisias for the site must also be dated to that time; Stephanos of Byzantium indicated that it was also known by other names (Nations cdlxxvi.6–7). Access to the site was for a long time difficult. From the late 18th century several archaeologically inclined travellers, including members of the Society of Dilettanti, described visible remains and copied inscriptions. Early excavations, undertaken by a French amateur archaeologist, Paul Gaudin, in 1904–5 and by an Italian mission under ...
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Aspendos
Iain Browning
[now Bilkis]
Site in southern Turkey of a Greek and Roman city that flourished c. 100
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Assos
Bonna D. Wescoat
[now Behramkale]
City on the Aegean coast of Turkey, rising from the sea to the summit of the coastal ridge opposite the island of Lesbos. Ancient testimony and archaeological evidence indicate that Assos was founded in the 7th century
The plan of Assos followed the steep contours of the area; the buildings were constructed of local volcanic andesite. The Archaic temple on the summit (see fig. (a)), probably dedicated to Athena Polias and built in the second half of the ...
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Belevi
William E. Mierse
Site of a monumental mausoleum 11 km north-east of Ephesos on the west coast of Turkey. The remaining structure, a core of natural rock shaped into a cube (15.00×24.00×11.37 m) and faced with cut stone blocks, originally formed a podium capped by a Doric frieze. On the podium stood a marble chamber surrounded by a Corinthian colonnade with eight columns on each side. The colonnade supported sculpted lion-griffins in confronted pairs on either side of marble urns, and the roof took the form of a pyramid, probably surmounted by a chariot group (for a suggested reconstruction of mausoleum. Relief sculptures (Izmir, Archaeol. Mus.) depicting Funerary Games and a Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs (Izmir, Archaeol. Mus.) decorated the ceiling coffers of the colonnade. In the main funerary chamber, which was cut into the rock core, stood a large stone sarcophagus with a reclining crowned figure on its lid (Selçuk, Ephesos Archaeol. Mus.) and a statue of a servant placed near by (untraced). The tomb’s occupant has been identified as Memnon, a general in the service of the Persian king Artaxerxes Ochos (...
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Chios
Jenny Albani and Margaret Lyttleton
[anc. Pityoussa]
Greek island lying 8 km off the coast of Turkey and 56 km south of Lesbos in the Eastern Sporades. One of the larger Greek islands, it is 48 km long north–south and 13–24 km wide east–west, with a mountain range running the length of the island; it has a population of nearly 100,000. Its most impressive architectural remains belong to the Early Christian, Byzantine and Genoese periods. The principal museums, in Chios city, are the Archaeological Museum, the Adamantios Korais Library and the Ethnological and Folklore Museum.
The earliest evidence of settlement is the Neolithic level uncovered by the British School at Athens during excavations (1952–5) of the harbour town of Emporio. According to tradition the island was colonized by the Ionians in the 11th century
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Cyrene
F. B. Sear and Susan Kane
[Arab. Shaḥḥāt]
City in Libya, 8 km from the coast and 620 m above sea-level on a plateau of the al-Jabal al-Akh?ar (Green Mountain). The Greek city flourished from its founding as a Dorian colony c. 630
F. B. Sear
Cyrene’s principal monuments, restored by their Italian excavators, reveal the splendours of the Greek city. It changed only superficially in Roman times, when alterations to existing buildings were more common than new projects.
Herodotus (IV. cl–clviii) related how a party of Therans, forced by drought to leave their native island, settled at Cyrene because of its high rainfall. Their leader, Battos, became king and established a dynasty that lasted until 440
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Didyma
Peter Schneider
revised by Gordon Campbell
[Branchidainow Didim.]
Ancient Greek oracular sanctuary on the west coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey), which flourished from the 7th century
Didyma was originally a spring sanctuary of the indigenous Carians (Herodotus: I.clvii.3), antedating the Ionian colonization of the coast in the 11th–10th century
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Dura Europos
Malcolm A. R. Colledge, Joseph Gutmann, and Andrew R. Seager
[now Qal‛at as Sāliḩīyah.]
Site of a Hellenistic and Roman walled city in eastern Syria, on a plateau between two gorges on the west bank of the middle Euphrates. The name combines elements that are Semitic (Dura) and Macedonian Greek (Europos). Dura Europos was founded by the Seleucids in the late 4th century
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Elmalı
M. J. Mellink
Town in the district of Antalya, south-west Turkey. Elmalı is set in a fertile plain c. 1100 m above sea-level, which is dotted with ancient sites that belonged to Lycia or the Milyad in Classical times. Roads from Lycian coastal sites lead through mountains and river valleys to Elmalı, from where connections upland to Pisidia and Burdur are easy. Excavations of a site of the 3rd millennium
At Karataş-Semayük, excavations revealed a fortified mansion of the early 3rd millennium
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Ephesos
Thorsten Opper, M. Rautmann, Anton Bammer, Ulrike Muss, and Mark Whittow
[Ephesus.]
Site of an important Classical city on the west coast of Turkey, c. 2 km south-west of modern Selçuk. It has been occupied since perhaps as early as the 10th century
M. Rautmann
According to Greek tradition, Ephesos was founded in the 10th century
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Eretria
John R. Lenz
Greek city on the south-west coast of Euboia, east of Lefkandi and Chalkis and facing north-eastern Attica. Eretria was important in two periods: the Late Geometric and Archaic (c. 750
On a site of Bronze Age settlement, Eretria in the first half of the 8th century
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Halikarnassos
Geoffrey Waywell
[now Bodrum]
City on the south-west coast of Caria, now south-west Turkey. It was founded c. 900
Halikarnassos reached the height of its wealth and importance in the 4th century
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Osman Hamdi
S. J. Vernoit
[Edhem, Osman HamdiHamdi Bey]
(b Istanbul, Dec 30, 1842; d Eskihisar, Gebze, nr Istanbul, Feb 24, 1910).
Turkish painter, museum director and archaeologist. In 1857 he was sent to Paris, where he stayed for 11 years, training as a painter under Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Léon Gérôme. On returning to Turkey he served in various official positions, including two years in Baghdad as chargé d’affaires, while at the same time continuing to paint. In 1873 he worked on a catalogue of costumes of the Ottoman empire, with photographic illustrations, for the Weltausstellung in Vienna. In 1881 he was appointed director of the Archaeological Museum at the Çinili Köşk, Topkapı Palace, in Istanbul. He persuaded Sultan Abdülhamid II (reg 1876–1909) to issue an order against the traffic in antiquities, which was put into effect in 1883, and he began to direct excavations within the Ottoman empire. As a result he brought together Classical and Islamic objects for the museum in Istanbul, including the Sarcophagus of Alexander, unearthed in Sidon in ...