Oenoanda or Oinoanda lies only some
The climb up from İncealiler to Oenoanda takes about an hour over rough terrain. It seems that, apart from a few days in 1997, the Turkish authorities never allowed the city to be excavated. Yet, that does not make the site less exciting because one can discover it as we walk on.
The most
striking feature in the landscape is, as always, the theater that sits higher
up the hill overlooking the valley below and offers a dramatic view of the
Inside the city walls, of which many stretches are easily spotted, we find the remains of the ancient city. Unfortunately, these have not been properly documented and only the most striking features catch the eye.
A well
recognizable avenue leads from the theater to the Agora. It has been compared to
Otherwise, bits of columns, capitals, architraves, cornices, pedestals and stones of all sizes with or without inscriptions are scattered around in great numbers. Another recognizable element in the rubble is the broken pipes and remains of an aqueduct that must have run all the way to the Baths in the northeastern corner of Oenoanda.
The origins of Oenoanda are rather obscure but based on its name that contains the letters “-nd” the
foundation could go back as far as the 2nd millennium BC. In any
case, it has been documented that Oenoanda was part of a tetrapolis
annexed to
Pending serious excavations, no evidence has been found about the pre-Hellenistic Era of Oenoanda.
The city gained
importance it seems, after the severe earthquake of 144 AD, when they received
10,000 denarii from Opramoas
of Rhodiapolis (see: Opramoas
of Rhodiapolis) to construct a
Another famous
citizen of Oenoanda was the wealthy philosopher Diogenes, who spent his entire
fortune on an Epicurean inscription. He had found peace of mind in the teachings
of Epicurus and in
order to show the people in Oenoanda the road to happiness, he commissioned an inscription
Unfortunately, the wall disappeared. It may have been deliberately destroyed or hit by an earthquake, but the scattered blocks were mostly reused as building material elsewhere. The wall with whatever remained of Oenoanda fell into oblivion, probably during the 9th century AD.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, many fragments of this precious inscription were found, analyzed and partially put back together like a giant puzzle. That is a gigantic task that is still ongoing.
Oenoanda is surrounded by necropolises on all sides. Rock graves typically appear on both the east and west sides of the city and from the road between İncealiler and Oenoanda many sarcophagi, mostly of the Lycian type, are easily spotted in the landscape.
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