The case of Alexander of Lyncestis

The name Alexander is already very popular in the days of Alexander the Great and may lead to confusion. 

For a start, there was King Alexander of Epirus, Olympias’ brother and Alexander’s uncle. I usually refer to him as Alexandros to make the difference. He is the one who married Alexander’s sister Cleopatra in 336 BC, the day King Philip of Macedonia was assassinated. 

[Expansion of Macedonia from Wikipedia]

Then there is Alexander of Lyncestis, in Upper Macedonia, son of Aeropus and son-in-law of the general and later regent Antipater. He had two brothers, Heromenes and Arrhabaeus, who were soon accused of plotting the murder of Philip II and put to death. Brother Alexander is said to have been the first to proclaim Alexander of Macedonia as king and thus avoided punishment, for now at least. 

In Alexander’s campaign, the Lyncestian was soon appointed to command the Thracian detachment and later the Thessalian cavalry. However, two years later, Parmenion, who was spending the winter near Gordion, caught a messenger carrying a secret letter from the Persian King Darius for Alexander of Lyncestis. It revealed that Darius promised to pay him a thousand talents of gold to kill Alexander and would proclaim him King of Macedonia instead! Parmenion sent the messenger with a trusted escort to Alexander, where the man repeated the same story. 

This was an extremely serious matter that Alexander put before his assembled Companions in order to make the appropriate decision. It was agreed to send a trusted man, a brother of Craterus, to Parmenion. He would travel incognito, dressed as a local and accompanied by guides from Perge, and deliver his message verbally, as it was thought better not to write down anything on a matter of this importance. Alexander’s envoy reached Parmenion without being detected and reported the instructions he was carrying. Alexander of Lyncestis was arrested and put in chains. He was tried for plotting against his king and put in prison. Being the son-in-law of Antipater, acting as the king’s Regent in Macedonia, was an important factor in his favor. 

The Lyncestian was dragged around for about three years, when in 330 BC, in the wake of Philotas’ trial and execution for a similar plot, the Macedonians demanded that he should be tried and punished accordingly as well. When he was brought in from confinement to plead his case, he was faltering and nervous, and found no words to reply and defend himself. This was perceived as a guilty conscience, and the bystanders ran him through with their spears. 

It should be noted that Queen Eurydice I, Alexander’s paternal grandmother, was born in Lyncestis. She married King Amynthas III of Macedonia, the father of Philip II, in 390 BC to consolidate the relations between the two countries.

Another case of restoration vs. reconstruction

The streets of the ancient city of Perge have been disfigured by so-called restorations! Last year, I wrote extensively about this problem (see: Restoration or reconstruction?), giving different examples. So, nothing new, except the stubbornness of those know-it-alls. 

One of the greatest pleasures of visiting an ancient city is to enjoy what time has left for us to see. There is no need to embellish the site and certainly not to bury the antique pavement under a smooth new layer of stones. If visitors cannot accept Perge as it was unearthed, they had better stay home. Nobody in their right mind will build a comfortable road to the top of the Mont Blanc, Mount St. Helens, or Mount Everest. Why expect our protected ancient cities to be turned into something that was never there? 

The colonnaded street that runs through Perge is unique, with a canal at its center to serve as an aqueduct and refresh the city on hot summer days. The pavement of the sidewalk that covers the space between the columns and the shops is one of the rare such examples that have survived. 

The old stone slabs, witnessing centuries-old ruts and other scars of time, have been covered with new stones joined together with cement! Romans knew concrete as they practically invented it, but they never used it for their road constructions! 

History has been buried under new modern stone slabs. Today’s visitor will no longer see the genuine ancient street. The entire ‘feel’ of witnessing something precious and unique has been erased forever. 

The head of the Perge Excavation Project, Professor Sedef Cokay, defends her action by saying that the original stones had shifted due “to rain, natural factors, and foot traffic from visitors”. Some stones were dislocated or missing, so what? Many cities around the world have streets like these today, heavy traffic or not. 

Second prize is the argument that “time will restore the feel of the old road”. Tricking the visitors and tourists into believing they still walk on an authentic ancient road is a misrepresentation; it is not correct and, worse, it is not true!

Does age matter?

Writing about Alexander over the years, I have been handling chronological dates for his whereabouts in the correct time frame. There is, however, another approach to consider and that is Alexander’s age. 

We know he became king at the age of twenty and started his invasion of Asia at the age of twenty-two. He died a month short of his 33^rd birthday. All his marches, sieges, battles, and fighting are condensed within this last period of roughly ten years. 

A comparison with any modern monarchy is impossible because there are hardly any kings left and they no longer go to war at the head of their army. To compare Alexander with young men his age today is out of the question also simply because life and the circumstances of living are too far apart. 

Alexander has been taught by Aristotle but again this kind of education cannot be identified with the teaching of a young man in our modern world. I believe that even Philip, although he intended to do what was best for his son, underestimated the vastness of Aristotle’s knowledge. Alexander was meant to rise above Philip because he understood how to draw from Aristotle’s vast database (to use modern terminology) and merge it expertly with his innate infallible instinct - his genius. 

However, Philip may well have realized the potential of his 16-year-old son when he entrusted him with the seal of Macedonia while campaigning against Byzantium. The young prince honored his assignment as Regent by successfully putting down the Maedi revolt on the country’s northern border. 

Two years later, Philip put his son in command of his cavalry at the Battle of Chaironeia. Alexander did more than his share and annihilated the entire Theban Band, all three hundred of them! 

We don’t know how much time the young prince spent among the soldiers growing up in Pella, but I think it is safe to assume it was a lot. Leading the small contingent against the Maedi and the cavalry in Chaironeia speaks volumes. An army has that instinctive flair to recognize a true leader, one they can and will trust. 

This trust would only grow when Alexander became king after his father was murdered. In the next two years, he successfully led his troops against the Illyrians and the Thracians to secure his northern borders, sacked the city of Thebes in retribution for its betrayal, and confirmed his position as Hegemon of Greece as per the Treaty of Corinth. Alexander could never have contemplated his campaign in Asia without the full trust and commitment of his army. 

He crossed the Hellespont shortly before his 22^nd birthday and fought the Persian army for the first time at the Granicus River. Later that summer, he marched to Sardes and took Ephesos, Priene, Miletus, Didyma, and Halicarnassus. Alexander spent the following winter in Lycia, after which he conquered Phaselis and Perge. 

When he was 23 years old, he headed north to Sagalassos and from there to Gordion, where he cut the knot. Crossing Cappadocia, he returned to the shores of the Mediterranean. At Tarsus, he fell sick with a fever, which incapacitated him for several weeks. By the end of the year, he was engaged in the Battle of Issus, his first personal confrontation with King Darius. 

In two years, Alexander fought two major battles (see: The Battle of the Granicus and The Battle of Issus, where Alexander and Darius faced each other for the first time), besieged two cities, Miletus and Halicarnassus, and occupied all the major ports in Asia Minor. In our modern world, this means that he crossed all of Turkey. 

At the age of 24, he laid siege to two more cities, Tyre (building a mole in the process) and Gaza. His reception in Egypt was that of a liberator, and he was soon acclaimed as their new Pharaoh - a title that automatically made him a god in the eyes of the Egyptians. At the western end of the Nile Delta, he founded his first Alexandria, a city that still exists and prospers today! 

Many more sieges and battles were to follow in Central Asia and India. We almost take them for granted, despite that every siege and every battle came with its own technicalities and challenges. Alexander faced many hardships as he traveled through deserts, waded through countless rivers, and crossed mountains as high as those of the Hindu Kush! 

The three years Alexander spent in Sogdiana and Bactria, from his 27^th to his 30^th birthday, were an uninterrupted succession of skirmishes and fights in guerrilla wars he was totally unfamiliar with. The events culminated with his victory at the Battle of the Hydaspes against the Indian King Porus. By then, he and his men had covered some 28,000 kilometers, creating many new Alexandrias in the process. 

Although Alexander is usually depicted sitting on his horse, we have to keep in mind that he moved at the pace of his foot soldiers. Riding bareback was not comfortable, not for the rider and not for the horse (see: No saddles and no stirrups for Alexander’s cavalry). 

It is impossible to imagine anyone covering such a distance on foot. It would imply walking an average of 2,800 kilometers a year, ten years in a row! Let us keep in mind that many of his troops were veterans of his father’s days, men in their fifties, sixties, and even seventies! Not a leisurely trip for the fainthearted. 

Speaking of walking: how many pairs of shoes, boots, and sandals would the Macedonians have worn out? Providing new ones for some 40,000 men or more would have implied production on an industrial scale! Maybe we should believe the sources suggesting that the soldiers fought and walked sections of the route barefoot?

Sadly, Alexander died far too young, and so did Hephaistion, but men like Ptolemy and Seleucos lived to the ages of 84 and 77, respectively. Age clearly is not everything!

Alexandria on the Oxus is at Kampyr Tepe

As mentioned earlier in my blog About Alexandria on the Oxus, the Russian archaeologist Edvard Rtveladze has been digging at Kampyr-Tepe since 2015, a strategic location even today as it is situated on the border between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

[Picture from The Telegraph, Credit: Maximum Exposure]

So far, it had been established that Kampyr-Tepe was a Graeco-Macedonian fortress, raising the question of whether it had been founded by Alexander the Great and if this was his Alexandria on the Oxus or Alexandria Oxiana. Until now, that Alexandria was thought to be located at the confluence of the Kokcha River and the Oxus River, i.e., at Ai-Khanoum in Afghanistan. 

Patience and determination certainly paid off for Rtveladze, for after finding a sanctuary, a treasury, and a harbor with distinct Hellenistic characteristics, he finally unearthed the main gate this year. It is said to be identical to that of Sillyum in Pamphylia. If so, we can match it to the gates of Perge and Termessos in Turkey and that of Apamea in Syria as well. They all share this typical semi-oval shape on the inner side of the gate. To find that same pattern this far east can only have happened in the wake of Alexander. What a revelation!

Thanks to the discovery of a new coin depicting Apollo and analysis of other layers of Kampyr-Tepe, the foundation of Alexandria on the Oxus could be dated to the 320s BC, which matches Alexander’s campaign in Central Asia perfectly. This was not the case for Ai-Khanoum.

Later this autumn, Edvard Rtveladze will return to Kampyr-Tepe to further investigate the main gate. Besides the citadel and the upper city that were revealed earlier (see: About Alexandria on the Oxus), the main temple dedicated to Demeter has been located, as well as the river crossing.

Unfortunately, there is no picture available on the gate at Kampyr-Tepe yet.

Restoration of the theatre in Perge

Perge, less than twenty kilometers northeast of Antalya is one of the must-see places of Pamphylia. Till now, unfortunately the grand theater that rises alongside the road to the site of Perge remained of limits in spite of the most promising statues that were taken from the theater to the Museum of Archaeology in Antalya.

In spite of the excavations carried out in the 1980s and 1990s, the theater remained off limits as it was dangerous to approach the weak and crumbling walls. It was even very difficult and almost impossible to simply walk around its outer limits because of the luxuriant and dense bushes that grows around it.

The restoration plans sounds very promising as the overall local economy will benefit from it now that the number of visitors to Perge have drastically decreased during the last decennium.

The Perge theater is a typical Roman construction counting 19 tiers of seats in its lower part and 23 tiers in the upper section. Most of the stage is still standing and its restoration would certain help to mentally place the statues from the museum back into their appropriate niches. As is so often the case, the theater has been adapted to host animal and gladiator fights.

Let’s hope that restoration work will start soon for the theater will certainly contribute to the beauty of the site and the wealth Perge knew in its heyday. We should not forget that this is where the bigger than life-size statue of Alexander the Great (now in the museum) once stood in all its glory!

To protect and preserve archaeological sites in Turkey

Recent articles published in the Hurriyet Daily News clearly underscore the problems Turkey’s archaeological sites are facing. The reasons for this concern are many, generally political ones, but the result is that in the end these antique sites do not receive the care and attention they deserve.

The most recent target is the beautiful city of Ephesus in western Turkey, where serious plans exist to build a more than six kilometres long canal that will connect the ancient harbour which has silted up over the centuries with the sea. A 600-meter-long channel will allow yachts to access their anchor space near the entrance and a bridge will connect both banks enabling pedestrians and cars to cross. The price to pay (moneywise) for the first phase of the 30-meter wide access channel is 30 million Turkish Liras, money that does not add anything to the beauty or the archaeological value of Ephesus. The canal will have a concrete foundation and the mud from the present swampy area will be dredged up to a depth of four meters. Construction is planned to start early 2018 and should be completed one year later – a very daring statement!

The Hurriyet Daily News luckily warns for the ensuing damage both to the environment and to the precious remains of ancient Ephesus. Each spring, water levels are already rising in front of the Vedius Gymnasium which makes one wonder about the consequences of opening the waterfront even more. Besides, the alluvium accumulated over the past 2,500 years holds the remains of many “sunken” ships as well as Ephesus’ necropolis. Will they be rescued in the process? If so, this means more work and higher costs that may not fit within the one year time-frame for this invasive construction.

Let’s not forget that Ephesus is on the UNESCO World Heritage List and over the past 120 years excavations were carried out by the Austrians who also made preliminary research in the area that is now under threat. However, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry has stopped the Austrian team on 31 August 2016 (that is last year), i.e. before the end of the normal excavation season. Their decision is based on Austria’s attitude towards the AKP government in Turkey. This means that people with in-depth knowledge of the place are pushed aside.

The ancient city of Ephesus covers a huge surface that has not yet been explored or excavated, while those parts that have been unearthed and carefully restored definitely require maintenance. Who is going to do the job with the Austrians gone? And should this not have priority over the construction of a harbour and even an airfield!

Yes, to make things worse, the plans to build an airport for “small” planes has been revived as well! The vibrations of the planes taking off and landing nearby have destabilized buildings in the ancient city and the project was stopped in 2013. After an internal squabble, work was, however, restarted and at present the taxiway, the runway and the connecting roads have been completed.

The Turkish government wants to attract more foreign tourists to Ephesus (and to other places as well). Today, the number of the visitors that come to Ephesus is only one quarter of that reached in 2011 but those numbers cannot be compensated by those expecting to arrive by boat or small planes as their budget is of a different order. Besides, access of foreign visitors by air and water will require larger infrastructures for customs, cars (parking) and buses (to transfer them to Ephesus), which in turn will lead to air and water pollution that will damage the fragile stones of this ancient city.

Unfortunately, Ephesus is not the only city under threat. There is, for instance, the case of Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite Empire in Central Anatolia which is also on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Members of the German Institute of Archaeology have been excavating the area since 1906 but due to the diplomatic tensions between their government and Turkey, their permit was withdrawn last year and the site is no longer maintained. The Germans contributed to the local economy in the region as they spent up to 900,000 TRY during their yearly stay and provided a job to a workforce of at least 60-70 people.

This has very serious consequences for the Hittite restoration project, a 65 meters long stretch of the 6.5 kilometre-long city walls. The Hittite style was reproduced carefully by building adobe bricks on top of the stone foundation. The archaeologists took pride in implementing the same procedure as the Hittites to make the 64,000 adobe bricks as they mixed 2,400 tons of adobe soil, using 100 tons of straw and 1,500 tons of water. The reconstruction of this seven-meter-high wall was started in 2013 but had to be stopped three years later. Without proper yearly maintenance, the wall is now crumbling down due to the erosion of rain, sun and snow.

The number of visitors cannot be compared to the figures of Ephesus for the obvious reason that Central Anatolia is far away from the tourists’ centres along the Aegean and Mediterranean Sea, but even so, only 2,000 tourists walked over this great site last year as opposed to the usual 25,000.

Another dramatic situation is unfolding in Perge, one of the most frequently visited sites by the tourists that used to flock into the Antalya area. The figures quoted by The Hurriyet Daily News say it all: 190,000 visitors in 2014, 112,390 in 2015 and only 60,000 in 2016. Here too, it is the local people who have invested in their souvenir shops and snacks/cafeterias who are suffering the most.

There certainly are many, many more such examples, unfortunately. For the past decennium foreign archaeologists and researchers have been kept away in favour of Turkish scholars. This looks like a nice way to put the native scholars at work but it is a loss of long-term foreign expertise and certainly not a good money deal. In 2016, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism spent 28 million Turkish Liras on a total of 560 excavation sites, meaning that the average budget for each site was 50,000 TRY. Remember that the Austrians spent 700,000 TRY in Ephesus and the Germans 900,000 TRY in Hattusha each year.

To make things worse and probably in the wake of the arrest of an employee from the American Consulate in Istanbul with alleged links to the Gülen movement, Washington announced it was suspending the processing of all visas in Turkey. The response from Ankara followed almost immediately and it stopped issuing visas in its embassy and consulate in the US. Well, the number of American visitors had already fallen drastically to 37,000 in 2016, whereas the year before there still were over the 88,000 visitors (read this article in Fortune for more details). *

The Guardian meanwhile has figured out that the Turkish tourism sector has encountered devastating losses. The Association of Turkish Travel Agencies has estimated that this year’s loss might be between GBP 2bn and GBP 2.5bn. They give the example of Antalya, a city whose economy relies mainly on the revenue from tourism and where visitors have dropped by over 50% in the first eight months of 2017. Even Russian visitors have decreased by 95% and although Turkey’s ties with Moscow have been mended its citizens have not yet returned en-masse.

Not much light at the end of the tunnel, it seems. The Hurriyet Daily News is drawing some cynic conclusions of this tasteless situation, reminding us that 27 million TRY were spent on the restoration of one mosque, the Abdulhamid II’s Hamidiye Mosque in Istanbul to be compared with 28 million TRY spread over 560 excavation sites!

* Update: As of 28 December 2017, the United States and Turkey have lifted the mutual restrictions on issuing visas for each other's citizens. Normal service has resumed and American citizens can once again go to Turkey.

Good and bad news from Perge

The Hurriyet Daily News recently came with the news that many mosaics have been uncovered in the necropolis of Perge, glorifying them to be as magnificent as those that made the reputation of Zeugma. Yet the photograph in their article shows the side of a sarcophagus and none whatsoever of the mosaics that are apparently making the headlines.

However, this article raises many questions besides the matter of pictures. They write that “In front of the mausoleums were intact mosaics depicting the goddess of the sea Oceanus, which is said to be the first in Turkey,..”. Well, first of all, Oceanus is a god and not a goddess and secondly, Oceanus has been depicted in many other mosaics in Turkey for instance at the Archaeological Museum of Antakya.

and, more to the point, at the Archaeological Museum of Gaziantep that exhibits the finds from Zeugma!

Sadly, this makes me doubt the eulogized information about this discovery. It is clear that Turkey is struggling to find enough tourists to visit their rich archaeological sites and Perge is no exception. In their article “Ancient Perge surviving, but locals are not” also published in May 2017 they confirm that the number of visitors has dropped drastically from 190,000 in 2014 to just 60,000 in 2016.

Perge certainly is one of those sites worth visiting and I warmly welcome everyone to spend prime time among those lovely ruins but it is not by advertising twisted information that this goal can be reached.

Perge’s Western Street reveals more statues

Each time I visit the Archaeological Museum of Antalya, there is something new to see. The Museum is expanding continually, and just recently, an entirely new section centered around the Western Street of Perge has been added.

The wealth of Perge seems to be endless, and the latest discovery of a more than life-size statue of Emperor Caracalla has made the headlines. Caracalla, whose full name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, seems to have been very fond of Perge, and his 2.2 meters high statue is the largest ever found. It stood at the junction of Western Street and the Northern Bath to enhance the so-called Caracalla Fountain. The emperor only misses his right hand, which is supposed to have held an unknown object above his head. He still wears the insignia of the eagle and the Medusa head; his head was crowned with a Corona Civica, a series of oak leaves woven into a crown.

Other finds include statues of Aphrodite, Tyche, Nemesis, Asclepius, Helios and Selene, beside those of a snake, a horse, a man, and a woman.

Excavations at Perge have been ongoing for the past 70 years now, and it is quite amazing that the flow of discoveries is still so enticing. 

The richness of Perge once again in the limelight

In spite of all the excavations, explanations, and reconstructions, we still cannot really imagine what a city like Perge must have looked like during its heyday. Walking through the wonderful collection at the Museum of Antalya, it is amazing to see how many of the statues have been found at Perge alone. This great city has a room of its own in Antalya’s Museum but is bursting out of it seams. It is quite exciting to read that even more near-intact statues have been recovered over the past three years.

No less than 13 rare sculptures have been unearthed at Perge’s necropolis at the end of the western street. In a Nymphaeum close to the northern baths, a complete statue of Emperor Caracalla, nearly 2.20m high, was found, the only complete one so far. Also, a 1.30m tall sculpture of a horse with perfect anatomical details was recovered in the area.

And then an impressive number of Greek gods and goddesses have been deterred as well: a 2-meters-high Selene, the moon goddess and sister of the sun god Helios; a strong and handsome Helios venerated on the same level as Apollo; a 1.70m high statue of Nemesis in a transparent dress; a statue of Tyche, the Latin Fortuna; a great Asclepius, god of medicine and health holding a plate of medicine in his right hand and a ferula plant in his left; a reassembled Aphrodite (since she was found in bits and pieces), the goddess of love and beauty; and an armored and finely sculptured Athena, the goddess of peace and intelligence. Last but not least, there was a headless statue of a woman in a long dress and coat, that of a headless man holding a sword, and finally, the statue of a priest holding a horn-of-plenty in his right hand and showing two snake reliefs on his neck.

All these beauties have meanwhile made their appearance in a new Perge  Hall at the Archaeological Museum of Antalya. Time to return for a new visit to the museum as well as to the site of Perge itself, since, according to the picture released in the Hurriyet Daily News, more of the ancient city has been cleared, including the hill behind the main fountain that leads to the acropolis.

[All pictures are from the Hurriyet Daily News]

Sagalassos in Alexander’s campaign

Amazingly, the story of Sagalassos so far has remained untold on my weblog, despite the details shared in the great exhibition held in Tongeren, Belgium, not so long ago (Sagalassos, City of Dreams). So, it is high time to tell more about this magnificent city since Alexander the Great conquered it in 333 BC. 

Nowadays, a narrow road leads from the village of Ağlasun to the top of the hill where Sagalassos lies hidden from view. This immense city in the otherwise broken landscape amidst snow-capped mountains is revealed only after passing the watchman's gate. An actual eagle's nest!

Since 1990, archaeologists have constantly been working at Sagalassos, year after year, season after season, exposing new buildings each time. It is easy for a layman to see the city rise from its ashes, so to speak. The wonderful thing about Sagalassos is that so many edifices can easily be re-erected, as, in most cases, at least 90% of the original elements are scattered around! This means that the visitor will always find a surprise each time anew. It is estimated that Sagalassos covers some 1,200 square kilometers and could be compared to Pompeii in Italy, which was frozen in time after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Over here, we find a city that was constantly occupied until the 13th century AD.

Overlooking the area from this strategic location, my admiration for Alexander the Great is growing again – as if that were still possible.

Just before the onset of winter in 334 BC, Alexander split his army into three groups. Under the command of his general Parmenion, part of his troops proceeded to Gordion. The newlyweds were allowed to return home to Macedonia to spend the winter with their families. The entire army was meant to regroup the following spring in Gordion. This meant that Alexander moved through Lycia with a smaller detachment of soldiers, approximately 14,000 men, fighting east through Pamphylia, where important cities like Side, Perge, Aspendos, and Termessos had to be taken to safeguard his rear. When he started his march north in the early days of spring, Sagalassos was evidently on his path, and I find it hard to picture his army moving uphill from around where today's Ağlasun was settled by the Seljuks. I have no mental picture of how big an army of  14,000 may look like – not to mention the number of horses –but this must have been impressive enough. I suppose the baggage train, servants, slaves, craftsmen, and merchants would have stayed in the valley below...

In the 14th century BC, the Hittites knew of Sagalassos, which they called Salawassa. Like all other cities around here, Sagalassos was dominated in turn by the Phrygians and the Lydians until the Persians took hold of it to include it in the province of Pisidia. The Sagalassians were bellicose people with no reason to welcome Alexander with open arms. Any rule change is understandably met with resentment, and their opinion about Alexander will be similar to what they thought about previous conquerors. Anyway, the city was taken, although occupying the high ground in front of the town, they also fought fiercely due to Sagalassos' reinforcements from Termessos. In advance of his right wing led by Alexander himself, the archers were the first to get the beating when they reached the steepest part of the climb to the city, but the Agrianes on the left held their ground. The Pisidians, who, according to Arrian, have no defensive armor, were no match for the fully-equipped infantry attackers (horses were useless in this terrain). About 500 citizens were killed, the surviving defenders fled, and Alexander stormed Sagalassos. After Alexander's death, the region was disputed by Antigonus Monophtalmus, Lysimachos, the Seleucids, and finally, the Attalids of Pergamon. Sagalassos shared the fate of its neighbors when it became part of the Roman Provincia Asia after the death of Attalus III in 133 BC. By then, the city was Hellenistic, and the vehicular language was Greek. 

Named the Metropolis of Pisidia, Sagalassos was a reliable supplier of grain and olives. The local clay ensured the prosperous commerce of pottery like amphorae, jars, and cups for export to the entire Mediterranean region. For six hundred years, the production of ceramics was carried out on an industrial scale. Under Emperor Hadrian, the city underwent significant building activities, many of which we still see today. It is estimated that in its heyday, Sagalassos counted some 50,000 inhabitants! The decline started after repeated earthquakes like that of 518 AD, but mainly those of 644 and 661, while the plague and the Arabian invasion gave the "coup de grace." In the 11th century, it fell into the hands of the Turkmen as it was situated on the caravan route between Antalya and Konya. The Seljuks in the 13th century built the nearby town of Ağlasun with a caravansary and a hammam of its own, and Sagalassos slid into oblivion. We had to wait till 1706 when a traveling Frenchman rediscovered the city, but it was not until 1985 that a Belgo-British team put Sagalassos on the map again, and excavations started for good.

My first visit in 2005 was unsuccessful, for I was with a group led by an uncooperative guide. I returned in 2007 under the far more professional guidance of Peter Sommer in the frame of his superb trip "In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great." And because of the ongoing excavations, I returned in 2009, far too long ago, when I saw the most recent pictures. My latest update of 2009 may tell of monuments now in improved condition, although they are, as a matter of course, still in the exact location anyway. 

The first building I encountered on my last visit (and I presume that is still the case today) is the vast complex of the Roman Baths built between 168 and 180 AD, which, together with those of Ephesos, belongs to the largest in Turkey. These baths were repaired and adjusted after the earthquake of 518, i.e., in the middle of the Christian period. From what I understood in Tongeren, archaeologists have traced the many additions and transformations, and the Baths may open to the public very soon.

The Lower Agora, meanwhile, has been restored in all its grandeur, with monolithic marble columns of different colors enhancing the façade of the Nymphaeum, where statues once filled the many niches. Some statues can be seen at the Museum of Burdur, but this must have been quite a sight! This was the first monumental Nymphaeum built under the reign of Trajan in the second century AD and was the first of its kind to meet the traveler entering Sagalassos from the south over the Colonnaded Street. About a century later, its façade was partly dismantled to be re-erected some 40 cm forward, creating a narrow service room behind the basin. The entire width of this fountain is 19 meters with a depth of approximately 3 meters, delimited by a meter-high limestone parapet. Among the statues that filled the nine niches, Hera and Tyche have been identified, and also two small statues of Nike.

The slabs of the marble Agora floor are still in place, as well as the staircase leading to the square below, which connected to the Colonnaded Street that linked up with the Via Sebasté down in the valley. What a panorama from here! It is at least as impressive as my first meeting with Delphi in Greece – one of those places that only the gods can choose.

Behind this Agora, half of the Odeon has been exposed. It doesn't look as if it survived the centuries too well, for it has been stripped of its marble coat, and all I see is the rough brick support. The shape and the method of construction are clearly visible, however.

Via a narrow street and a left turn, I reach the Bouleuterion, a square meeting room counting 250 seats. Three bronze statues representing the people, the city, and the senate at the entrance must have welcomed the attendees.

Next to it lies the Heroon from the early days of the first century AD, delicately restored with its magnificent friezes of dancing and music-playing girls. Although these friezes are mere copies (the originals were also moved to the Museum of Burdur), they give an excellent idea of how they once looked. The hero in whose honor this Heroon was erected remains unknown, although some pretend it might be Alexander the Great. This may be wishful thinking, for although the hero's head, now on display at the Burdur Museum, closely resembles Alexander, I am a little skeptical.

At the foot of this Heroon lies the Upper Agora, dating from the Hellenistic period and enlarged in the first century. The great attraction is the ostentatious fountain, the Antonine Nymphaeum from 160-180 AD, that looks like a theater front with six niches that held statues from the late fourth or early fifth century AD representing Asklepios, Koronis, Nemesis, Apollo, possibly Hygeia, and an unidentified male. Each corner hosted a beautiful, larger-than-life Dionysus with Satyr, now also in Burdur (with the other statues). In-depth research has revealed that the fountain was repaired in the 4th century and that the statues came from the Temple of Apollo Klarios in the lower part of the city. Each corner of the Upper Agora is enhanced with a 13-meter-high honorific column for the city's most prominent families, whose children later would become the first Roman citizens of Sagalassos. After the earthquake of 650 AD, the entire Nymphaeum collapsed and was never restored. I hear that today the monumental fountain has been so meticulously repaired that the water is again pouring into the broad water basin. That is a "must-see" for my next visit.

Public buildings surround the Upper Agora, where I find Greek and Latin inscriptions. In the middle of the Agora are the remains of a kiosk, initially a small temple dedicated to Tyche with a pyramidal roof and built in the days of Emperor Augustus. It was later reused by Empress Constantia (4th century AD), followed by Emperors Gratianus and Valentianus, and again by Empress Flavia Eudoxia (5th century AD).

Below and southeast of this Agora lies the food market or Macellum from the end of the 2nd century AD. It is a mere square of 21x21 meters with, in its center, a Tholos with a small fountain or water basin to keep the fish fresh. Shops surrounded the Macellum only on three sides, the fourth side being delimited by a colonnade offering a magnificent view over the lower city. Things were spoiled around the beginning of the sixth century when the shops were entirely rebuilt with rubble and lots of spolia from other monuments.

What a pleasure to walk around, especially since I am about the only visitor – so gratifying!

After a look at the necropolis, which is largely fenced off, I turn to the eastern side of Sagalassos. Here lies the exciting and now roofed Library of Flavius Soverianus Neon from 120 AD with its well-preserved mosaic floor. It was inspired by the Library of Celsus in Ephesos, although I personally fail to see how. For a start, this construction is much smaller, measuring only 11,80 x 9.90 meters, and the impressive façade of Ephesos is entirely absent here.

Right beneath the Library is another fountain, a Nymphaeum with Doric columns supporting the preserved roof above the water basin – a rare example of Hellenistic art from the first century BC. This Nymphaeum was the first to be excavated, and to everybody's surprise, as soon as it was exposed, the water started flowing again! Isn't that amazing? The flow is less than it used to be in antiquity simply because the water comes from one source, whereas there were several in antiquity. The fountain's edge is deeply eroded by the many jars pulled out of the freshwater, and the presence of those women drawing water is almost palpable.

The inevitable Roman Theater, completed between 180 and 210 AD, is cozily nestled in a curve higher up the hill. However, it was built in Hellenistic tradition on a Greek foundation with seating in three-quarters of a circle. No excavations have been carried out yet, and the stage seems ready to collapse any day for the past two thousand years. The fault line of the devastating earthquake of 661 AD actually ran right in front of the podium, clearly separating it from the 9,000 seats. Strangely enough, the stage of this theater was only one story high. The reason seems to be that the Sagalassians wanted to see the flat-topped conical hill in the background, where Alexander defeated them in 333 BC – a later honor to the great conqueror!

On the high plateau behind it, the city's unique potters' quarters have left thousands and thousands of shards, ranging from plain earthenware to exquisitely decorated pieces. This place is so unique because of the five known potters' centers spread around the Mediterranean Sea. Only two have been localized: this one and another one in Pergamon, which is entirely flooded after the construction of a barrage. Unforgivable to flood antiquities like that, but it seems to be Turkey's policy, as we have seen at Zeugma and Allianoi …

At the heart of the exhibition in Tongeren, Belgium, a scale model of Sagalassos was presented. It is incredible to discover how many temples, baths, nymphaeums, and private houses have been mapped out over the past decades.

The latest excavations focused on several Roman villas, which I have yet to see but look very promising. There is this vast mansion just beyond the Roman Baths, which, when it was completed in the fourth century, counted no less than 66 rooms spread over several terraces on the slope. The oldest part dates from the 1st century BC and over the years, the villa has been extended and restored many times. By the 6th century, it was split into at least four smaller apartments in which the luxurious quarters were transformed into storage rooms and even stables! So far, we know that the construction collapsed during the heavy earthquakes of the 7th century and was no longer occupied. There are many more mansions like this one in the area, i.e., east of the Colonnaded Street, but also on the opposite side, which is much more terraced. Yes, high time to pay Sagalassos another visit.

The cherry on the cake is a visit to the nearby Museum of Burdur to treat yourself to the original dancing girls from the Heroon and the grand statues of extreme beauty from the Upper and Lower Agora fountains.