Greek city of
Sardes in
Lydia
Bronze 15mm (5.00 grams) Struck circa 133-80 B.C.
Reference: Sear 4736; B.M.C. 22.239,18
Laureate head of Apollo right.
ΣΑΡΔΙ /ΑΝΩΝ either side of club, monogram to right; all within oak-wreath.
The ancient capital of the Lydian Kings, Sardeis lay under a
fortified hill in the Hermos valley, at the important road junction. In the
pre-Alexandrian age it was the center of the principal Persian satrapy, ad in
all probability the mint-place of much of the Persian imperial coinage of darics
and sigloi. In 189 B.C. it came under the rule of the Attalids of Pergamon, and
fifty-six years later it passes to the Romans.
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In
Greek
and
Roman mythology
, Apollo
,
is one of the most important and diverse of the
Olympian deities
. The ideal of the
kouros
(a
beardless youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the
sun; truth and prophecy;
archery
;
medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son
of Zeus
and
Leto, and has a
twin
sister, the chaste huntress
Artemis
.
Apollo is known in Greek-influenced
Etruscan mythology
as Apulu. Apollo was worshiped in both
ancient Greek
and
Roman religion
, as well as in the modern
Greco
–Roman
Neopaganism
.
As the patron of Delphi
(Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an
oracular
god — the prophetic deity of the
Delphic Oracle
.
Medicine and healing were associated with Apollo, whether through the god
himself or mediated through his son
Asclepius
,
yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly
plague
as well as one who had the ability to cure. Amongst the god’s
custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over
colonists
, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of
the Muses
(Apollon
Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god
of music and poetry
.
Hermes
created
the lyre
for him,
and the instrument became a common
attribute
of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called
paeans
.
In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo
Helios he became identified among Greeks with
Helios
,
god of
the sun
, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with
Selene
,
goddess
of the moon
.
In Latin texts, on the other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to
find any conflation of Apollo with
Sol
among the
Augustan poets
of the first century, not even in the conjurations of
Aeneas
and
Latinus
in
Aeneid
XII
(161–215).
Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological
texts until the third century CE.
Sardis or Sardes was an ancient city at the location of modern
Sart (Sartmahmut before 19 October 2005) in
Turkey
‘s
Manisa Province
. Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of
Lydia
,
one of the important cities of the
Persian Empire
, 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 John of the
Book of Revelation
in the Holy Bible 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
.
Geography
Map of Sardis and Other Cities within the Lydian Empire
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
4 kilometres (2.5 mi) 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 kilometres (45 mi) from
İzmir
). The part
of remains including the bath-gymnasium complex, synagogue and Byzantine shops
is open to visitors year-round.
History
Remains of the
Byzantine
shops in Sardis
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 BC, by the
Persians
in the 6th, by the
Athenians
in
the 5th, and by
Antiochus III the Great
at the end of the 3rd century BC. 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 BC.
The early Lydian kingdom was very 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,
which was in reality gold dust out of
Mount Tmolus
. It was during the reign of King
Croesus
that
the
metallurgists
of Sardis discovered the secret of separating
gold from
silver
, thereby
producing both metals of a purity never known before. This was an economic
revolution, for while gold nuggets panned or mined were used as currency, their
purity was always suspect and a hindrance to trade. Such nuggets or coinage were
naturally occurring alloys of gold and silver known as
electrum
and one could never know how much of it was gold and how much was silver. Sardis
now could mint nearly pure silver and gold coins, the value of which could
be—and was—trusted throughout the known world. This revolution made Sardis rich
and Croesus
‘
name synonymous with wealth itself. For this reason, Sardis is famed in history
as the place where modern
currency
was invented.
Disaster came to the great city under the reign of the emperor
Tiberius
,
when in
AD 17, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake
, but it was rebuilt. It was one
of the great cities of western
Asia Minor
until the later
Byzantine
period.
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 AD 295. It was
enumerated as third, after
Ephesus
and
Smyrna
, in the
list of cities of the Thracesion
thema
given by
Constantine Porphyrogenitus
in the 10th century. However, over the next four
centuries it was in the shadow of the provinces of Magnesia-upon-Sipylum and
Philadelphia, which retained their importance in the region.
After 1071 the Hermus valley began to suffer from the inroads of the
Seljuk Turks
but the Byzantine general
John Doukas
reconquered the city in 1097, the successes of the general
Philokales in 1118 relieved the district from later Turkish pressure and the
ability of the Comneni
dynasty together with the gradual decay of the
Seljuk Sultanate of Rum
meant that it remained under Byzantine dominion.
When
Constantinople
was taken by the
Venetians
and Franks
in 1204 Sardis came under the rule of the Byzantine
Empire of Nicea
. However once the Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261,
Sardis with the entire
Asia Minor
was neglected and the region eventually fell under the control of
Ghazi (Ghazw)
emirs, the
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 19th century, Sardis was in ruins, showing construction chiefly of the
Roman period. Early excavators included the British explorer
George Dennis
, who uncovered an enormous marble head of
Faustina the Elder
, wife of the Roman Emperor
Antoninus Pius
. Found in the precinct of the Temple of
Artemis
, it
probably formed part of a pair of colossal statues devoted to the Imperial
couple. The 1.76 metre high head is now kept at the
British Museum
.[4]
The first large scale archaeological expedition in Sardis was directed by a
Princeton University
team led by Howard Crosby Butler between years
1910–1914, unearthing a temple to
Artemis
, and
more than a thousand Lydian tombs. The excavation campaign was halted by
World War
I
, followed by the
Turkish War of Independence
, though it briefly resumed in 1922. Some
surviving artifacts from the Butler excavation were added to the collection of
the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
in
New York
.
A new expedition known as the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis was
founded in 1958 by G.M.A. Hanfmann, professor in the Dept. of Fine Arts at
Harvard University
, and by Henry Detweiler, dean of the Architecture School
at
Cornell University
. Hanfmann excavated widely in the city and the region,
excavating and restoring the major Roman bath-gymnasium complex, the synagogue,
late Roman houses and shops, a Lydian industrial area for processing electrum
into pure gold and silver, Lydian occupation areas, and tumulus tombs at Bin
Tepe. From 1976 until 2007, the excavation was directed by Crawford H.
Greenewalt, jr., professor in the Department of Classics at the
University of California, Berkeley
. Since 2008, the excavation has been
under the directorship of Nicholas Cahill, professor at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison
. 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
A recent view of the
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 presence of
Jewish communities in Asia Minor and their integration into general Roman life
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 2nd century AD,
the rooms the synagogue is situated in were used as changing rooms or resting
rooms.
Sardis and the Hebrew
Sepharad
may have been one and the same.
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