| "Imagine coming upon a city
of antiquity so rich in archeological treasure
that choice sculptures roll off the sides of
ditches, tumble from old walls, and lie
jam-packed amid colonnaded ruins." Those
are the words of Turkish archeologist Professor
Kenan Erim who directed the excavations at
Aphrodisias under the auspices of the New York
University. He is so closely associated with the
site that he can suitably be accepted as the
father of Aphrodisias and therefore fully
deserved to be buried near the Tetrapylon. The name of the city has
the same root as "aphrodisiac". Both
words derive from the Greek name for the goddess
of love, Aphrodite. Aphrodisias was one of
several ancient cities dedicated to the goddess
of love. Within the borders of Caria, during the
Roman period, Aphrodisias became an artistic
center with a famous school of sculpture.
The site has been
systematically excavated since 1961 by professor
Kenan Erim and has yielded a wealth of art
treasures to archaeologists.
Names of many
sculptors from Aphrodisias have been seen in lots
of works in Italy, Greece and elsewhere. Fame of
Aphrodisias is not only limited to arts. It also
had a number of renowned scholars and writers as
well as philosophers, of whom the most notable
was Xenocrates.
School of Sculpture
Statues were
carved from the local white, grayish blue Carian
marble, mostly from Babadag (Salbakos),
2,308 m / 7,572 ft high nearby
mountain. Sculptors from other areas came to
Aphrodisias for annual sculpture competitions.
The eyes of the statues found here are full of
expression and vitality and the bodies seem
capable of moving. The public monuments in
Aphrodisias were decorated with "peopled
scrolls" which were one of the
characteristics of stone carving produced by the
school of sculpture in Aphrodisias.
History of Aphrodisias
Excavations in the
24-meter-high (78 ft) theater hill have
revealed layers of settlement going back to the
Bronze Age (c. 2800-2200 BC).
It was founded in
the 5C BC and flourished under the Roman
Empire (1C BC-5C AD). Mark Antony
recognized the autonomy of Aphrodisias in the
1C BC. In the Byzantine period it was first
the seat of an archbishopric, then of the
metropolitan of Caria. In the 6C AD the name
of Aphrodisias was changed to Stavropolis, the
city of the Cross, to erase the pagan goddess of
love from people’s minds. As the capital of
Caria Aphrodisias was finally called Caria which
then became Geyre in Turkish. Later in the 13C it
was abandoned.
The Site
The Tetrapylon
is a monumental gateway which was probably built
in the 2C AD during the reign of Hadrian. It
had 4 rows of 4 columns. It is thought to have
marked the intersection of a major street with a
sacred way heading toward the sanctuary of
Aphrodite.
The Stadium
is one of the best preserved stadia in Anatolia.
It is 262 m / 286 yards long, 59 m / 64
yards wide with 22 rows of seats with a 30,000
spectator capacity. Originally it had a blind
arcade on top of the highest row surrounding all
the seats. The stadium was used for sporting,
musical and dramatic events. The eastern part of
the arena was for gladiatorial fights.
The Temple of
Aphrodite, a late Hellenistic building, was
originally designed as an Ionic temple with 40
columns arranged in an 8 by 13 rectangle. It was
converted into a church in the Byzantine period.
The columns at each end were removed, an apse was
built in the eastern section, and a baptistery
and an atrium were added to the west.
The affinities
between Aphrodite and Ishtar are generally
well-recognized. In Mesopotamian mythology,
Ishtar was the principal goddess of the
Babylonians and Assyrians. She was both the
compassionate mother of all life, who brought
fertility and relief from sickness, and the
lustful goddess of sexual love and war.
Life in the city
was concentrated around the Temple of Aphrodite.
The cult of Aphrodite was so popular that it took
some time before Christianity was fully accepted
by Aphrodisians.
The
Bishop’s Residence consisted of halls
and rooms, is thought to have been the residence
of the bishop of Aphrodisias in early Byzantine
times. Its large audience chamber was typical of
a governor’s residence in Roman provinces.
The Odeon
is a semicircular building and has 12 tiered rows
of seats with lions’ feet. It actually had
more rows of seats and was once roofed. The
seating capacity was 1,700. A corridor at the
back of the stage led to a porticoed area which
was adorned with the statues of important
Aphrodisians and was connected to the agora. The
south-west corner of the portico of Tiberius is a
long and narrow 1C AD basilica, an
administrative and an official building of
importance.
The Baths of
Hadrian were built under Hadrian in the
2C AD. There were two pairs of large rooms
on either side of a huge central hall called the
caldarium.
Building of the Portico
of Tiberius, whose Ionic colonnade has
partially been restored, was started during the
reign of Tiberius, 1C AD which explains why
it was named after him. The central area of the
portico is occupied by a huge basin or pool,
175 m / 574 ft long, 25 m /
82 ft wide and 1 m / 3.28 ft deep
with two semicircular extremities at the north
and east ends. The portico may well have been a
gymnasium or a palaestra with an exercise area
between the colonnade and the pool.
The Theater
was built in the late Hellenistic period and
later restored in the 1C BC, and according
to its inscription it was dedicated to Aphrodite
and the people of the city by Julius Zoilos, a
former slave of Octavian. The seating capacity
was 8,000. The stage building consisted of six
vaulted dressing or storage rooms out of which
four opened into the corridor behind the
proskene. The stage building wall in the north
parados had Greek inscriptions of important
documents related to the history of the city such
as letters of emperors to the city or senatorial
decrees. The orchestra and the stage building
were restored in the 2C AD in order to make
the building more suitable for animal or
gladiatorial fights. The theater was seriously
damaged in the 7C, and the Byzantines built
houses on top of the cavea and converted the hill
into a fortress by circling it with walls and
towers.
The Tetrastoon,
originally surrounded by four (tetra)
colonnades on all sides with a round fountain in
the center, had several functions in the Roman
and Byzantine city. First it was a meeting place
for the citizens and also by having surrounding
small shops served as a market place. Finally it
gave access to the theater. To the south of the
tetrastoon was the Imperial Hall with Theater
baths which have not been completely
excavated. Among very unusual discoveries of
archeology is the Sebasteion. It was a
1C AD shrine in which the emperor was
worshipped. Sebasteion derived from the Greek
"Sebastos", which is the Greek
equivalent of "Augustus". It consisted
of a 14-meter-wide (46 ft) courtyard and two
parallel three-storied porticoes with a length of
80 m / 263 ft, of half-columns on both
sides. The south portico had three different
column orders on each story, Doric, Ionic and
Corinthian.
The Museum
The exhibits in
the museum are not arranged in chronological
order but thematically. There are galleries for
busts, decorative sculpture and religious
sculpture as well as ceramics and other objects.
The museum should be visited in an anti-clockwise
direction. The names of the halls in turn are as
follows: The Imperial hall, corridor of Zoilos,
hall of Melpomene, odeon hall, display cases
gallery, hall of Penthesilea, hall of Aphrodite
and courtyard.
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