An update on Germenicia

Back in 2012, I posted my first blog about the city of Germenicia located some one hundred kilometers north of Gaziantep in eastern Turkey (see: Ever heard of Germenicia?).

Illegal digs carried out in 2007 revealed the presence of the Roman city of Germenicia or Germenicia Caesarea named after Emperor Caligula (in full Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) which covered an area of 140 hectares. The terrain has been divided into 50 parcels and after almost ten years the land of 30 of them has been expropriated. Works have been ongoing since in order to register, excavate and preserve the many large Roman villas and their exquisite floor mosaics.

[Mosaic from Germanicia, at the Kahramanmaraş Museum. 

Regional Directorate of Culture and Tourism Kahramanmaraş]

It appeared that these villas belonged to the local elite and military leaders and it is estimated that there are approximately one hundred such residences built on the foothill of the mountain. The mostly intact mosaics that have been unearthed so far are of the highest quality and generally date from the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th century AD. They feature sophisticated designs using a mix of colored glass, marble, and limestone tesserae, deploying even three-dimensional effects. The quality of these mosaics is unusual because of their realism and their details ranging from architectural representations to scenes of daily life.

The Romans were not the first to occupy the region. Earlier settlers were the Urartians, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, and Seleucids because the city was built on the crossroads of several ancient trade routes, like the Silk Road. But the wear and tear of repeated wars, landslides, and fire buried the city into oblivion for almost 1,500 years.

Kahramanmaraş, the modern version of Germenicia  has a worthwhile museum of its own. It displays more than 30,000 artifacts from local excavations dating from prehistoric times, Hittite occupation, and Roman and Byzantine eras. Most spectacular are, of course, the mosaics recovered from the Roman villas of Germenicia  but also from other nearby sites. An adjacent room is exhibiting a number of steles, sarcophagi, and marble heads of the Roman elite; another room illustrates daily life through a rich collection of tools, jewelry, armory, pottery, bronze, and glass artifacts as well as coins from Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman eras.

As elsewhere, Turkey hopes to draw tourists to Germenicia, who may already be visiting the treasures of Sanliurfa (founded by Seleucos in 304 BC as Edessa) and Gaziantep (where the mosaics from Zeugma are being exhibited).

Ever heard of Germenicia?

Well, I haven’t. That is, till now when I read this article in the Hurriyet Daily News about this ancient city of Germenicia in Southeast Turkey that was buried underground for 1,500 years.

Once again, we owe it to illegal excavations that started in 2007 under a house in the province of Kahramanmaraş for authorities to decide the complete excavation of the mosaics and the city in order to turn it into an open-air museum.

[picture from www.ntvmsnnbc.com]

Germenicia is contemporary of Roman era cities like Zeugma and Yamaçeviler. Until now, archaeologists had not been able to locate this city although it was identified as Kahramanmaraş on old maps, simply because there were no architectural remains left. Germenicia was a very important and magnificent city which even stamped its own coins, but it remained hidden as a result of invasions and fires.

The illegal digs have now set a plan in motion to divide the region into 19 parcels of land, five of which promising to be important enough to start excavations. The mosaics have changed the future of the city that was buried till now. It has been established that two-storied Roman villas were built here around 400 AD.

Germenicia was named after the father of Roman Emperor Caligula, and is to be pinpointed at the foothills of Ahir Mountain in the neighborhood of Namik Kemal. Archaeologists believe that the city was buried by landslides as a consequence of a severe earthquake. They estimate that as many as one hundred villas with 15-20 rooms each are to be found in the region, and the newly unearthed mosaic suggests that it belongs to a floor decoration in one of these villas.

Time will tell us what other treasures have been buried in Germenicia for so many centuries.