Which Cnidos? Near modern Tekir or modern Datça? - Caria 4

History is often more complicated than it appears to be at first glance. The famous city of Cnidos, boasting about its unique statue of the first naked woman ever created in the shape of Aphrodite, is located at the end of the Dorian peninsula near today’s Turkish town of Tekir. The lizard-like peninsula is approximately forty miles long. Still, at no point more than eight miles wide, its name “Dorian” refers to the origin of its first settlers who came from the Greek city of Sparta, according to Herodotus.Being built shortly after 360 BC, it would have looked pretty new if Alexander the Great had visited Cnidos. We must imagine shining white stones and polished marbles enhanced with the bright colours on the pediments and the friezes of the many temples. This is one of those moments in life I wish I could travel back in time … 

Among the Carians, the Cnidians were renowned sailors who traded with cities all over the eastern Mediterranean and who, together with other Greeks, established several colonies, even as far as Sicily in the early 6th century BC. However, the best-known settlement is that of Naucratis founded as early as 610 BC in the Nile Delta, roughly 70 km away from the later city of Alexandria. 

Exceptionally, the Egyptian pharaoh allowed it to be called a city and named it Hellenium. Here a good half dozen states including Cnidos and Halicarnassus were allowed to trade, the only place in Egypt where Greeks were allowed to do so. The Cnidian entrepreneurship made them one of the most prosperous people in the Greek world and it is not surprising to see typical Cnidian amphora at the Archaeological Museum in Bodrum. I personally think that business was so flourishing that they could afford their own amphora factory and their own design with a cone-shaped base that served as a third handle - a funny-looking little knob. Cnidos of the wine from Chios. It was distributed all over the Mediterranean and the Aegean, reaching its peak between the 3rd and 1st century BC. This inexpensive, rather sweet wine called “protopon” was especially appreciated by the soldiers posted in Alexandria and Athens, it seems.

Yet the city of Cnidos was not always located near modern Tekir, which I visited (see: Was Alexander the Great aware of Cnidos?) but until about 360 BC was lying halfway the Dorian peninsula, near the pleasant harbor of modern Datça. Except for a few coastal patches, this peninsula had not much arable land between the mountains and the sea - most of the eastern end is truly bare. For that reason, the few villages settled near fertile land around the middle of the peninsula, exactly where I find Datça when sailing into its busy harbor. I don’t have the opportunity to investigate the scarce remains of this first settlement of Cnidos, but traces of a well-defended city wall dating to around 400 BC have been found. All we know of this city is based on the few stretches of walls, loose blocks, and solid foundations of a large building near the river-mouth, for most of it is now buried at considerable depth. The old city at Datça was not abandoned when the new Cnidos was built at the western tip of the peninsula, but since commerce was centered on this new efficient double harbor at Cape Crio, it is evident that the old location became less attractive. Looking at the overall landscape, I try to find the acropolis and the outlines of the ancient harbor. This is not easy, for the entire bay is crowded with ships and boats tied to the concrete shoreline where scores of cafés and restaurants compete for the tourist’s attention. To escape the crowds, the noise, and the invading music, I seem to walk around in circles, and I’m glad that we soon heave the anchor to rest in a more peaceful cove for our own meal on board.

Famous artists flocked to the new city of Cnidos. I mentioned Praxiteles earlier as the sculptor of the beautiful Aphrodite, but there were others, like Bryaxis who made a statue of Dionysus; Skopas who created another Dionysus and an Athena; the unknown creator of the famous head of Demeter that Newton found in the area; and finally Sostratos who eventually built the lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt. As early as the 5th century BC, Cnidos knew many good doctors, like for instance Euryphon who developed a new method to examine his patients. And there was Ctesias, in fact a historian whose excellent medical skills promoted him to become the personal physician of the Great Persian King. The most famous citizen of Cnidos is in my eyes the scientist, Eudoxus, a many-sided scholar, who is said to have built an observatory on top of the hill in Cnidos (the new city near Tekir, of course), but no trace has been found so far. Besides being an astronomer, he also was a mathematician, physician, geographer and philosopher. Some say that he was the one who wrote the code of laws for the new city – it would be interesting to find that out, wouldn’t it? He is known to have died about 355 BC (when Alexander was only one year old …).

The prosperity of Cnidos must not have gone unnoticed by the Persians who were ever pushing further westwards. After taking Lydia in 546 BC, they gradually moved further south and took possession of Caria by 353 BC. Yet their rule was a pretty loose one, and the Carians were happy with the way the Hecatomids treated them. When Alexander the Great arrived there in 334 BC, he found a Persian satrap governing the region while the Carian Queen Ada, the true successor to the throne of King Mausolus, was living in exile in Alinda. How and what Alexander decided to do with Cnidos is not documented. It probably was simply included in Ada’s Caria till she died as well as Alexander. After that, Cnidos became the scene of the unfortunate wars of Alexander’s successors.

[Click here to see all the pictures of Cnidos]
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An introduction to Caria, Turkey

It is quite amazing to realize how little we know about the ancient regions of Turkey. In Greece, we are quite familiar with Attica and Macedonia, for instance, but in Turkey, that knowledge is still very remote. Ask any of the millions of tourists who flock to Antalya each year and close to none will be able to tell you that they actually are in ancient Pamphylia.

Well, I have been among those ignorant travelers for years, I must admit, as it is only since I intensively followed the trail of Alexander the Great after crossing the Hellespont (modern Dardanelles) that I became aware of the distinctive areas. They slowly fell into place: the Phrygians with their typical hats, the Lydians with King Croesus, and mostly Ionia with cities like Ephesus, Priene, and Miletus. So my puddle of awareness slowly grew as I marched alongside Alexander the Great to the East.

This time, I find myself in ancient Caria, where Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum) once shone with its famous Mausoleum, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. However, unlike the situation in our modern times, clear borderlines generally did not exist, and the limits of these more or less independent regions were rather vague. At times, a river or a mountain range may have defined the limit, but otherwise, many border towns were often alternatively ruled by the strongest ruler on either side.

In any case, although I had visited several inland cities in southwestern Turkey that belonged to Caria, I still had no clear image. Caria remained an abstract region. Strange, to say the least.

It is generally accepted that Caria covered the area from the Meander River in the North to today’s Lake Köyceğiz above Caunos in the South. The Carians, curiously enough, do not fit in with their neighbors in any way, neither culturally nor linguistically. There are many theories about their origin, but as they say themselves, they have always lived on the mainland and have always been called Carians. Homer in his Iliad mentions that they were “barbarous of speech” and it seems that even today’s Turkish in that region is labeled as being “harsh”. They were excellent seafarers, though serving in many foreign armies, and were, for instance, highly prized (and probably well paid) by the Egyptians. It is said that it was the Carians who taught the Greeks to put crests on their helmets and showed them how to affix handles on their shields, which, till then, were simply slung over the soldier’s shoulder.

Caria’s greatest ruler certainly was Mausolus, who lent his name to the word “mausoleum” after the tomb he built for himself. This is definitely a “must-see” for every visitor, yet what is left is a very disappointing sight, I would say. The ancient Mausoleum stood in the very heart of the city, but today’s site looks more like a bomb crater amidst the low houses. I thoroughly admire the efforts of historians and archaeologists to bring these unique remains back to life, but it is asking a great deal of our imagination to picture this once so grandiose building on this spot. What is left here are only crumbs. For twenty centuries, the Mausoleum withstood many wars and natural disasters, but the repeated earthquakes turned out to be fatal, and when the Knights of Rhodes arrived here in 1402, they found ready building material for the construction of their fortified castle, the very one that we call St John’s Fort in the middle of the harbor. The story goes that the Knights still found an untouched coffin in the base of the Mausoleum, but postponed opening it till the next day. Yet the next day, the tomb had been plundered. It is said that both Mausolus and his wife Artemisia were cremated, meaning that there could only have been an urn with their cremated remains, but that is something we will never know for sure. The Knights were kind enough to save some of the friezes that were lying around and used them to decorate the walls of said castle. This is where the British archaeologist, Charles Newton, found them in the mid-19th century to recover them and ship them to the British Museum, together with part of a wheel (two meters in diameter) from the quadriga on top of the Mausoleum and the statues of King Mausolus and Queen Artemisia. In a later shipment, he loaded the blocks of marble and green stones that were to be transhipped in Malta. This load, however, never left the Maltese docks because the stones were considered of less importance and amazingly enough, they were used in the construction of the city’s new docks in the 19th century (see Remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Malta?).

Despite all the efforts made in recent decades, we are still not entirely sure what the Mausoleum really looked like. Although we have detailed descriptions from witnesses like Pliny and Vitruvius, they don’t give a good overall view, yet plenty of facts and figures to go by. The fact is that the most talented artists of that time were called upon. Skopas, Leochares (the same architect who built the famous Philippeon in Olympia for Alexander’s father!), Bryaxis, and Timotheus were appointed to decorate one side of the Mausoleum each, assisted of course by hundreds of craftsmen of all kinds. The Mausoleum is said to have been 148 feet high, resting on a square base with a stairway leading to the first platform. The outer wall of that platform was decorated with statues of gods and goddesses, while on each corner, a warrior on horseback was guarding the tomb. On top of this platform stood an imposing square mass which was girded with a band of reliefs representing the battle of centaurs and Amazons with Greek soldiers. This section was then crowned by 36 columns, alternated with more statues, behind which a massive block supported the pyramidal roof, where the quadriga with Mausolus and Artemisia was placed. During my last visit, it suddenly dawned on me that this Mausoleum has, in fact, close ties with the Pyramids in Egypt, as in both cases the actual tomb is hidden deep inside a massive stone construction.

Except for a few dozen lost blocks and column drums, nothing significant is left on the spot to see, with one single frieze that found shelter in the small museum next to the very ruins. For those who are really interested, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at St John’s Castle itself to locate the recuperated stones and column drums from the ancient Mausoleum in its walls. Finally, I would highly recommend a visit to the British Museum in London, to admire the magnificent statues of Mausolus and Artemisia, the horse head with its iron bit still in place, the lions that once watched over the lower staircase, and, of course, the many friezes created by the four great artists, were it only to make the (mental) picture complete.

Click on the Label Caria 2012 to read the full story