Tourists at one of the sites in the Ancient city of Amos; Source: Hurriyet Daily News

The Marmaris Chamber of Commerce, or MTO, Muğla University Archeology Department, Turunç Municipality and The Union of Tourism and Infrastructure in Marmaris and its Environs, or MARTAB, have joined forces for the project.

Speaking at the amphitheater of the 4,000-year-old city of Amos, located approximately 20 kilometers from Marmaris, MTO President Mehmet Baysal said the organization was proud to become a part of the efforts. “Amos was a part of the Caria civilization and one of the most important elements of the the Rhodes union,” he said. “We are very happy that now it can serve as a tourism hotspot.”

Baysal said no excavations will be performed in the city for now, and only landscaping works will be done, focusing on the 1,000 people capacity amphitheater.

Miray Apak, MTO’s foreign relations director, said the works in Amos were part of the chamber’s ongoing project “Where will Marmaris be in 2010.”

“We have applied for the necessary permits,” said Apak. “The construction works will start once the permits are granted, which I believe will be very soon.”

Turunç Mayor Ali Fuat Fidan, a member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, said projects for the ancient city of Amos have been on the district’s agenda for years. “Today we are making a start,” he said. “I want to thank all the parties involved in the project and promise the municipality will support them in the best way it can.”

The head of Muğla University’s archeology department, Professor Adnan Diler, who acts as a scientific consultant to the project, noted not enough attention is shown to the historical assets of the Muğla region. “The ministry and gendarmerie cannot be enough; the local officials and nongovernmental organizations should take care of these remains,” said Diler.

Diler said he was excited with the stage of the ancient amphitheater. “I will support the project as a consultant,” he added. “For years, we have argued ‘don’t do that there, declare this area a protected zone,’ but this is not the way to preserve the ancient remains. We must do the right things and show that preservation is not that difficult.”

The ruins of the ancient city of Amos can be reached from Asarcık Hill, northwest of Kumlubük Bay. Amos dates to the Hellenistic era and now consists of an amphitheatre on the side of the hill, a temple and statue pedestals. Surrounded by ramparts dating back to the same time, this amphitheater is in good condition, including its seating area, side walls and stage with three chambers. Excavations in 1948 by Professor George Evards Bean revealed four inscriptions, which mentioned three rental contracts, thought to date from around 200 B.C.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News

Ernst Pernicka, a University of Tubingen professor of archaeometry who is leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey, said the bodies were found near a defense line within the city built in the late Bronze age.

The discovery could add to evidence that Troy’s lower area was bigger in the late Bronze Age than previously thought, changing scholars’ perceptions about the city of the “Iliad.”

“If the remains are confirmed to be from 1,200 B.C. it would coincide with the Trojan war period. These people were buried near a moat. We are conducting radiocarbon testing, but the finding is electrifying,” Pernicka told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Ancient Troy, located in the northwest of modern-day Turkey at the mouth of the Dardanelles not far south of Istanbul, was unearthed in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann, the German entrepreneur and pioneering archaeologist who discovered the steep and windy city described by Homer.

Pernicka said pottery found near the bodies, which had their lower parts missing, was confirmed to be from 1,200 BC, but added the couple could have been buried 400 years later in a burial site in what archaeologists call Troy VI or Troy VII, different layers of ruins at Troy.

Tens of thousands of visitors flock every year to the ruins of Troy, where a huge replica of the famous wooden horse stands along with an array of excavated ruins.

Article: Reuters

Stone figurine of a man found at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. By Jason Quinlan/Çatalhöyük Research Project; Source: Guardian

A reclining man with a bushy beard and big nose is the latest to join a haul of stone figurines unearthed at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. The sculpture, which measures around six inches high, was uncovered at the neolithic site last week.

Çatalhöyük was the final resting place of some of the world’s first farmers. Other figurines representing farmyard animals and people in sitting and standing positions have already been excavated at the site, which dates back to the dawn of farming some 9,000 years ago.

Archaeologists working on the site have discovered primitive houses with rooms decorated with vulture skulls, wild boar tusks and teeth from weasels and foxes. Some of the buildings are believed to have humans buried beneath them.

The discovery of female figurines at Çatalhöyük has led anthropologists to speculate that the community worshipped “mother goddesses”.

Death and violence feature prominently in the sculptures, with some missing heads and others with exposed ribs, hip bones and pelvises.

Source: Guardian

Part of the Apollo Statue, 4m in height (Rare). By Francesco D'Andria; Source: MSNBC

A colossal statue of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, music and poetry, has emerged from white calcified cliffs in southwestern Turkey, Italian archaeologists announced.

Colossal statues were very popular in antiquity, as evidenced by the lost giant statues of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Colossus of Nero. Most of them vanished long ago — their material re-used in other building projects.

“This colossal statue of Apollo is really a unique finding. Such statues are extremely rare in Asia Minor. Only a dozen still survive,” team leader Francesco D’Andria, director of the Institute of Archaeological Heritage, Monuments and Sites at Italy’s National Research Council in Lecce, told Discovery News.

Split in two huge marble fragments, divided along the bust and the lower part of the sculpture, the 1st century A.D. statue was unearthed at the World Heritage Site of Hierapolis, now called Pamukkale.

Founded around 190 B.C. by Eumenes II, King of Pergamum (197 B.C.-159 B.C.), Hierapolis was given over to Rome in 133 B.C.

The Hellenistic city grew into a flourishing Roman city, with temples, a theatre and popular sacred hot springs, believed to have healing properties.

Standing at more than 13 feet in height, the newly discovered statue, which is missing the head and the arms, might have been one of the most impressive sights in the city.

“It depicts the Greek god Apollo sitting on a throne and holding the cithara with his left arms. The god wears a wonderfully draped tunic. The cloth has a transparency effect to reveal mighty muscles,” said D’Andria.

Inspired by the great classical masterpieces, the artist did not pay the same peculiar attention to the back of the statue.

“This shows that the sculpture was placed against a wall and was supposed to be seen only frontally,” D’Andria noted.

Standing in all its massive regality, the statue was particularly important for the city, since Apollo was venerated as Hierapolis’ divine founder.

The colossal statue was probably the main sculpture at the sanctuary of Apollo, which was intentionally built over an active fault.

“Hierapolis is a unique site, and archaeologists are bringing to light incredible findings each year. As with all the other ancient buildings, the statue will be virtually reconstructed in full detail,” Francesco Gabellone, an architect at the National Research Council in Lecce, told Discovery News.

Gabellone and his team are working on “Virtual Hierapolis,” a project which has made it possible to virtually walking in the ancient city as it appeared during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius (42 B.C.-37 A.D.), when it was reconstructed following a devastating earthquake.

The city survived until 1334, when it was abandoned forever after another earthquake.

“We have not lost hope to physically reconstruct the statue in its entirety. We are still digging, and we might be able to find the missing head at least,” D’Andria said.

Source: MSNBC

Leander's Tower (Also known as Maiden's Tower and Kiz Kulesi), by Flickr user Secret Blue

That İstanbul is a real treasure chest for history, art and architecture freaks is no secret. Its colorful mosaic of historical city structures — mosques, churches, synagogues, palaces, castles and towers — reflects the many, many social and cultural influences of a number of foreign communities that have left their indelible footprints across the city throughout its long history.

The oldest settlement on the land that is now İstanbul was, however, Greek.
Already, in 685 B.C., settlers from the ancient Greek town of Megara chose to colonize the town of Chalcedon, in today’s Kadıköy district, thus aiming to secure the Bosporus as a channel of trade between the Greek polities and the Black Sea region. Some years later, in 667 B.C., famous Greek King Byzas went on colonizing the European side of the Bosporus further, thus founding the city of Byzantion.

Two prominent examples of ancient Greek architecture are the Serpentine Column and Leander’s Tower.

Being approximately 2,500 years old, the Serpentine Column is said to be İstanbul’s oldest remaining Greek monument. Erected to honor the triumph of the Greeks over the Persians at Plataea, it originally stood at Delphi (both ancient cities on Greek ground) and was moved to İstanbul in 324 B.C. by Constantine the Great to mark the declaration of the new capital city of the then-founded Roman Empire under the name of Constantinople. The originally eight-meter-high piece was made up of three intertwined serpents which supported a golden bowl. The bowl is believed to have been lost or stolen when the city was sacked during the Fourth Crusade. Some say the heads were hit and cut off by a drunken nobleman in the 17th century but one of them can still be seen in the İstanbul Archaeology Museum. The rest of the column can be found today at the Hippodrome in the Sultanahmet quarter.

Surrounded by no fewer stories is Leander’s Tower, often referred to as Maiden’s Tower and located offshore in the Bosporus in the Üsküdar district. It was actually built in 408 B.C. by an Athenian general to control Persian ships sailing along the Bosporus. Another more well-known story is that of a sultan who erected the tower to protect his daughter from a snake bite, predicted by an oracle. But, as the story goes, there was no way to escape destiny: On the day of her 18th birthday, the sultan brought his daughter a basket of fruit as a gift and hiding within it, of course, was the predicted snake. The tower, which also contains a small, romantic restaurant, can be visited today by taking one of the small boats that sail from the nearby shore.

However, with the fall of Rome in 476, all that remained of the Roman Empire was its eastern part, which then came to be known as the Byzantine Empire. Distinctly Greek in culture and the center of Greek Orthodox Christianity, its capital, Constantinople, was adorned with many magnificent churches, including probably the most well known, Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia), once the world’s largest Christian cathedral.

Other important churches that were built later on under Byzantine rule include the Pammakaristos Church, which is now Fethiye Mosque in the Çarşamba neighborhood of today’s Fatih district, and the Church of St. Savior in Chora, situated in the western Edirnekapı district of İstanbul and especially famous for its beautiful mosaics and paintings.

After the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Sultan Mehmed II (Mehmet the Conqueror) in 1453, naturally many city structures were destroyed. Mehmed’s main concern with İstanbul had to do with rebuilding the city’s defenses and re-population, and he soon devoted much energy to bringing prosperity to İstanbul. In 1459, he sent out orders that any Greeks — as well as Slavs, Jews and Armenians — who had left İstanbul as slaves or refugees and whose diverse skills were needed now to transform the city into a flourishing capital of the empire were allowed to return to the city.

Every third inhabitant in İstanbul was Greek

According to a census of 1477, there were 9,486 houses occupied by Muslims, 3,743 by Greeks, 1,647 by Jews, 267 by Christians from Crimea and 31 by Gypsies. Nearly every third inhabitant of the city was Greek at that time, so the Greek population played a significant role in the social, political and economic life of the city and the multiethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire in general. The leader of the Greek community within the empire officially became the ecumenical patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, which was moved to the Church of St. George in İstanbul’s Fener district in 1586. The patriarchate complex includes the authorization offices, the patriarchate library, the financial offices and the public enterprises of the patriarchate and the Cathedral Church of St. George. The church is definitely worth visiting. It is especially famous for its priceless artifacts and relics, which include the patriarchal throne, believed to date from the fifth century; three rare mosaic icons; a fragment of the Pillar of the Flagellation to which Jesus was tied and whipped; and the coffins of the three saints.

Further on, the Greek High School for boys on the top of Fener hill became an important educational institution to educate young Greeks for Ottoman bureaucracy and orthodox clergy as well. The Yoakimyon High School for girls and Marasli Greek Elementary School next to the patriarchate are other schools that can still be found in the district.

As you see, the list of Greek footprints in İstanbul seems endless. To start tracing them back, just take a small tour of Fener — you will come across an incredible number of smaller, more or less well-preserved churches, and you can still find a few of the typical, small Greek single-family houses, recognizable by their finely decorated facades.

Just take a look — it’s well worth it!

Source: todayszaman

The Location of Kucukcekmece Lake, Turkey (source: Google Earth). The Lake itself is the second largest lake in Turkey

Dr. Şengül Aydıngün from Kocaeli University explained that an ancient city had been found after they had conducted surface research in Yarımburgaz, the oldest settlement area in the Küçükçekmece basin.

Speaking to the press, Aydıngün, head of the Istanbul Prehistoric Research (İTA) Project, said they had found out about the ancient port, located 20 kilometers away from Byzantium (old İstanbul), during research conducted last year into historic documents and compositions written by geographers several centuries ago.

Permission has now been granted to start the excavation, and Aydıngün said they are currently at the start of a very long dig.

“It might take a century,” he added. Aydıngün said they had detected the remains of the port during their initial search and had found ceramics and similar small findings near the surface.

They also detected a “grid system” of roads from aerial views, and they expect to unearth a city built in a manner similar to the planned urban developments of Ephesus and other ancient cities.

 The area where they have started to work is the most important spot, according to Aydıngün, who said they think a structure possessing important architectural features such as columns and doors might be a temple. Pointing out that the city is situated on a peninsula, Professor Hakan Öniz, a marine archeologist from Eastern Mediterranean University said structures in the city connect with a pier, port and a lighthouse in the farthest point of the city.

Explaining that the connection between Lake Küçükçekmece and the Sea of Marmara was wider 1,000 years ago, Öniz said divers are conducting research on the lighthouse. Öniz argues that a military port on the site had the capacity to host more than 40 ships. He said the search for a lighthouse was started after people claimed “there is a minaret in the lake.”

 Culture and Tourism Ministry Monuments and Museums Department General Director Orhan Düzgün said Bathonea was added to the 150 ancient cities that are currently being excavated. Düzgün said the lighthouse found here is one of the three most important ancient lighthouses.

source: todayszaman

The Location of the discovery, source: Google Earth

The oldest discovered parliament building in human history will soon house the heads of the world’s parliaments.

Once the on-going restoration works of the building are completed, the head of Turkey’s parliament will host the gathering of the international parliamentarians, the Milliyet newspaper reported today.

The antique parliament building is located in the ancient town of Patara, near the modern town of Kaş in Turkey’s Antalya province. Dating to the second century BC, the structure has a capacity of 1,455 people.

The site was used for parliamentary assembly by the Lycian League – a union established in 168 BC and comprised of 23 city-states as members. Administered with democratic principles, each member state sent two or three senates to the parliament. The Union continued to function after becoming a province of the Roman Empire in 46 AD. After being taken over by the Byzantine Empire in the fourth century AD, the Union was abandoned and the building’s use was discontinued.

The Turkish Parliament, according to the publication, donated 5 million Turkish lira (around 2,393,000 euro) for the ancient building’s restoration, which is expected to be completed in June 2010.

Source: balkantravellers

The assemblage appears to represent a Neo-Assyrian renovation of an older Neo-Hittite temple complex, providing a rare glimpse into the religious dimension of Assyrian imperial ideology,” says Timothy Harrison, professor of near eastern archaeology in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and director of U of T’s Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP). “The tablets, and the information they contain, may possibly highlight the imperial ambitions of one of the great powers of the ancient world, and its lasting influence on the political culture of the Middle East.” The cella also contained gold, bronze and iron implements, libation vessels and ornately decorated ritual objects.

The Hatay province in SE Turkey, was the location of the discovery. Source: Google Earth

Partially uncovered in 2008 at Tell Tayinat, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Palastin, the structure of the building where the tablets were found preserves the classic plan of a Neo-Hittite temple. It formed part of a sacred precinct that once included monumental stelae carved in Luwian (an extinct Anatolian language once spoken in Turkey) hieroglyphic script, but which were found by the expedition smashed into tiny shard-like fragments.

“Tayinat was destroyed by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 738 BCE, and then transformed into an Assyrian provincial capital, equipped with its own governor and imperial administration,” says Harrison. “Scholars have long speculated that the reference to Calneh in Isaiah’s oracle against Assyria alludes to Tiglath-pileser’s devastation of Kunulua – ie, Tayinat. The destruction of the Luwian monuments and conversion of the sacred precinct into an Assyrian religious complex may represent the physical manifestation of this historic event.”

The temple was later burned in an intense fire and found filled with heavily charred brick and wood which, ironically, contributed to the preservation of the finds recovered from its inner chambers. “While those responsible for this later destruction are not yet known, the remarkable discoveries preserved in the Tayinat temple clearly record a pivotal moment in its history,” says Harrison. “They promise a richly textured view of the cultural and ethnic contest that has long characterized the turbulent history of this region.”

TAP is an international project, involving researchers from a dozen countries, and more than 20 universities and research institutes. It operates in close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of Turkey, and provides research opportunities and training for both graduate and undergraduate students. The project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), and receives support from the University of Toronto.

source: sciencedaily

The Tablet Found at the digsite in Turkey; Source: The Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project

Soon after it was sent, the ancient city of Tushan was overrun by Babylonian invaders, its temples and palaces pillaged, then torn down or set aflame.

The letter, scratched into a clay tablet in 630BC, may never have reached its intended recipient. But more than 2,500 years later it has been unearthed almost intact by archaeologists, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the downfall of the one of the most powerful empires of the ancient world.

In the 30-line letter, the author despairs that he lacks the necessary equipment and manpower to stave off the enemy, suggesting that the issue of military resources may be as old as warfare itself.

Archaeologists have identified the author as a city treasurer who had been charged with building up an army to defend Tushan against a coalition of foreign forces, led by the Babylonians.

At its height in 668-627BC, the Assyrian Empire spanned from Egypt to Iran, and encompassed most of modern Turkey. Tushan, a bustling trade centre and the regional capital, would have been one the empire’s richest cities.

But in its latter years, the empire, mired in corruption and too large to sustain, ultimately fell to an aggressive enemy campaign. The invasion of Tushan is believed to have marked a tipping point in its dissolution.

The letter, found during the excavation of an Assyrian acropolis in southeastern Turkey, gives a remarkable insight into the final collapse of the empire and suggests that the Assyrians may have been militarily unprepared and put up a feeble resistance.

John MacGinnis, an archaeologist from the University of Cambridge who led the excavation, said: “The letter is written during the process of downfall. The chances of finding something like this are unbelievably small.” Mannu-ki-Libbali laments that he has neither the equipment nor the troops needed for the onerous task ahead. He lists cohort commanders, craftsmen, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, bow makers and arrow makers as essential to building a resistance.

It is apparent that all of the above have already fled the city and that he has been left with a near-impossible task. “Nobody mentioned in this letter, not one of them is there!” he writes. “How can I command?”

He also lacked horses, containers, bandage boxes and chariots.

Expecting the imminent arrival of the Babylonians, armed with arrows, spears, boulders and battle rams, the letter ends with the despairing declaration: “Death will come out of it! No one will escape. I am done!”

Irving Finkel, a British Museum specialist in Assyrian history, said that the tablet captured an epic event. “It has almost a Hollywood quality, this sense of the enemy are coming. I can hear their hooves,” he said.

After the invasion, the Assyrian territory was carved up between the Babylonians and their allies the Medes and the Cimmerians. Half a century later it would be absorbed into the Persian Empire, under Cyrus the Great.

The letter is written on a clay tablet in ancient Assyrian, using a script called cuneiform based purely on lines and triangles. It was written by jabbing a quill with a triangular-shaped nib into wet clay. Different letters were formed by superimposing identical triangles in different combinations.

Dr MacGinnis said: “A complex character might involve around 13 triangles.”

The researchers believe that Mannu-ki-Libbali would have written the letter himself, although there would have been professional scribes at the time. The tablet, which is about the size of a mobile phone, is held by the Diyarbakir Museum in southeastern Turkey, close to where it was discovered.

If you would like to learn more about the letter, please follow this link;  The Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Project

Source: timesonline

According to a report in Today’s Zaman, excavations in the area, carried out by teams from Kocaeli University’s archaeology department with the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, first revealed the ruins in 2006.

Associate Professor Fusun Tulek said that the castle and the ancient city were surrounded by city walls and that they have found ceramic pieces.

“We found Umayyad ceramics dating back to the late seventh and early eighth centuries. We also frequently encountered ceramics from the ninth century. Yet, we did not find ceramics dating earlier than the seventh century. We are certain that the castle and ancient city belong to the early Islamic period,” he said.

Tulek also said that the palaces, mosques, baths and military structures in the city feature elements of Umayyad architecture.

“This city is on the route to Baghdad and the Silk Road. This city, from the early Islamic period, is older than Anavarza Castle, which was managed by a Turkish emir during the Abbasid era,” he said.

Highlighting that the Umayyads chose flat regions when constructing cities, Tulek said, “The castle was on both a military route and a trade route and served military, political and commercial purposes for a long time. Then, it fell into disrepair.

Source: blog.taragana