Sardis

 

(sär'dĭs) or Sardes (–dēz) , ancient city of Lydia, W Asia Minor, at the foot of Mt. Tmolus, 35 mi (56 km) NE of the modern Izmir, Turkey. As capital of Lydia, it was the political and cultural center of Asia Minor from 650 B.C. until the death of Croesus (c.547 B.C.). The first gold and silver coins were minted there in the 6th cent. B.C. An almost impregnable citadel, Sardis was nevertheless captured in 499 by the Ionians in the Persian Wars. In 133 it passed to the Romans. After being destroyed by an earthquake in A.D. 17, it was rebuilt by the Romans. The city was destroyed by Timur in the 14th cent. The actual site of the city was not discovered until 1958. Excavations have uncovered the Roman baths and gymnasium, the Greek Temple of Artemis (dating from the 4th cent. B.C.), the walls of the city when it was under Lydian rule, and inscriptions in old Lydian.

This article is about the ancient Lydian city. For others see Sardis (disambiguation)

Sardis(Σάρδεις) Ancient City of Greece (Sart)

The Gymnasium of Sardis Sardis Sardis

Sardis, also Sardes (Lydian: Sfard, Greek: Σάρδεις, Persian: Sparda), 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 2-1/2 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 - İzmir highway (approximately 72 kilometers from İzmir). The part of remains including the bath-gymnasium complex, synagogue and Byzantine shops is open to visitors year-round.

History

See also: Lydia (Achaemenid)

The earliest reference to Sardis is in the The Persians of Aeschylus (472 BC); in the Iliad the name Hyde seems to be given to the city of the Maeonian (i.e. Lydian) 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. During the Ionian Revolt, the Athenians burnt down the city. Sardis remained under Persian domination until it surrendered to Alexander the Great in 334 B.C..

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 until 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 woolen 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 (and probable destruction) 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. (For evidence in the east, see Dura Europos in Syria.) 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

• The Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, of the Harvard University Art Museums
• The Search for Sardis, history of the archaeological excavations in Sardis, in the Harvard Magazine
• Sardis, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Sardis Turkey, a comprehensive photographic tour of the site
• The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites - Sardis
• Sardis Capital Limited, a high tech investment bank based in London

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

Seven churches of Asia
1. Ephesus · 2. Smyrna · 3. Pergamos · 4. Thyatira · 5. Sardis · 6. Philadelphia (modern Alaşehir) · 7. Laodicea

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