Monday, May 4, 2009

Bin tepeler and geography



The vegetation on these plains was very luxuriant: for some way we passed through thickets of tamarisk, and heard the nightingale for the firsı time this year. After three hours march due west the tumulus of Halyattes formed a conspicuous object in the view, and rose consid-erably above the smaller tombs by which it is surrounded. The mass of tumuli, of which we counted upwards of sixty, evidently a Necropolis of the ancient Lydian kings, is calied Bin Tepeh (the thousand hills) by the Turks. We passed several villages this day. mostly in a ruined state, deserted by their Turcoman inhabitants, who were encamped upon the plain tending their flocks and herds, while thousands of storks were building their nests upon the walls and damaged trees in the neighbourhood; we also observed other rare birds upon this plain, several gray Numidian crancs, and ducks of a beautiful red and brown color,
' At lOh. 30 m. we began ascending, in a north-westerly direction, the low ridge of limestone hills on which the tumuli are situated, leaving the Gygaean lake on our right. filling up that part of the plain which stretches away to the north. On reaching the summit of the ridge we had at our feet the whole eMent of the unruffled lake, the marshy bank skirted with reeds and rushes, surrounded by hills on every side, except to the S.E., where it opens to the Hermus, in which direction its superfluous waters escape, and to the N., where the hills appear to sink away altogether. One mile S. of this spot we reached the principal tumulus, generally designated as the tomb of Halyattes. İt took us about ten minutes to ride round its base, which would give it a circumference of nearly half a mile. Towards the north it consists of the natural rock, a white horizontally stratifıed earthy limestone, cut away so as to appear as part of the structure. The upper stmcture is sand and gravel, appar-ently brought from the bed of the Hermus. Several deep ravines have been worn away by time and weather in its sides, particularly on that to the south; we followed one of these, as affording a better footing than the smooth grass, as we ascended to the summit. Here we found the remains of a foundation nearly eighteen feet square, on the north of which was a huge circular stone ten feet in diameter, with a flat bottom and a raised ledge or lip, evidently piaced there as an orna-ment on the apex of the tumulus. Herodotus says that phalli were erected upon the summit of some of these tumuli, of which this may be one.... in consequence of the ground sloping to the south, this tumulus appears much higher when viewed from the side of Sardis than from any oüıer. it rises at an angle of 22 degrees, and is a conspicuous object on ali sides.



We now continue on to Salihli, where we turn right on high-way E96/300. The highway take us westward along the south side of the Hermus valley, a fertile plain that Homer refers to in The Iliad as "lovely Maeonia." As we cross the plain the eroded acropo-lis hill of Sardis comes into view on the western ramparts of Boz Dağları, the Gray Mountains, the range known in antiquity as Mt. Tmolus. Chandler, as he passed this way in 1765, on his way eastward from the site of Philadelphia to that of Sardis, wrote:
We set out at nine in the morning from Philadelphia for Sardes, distant twenty-eight miles, according to the Antonine Itinerary. The way is by the foot of mount Tmolus, which was on our left; consisting of uneven, separate, sandy hills, in a row, green and pleasant, önce clothed with vines, but now neglected. Behind them was a high ridge covered with snow. The plain, beside the Hermus, which divides it, is well watered by rills from the slopes. it is wide, beautiful and culti-vated; but has few villages, being possessed by the Turcomans, who, in this region, were reputed thieves, but not given to bloodshed. Their

booths and cattle were innumerable....We travelled three hours and a half north-westward, and as long westward. We met numerous cara-vans, chiefly of mules, on the road; or saw them by its side feeding on the green pasture, their burdens lying on the ground; the passengers sitting in groups, eating or sleeping on the grass. We pitched our tent about sunset, and the next day, after riding two hours in the same direction, arrived at Sardes, now called Şart.
Some eight kilometers from Salihli we approach the village of Sartmustafa, as it is now called. This is the site of ancient Sardis, some of whose restored edifices we now see in the archaeological site to the right of the road just before the village center on the Ecelkapız Çayı, the river Pactolus of antiquity.
The village is on the site of the business center of Roman Sardis, which was astride the Persian Royal Road at the point where it crossed the Pactolus. The acropolis of the ancient city is about one Roman mile to the southeast—as the eagle flies, with the theater and stadium below it to the north near the highway. The temple of Artemis is to its east near the Pactolus. A road leads from Sarmustafa south along the east bank of the Pactolus; after about 1.5 kilometers it brings us to a car park near the temple of Artemis. Here we will begin our tour of "golden Sardis," the capi-tal of ancient Lydia.
Lydia emerged as the dominant power in western Anatolia un-der King Gyges (r. ca. 685-652 B.C.), the fırst of the Mermnadae dynasty. By that time the Phrygian kingdom, which had previ-ously controlled the region, had been destroyed by the Cimmerians, who had also overrun Sardis in the mid-eighth century B.C. The rise of Lydia was stimulated by the economic policy of Gyges, who exploited the gold that was washed down from Mt. Tmolus by the Pactolus, minting it for the world's first coins. The inven-tion of coinage further added to the already considerable wealth of the Lydians. it allowed them to develop their widespread trade, which extended from central Anatolia to the Aegean coast. Ali of it passed through Sardis, making it the richest city of its time.



Gyges expanded the bounds of his kingdom westward by attack-ing the Ionian cities along the Aegean coast, an aggressive policy that was followed by his first three successors: Ardys (r. 651-625 B.C.), Sadyattes (r. 625-610 B.C.) and Alyattes (r. 609-560 B.C.). Herodotus, in Book I of his Histories, describes the annual cam-paigns that Alyattes conducted against Miletus, the greatest mari-time power in the Ionian League:
Alyattes carried on the war which he had taken över from his father [Sadyattes], against the Milesians. His custom each year was to in-vade Milesian territory when the crops were ripe, marching in to the music of pipes, harps, and treble and tenor oboes. On arrival he never destroyed or burned the houses in the country, or pulled their doors off, but left them unmolested. He would merely destroy the trees and crops and then retire. The reason for this was the Milesian command of the sea, which made it useless for his army to attempt a regular siege; and he refrained from demolishing houses in order that the Milesians, having somewhere to live, might continue to work the land and sow their seed, with the result that he himself would have something to plunder each time he invaded their country.
Alyattes was succeeded by his son Croesus (r. 560-546 B.C), the last of the Mermnadae, under whom the Lydian kingdom reached the pinnacle of its greatness. Early on in his reign Croesus aban-doned the aggressive Lydian policy toward the Asian Greeks, and instead he signed a treaty of peace with the Ionian League. The terms agreed to were very lenient for the Ionians, requiring them to pay an annual tribute to Croesus and to supply troops to his army when he was on campaign. Croesus was very generous to the Greeks, sending fabulous treasures to the shrine of Apollo at Delphi and helping the Ephesians restore their famous temple of Artemis.
The golden age of Lydia came to an end in 546 B.C, when Croesus made the mistake of attacking King Cyrus of Persia, who decisively dcfeated hini and then captured Sardis after a two-\veck siege. This was the end of the Lydian kingdom, and Croesus died continued under their new rulers, for the city was located on the Royal Road that the Persians built to link western Asia Minör with their capital at Susa.
The Asian Greeks, aided by Athens, rebelled in 499 B.C., at-tacking Sardis and setting fire to the city. Herodotus writes of this in Book V of his Histories, where he describes how the lonians and their Athenian allies attacked Sardis, whose defenders were led by Prince Artaphernes, a half-brother of King Darius:

The [Ionian] fleet sailed for Ephesus, where the ships were left at Coressus in Ephesian territory; the troops, a strong force, then began their march up-country, with Ephesian guides. They followed the course of the Cayster, crossed the ridge of Tmolus, and came down upon Sardis, which they took without opposition, except for the cen-tral stronghold of the town, which was defended by Artaphernes in person, with a considerable force. But they were prevented from sacking the piace after its capture by the fact that most of the houses in Sardis were constructed of reeds, reed-thatch being used even on the few houses which were built of brick. One house was set alight by a soldier, and the flames rapidly spread until the whole town was ablaze. The outlying parts were ali burning, so the native Lydians and the Persians as were there, caught in a ring of fire and unable to get clear of the town, poured into the market square on either side of the Pactolus, where they were forced to stand on their defense. The Pactolus is the river which brings the gold dust down from Tmolus. it flows through the market at Sardis, and then joins the Hermus, which, in its turn, flows into the sea. The lonians, seeing some of the enemy defending themselves, and others approaching in large num-bers, then became alarmed, and withdrew to Tmolus; and thence, just before nightfall, they marched off to rejoin their ships. in the conflagration at Sardis, a temple of Cybele, a goddess worshipped in that part of the world, was destroyed. and the Persians later made this a pretext for their burning of Greek temples.

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