Sardis
Sardis, , 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.
Encyclopedia
Sardis, , 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.
Location
Sardis was situated in the middle of Hermus valley, at the foot of Mount Tmolus, a steep and lofty spur which formed the citadel. It was about 21/2 miles south of the Hermus. Today, the site is located by the present day village of
Sart, near
Salihli in the Manisa province of Turkey, close to the
Ankara -
Izmir highway . The part of remains including the bath-gymnasium complex, synagogue and Byzantine shops is open to visitors year-round.
History
The earliest reference to Sardis is in the
The Persians is a tragedy [i] by the ancient Greek [i] playwright Aeschylus [i]. ...
of
Aeschylus ; in the
Iliad the name Hyde seems to be given to the city of the Maeonian 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. 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 till 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 woollen 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 by the
Mongol warlord
Timur in 1402.
Archaeological expeditions
By the nineteenth century, Sardis was in ruins, showing construction chiefly of the Roman period. The first large scale archaeological expedition in Sardis was directed by Howard Crosby Butler of
Princeton University between years 1910 - 1914, unearthing the Temple of Artemis, and more than a thousand Lydian tombs. The excavation campaign was halted by
World War I, followed by the
Turkish War of Independence. Some surviving artifacts from the Butler excavation were added to the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York.
Today, the laws governing archaeological expeditions in Turkey ensure that all archaeological artifacts remain in Turkey. Some of the important finds from the site of Sardis are housed in the Archaeological Museum of Manisa, including Late Roman mosaics and sculpture, a helmet from the mid-6th century BC, and pottery from various periods.
Sardis synagogue
Since 1958, both
Harvard and
Cornell Universities have sponsored annual archeological expeditions to Sardis. These excavations unearthed perhaps the most impressive synagogue in the western diaspora yet discovered from antiquity, yielding over eighty Greek and seven Hebrew inscriptions as well as numerous mosaic floors. The discovery of the Sardis synagogue has reversed previous assumptions about Judaism in the later Roman empire. Along with the discovery of the godfearers/theosebeis inscription from
Aphrodisias, it provides indisputable evidence for the continued vitality of Jewish communities in Asia Minor, their integration into general Roman imperial civic life, and their size and importance at a time when many scholars previously assumed that Christianity had eclipsed Judaism.
The synagogue was a section of a large bath-gymnasium complex, that was in use for about 450 - 500 years. In the beginning, middle of the second century AD, the rooms the synagogue is situated in were used as changing rooms or resting rooms. The complex was destroyed in 616 AD by the Sassanian-Persians.
External links
- , of the Harvard University Art Museums
- , history of the archaeological excavations in Sardis, in the Harvard Magazine
- , at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- , a comprehensive photographic tour of the site
-
Bibliography
- Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times: Results of the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis 1958-1975, George M. A. Hanfmann et. al., ISBN 0-674-78925-3, Harvard University Press
