The Siting of the Acropolis

I must admit to being a subscriber to the traditional view that the acropolis of Antioch was well within the city, in most likelihood just above the theatre on a spur that ran out from the lower slopes of the mountain. My intrepid colleague, Jorgen Christensen-Ernst, likes to challenge the traditional though and he is on the spot in Antakya all the time. Their have been no excavations at the acropolis (as with virtually everywhere else in the city) so no-one can say definitively either way.

Jorgen did however recently stumble upon some references that he believes might signal that the acropolis was much much higher up and that, in fact, it occupied the place where the fortress now sits perched upon the mountain. An argument against such a siting is that the acropolis would have been well-nigh inaccessible to anyone in the population except those with the fortitude of a mountain goat. Certainly before the major walls were built (which was NOT under the Seleucids) that would have put the acropolis outside the city fortifications. A caveat that offers a pro case for the fortress as the site is the city of Priene where the acropolis is so vertiginously elevated that it is pretty much out of sight of the city way down below. 

In defence of the fortress option, Jorgen found two references in the book Asianic Elements in Greek Civilisation: The Gifford Lectures, 1915–1916, Edinburgh by William Mitchell Ramsay in which the author states: "That there was a Katoikia called Koloe in the neighbourhood is certain from the inscription on the accompanying monument, which is in many respects the most important of all. Despite the resemblance of the ancient Koloe to the modern Koula, the late Byzantine evidence shows that Koula was understood as the Turkish, and probably old Anatolian, kula, kale, a fort or castle.

There is a distinction now made between koula, tower, and kala or kale, strong place, fortress. The term koula, kula, is explained by Ducange, Notae in Alexiadem, p. 621, as applied by the Greeks to all acropoleis. The acropolis of Antioch on the Orontes was called Koula by Anna Comnena, ii. pp. 89 f, and Kala is mentioned as a strong tower on the west side, by Scylitzes in Niceph. Phocam, quoted by Ducange, loc. cit., which shows that the words are practically identical. In all probability the words are variants of an old Anatolian word, taken over by the Turks; but H. Kiepert in a letter to me preferred to consider them early Turkish words".

We would note that Anna Comnena lived from 1083 to 1153. In her childhood Antioch was still under Arab rule and then passed to Crusader rule. Its hard to believe that she actually ever went to Antioch, so her observations are most likely second-hand.  

Some New Views from the 18th Century

While trawling through the website of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (gallica.bnf.fr) I came across a collection of engravings that we had no seen before. My first suspicion was that these related to some other Antioch (e.g. ad Cragum) but the inclusion of an internal view of the ramparts of this "Antioch" gave us some confidence that the artist, François-Marie Rosset (1752-1824), was sketching Antioch on the Orontes in these images dating from 1790. He had left France as part of a diplomatic/scientific mission to Syria in June 1781, arriving in Aleppo in September. Presumably the intervening period is when he passed through Antioch.

The interesting thing though was these images did not contain just the same-old, same-old but had three etchings of structures that I had never seen before that definitely looked like it came from the city's antique phase or at least late antique period.

 

Here they are:

 

 

The first three are the novel ones. The second one has a look that might imply that it is at Daphne due to the water springing from the base of the structure. The other two have the look of either an arcaded portico or a ruined basilica/church. Or they could be older than the Christian period or they could be a total fantasy. Another thought strikes me that they could be the Bab Boulos (Beroea Gate) which did have a spring/pond in front of it according to other images. These structures in the Rosset works though do have a more ethereal look than the images of the Beroea gate I have seen previously, as the gate was arched but also fairly massive and solid.  

More information on Rosset and his wanderings (if indeed he ever visited the city) would maybe solve the mystery.

 

 

 

Benjamin of Tudela

Benjamin was a wandering Spanish rabbi in the 12th century who roamed as far as Jerusalem (returning to Spain in 1173 AD) and in the process wrote a sort of travel guide to the sights seen.

Benjamin of Tudela in the Sahara, in the XIIth century. Engraving by Dumouza, XIXst century


Benjamin's report on his wanderings can be found in: THE ITINERARY OF BENJAMIN OF TUDELA, CRITICAL TEXT, TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY BY MARCUS NATHAN ADLER, M.A., London 1907. 

He makes a brief mention of Antioch: "Thence it is two days' journey to Antioch the Great, situated on the river Fur (Orontes), which is the river Jabbok, that flows from Mount Lebanon and from the land of Hamath. This is the great city which Antiochus the king built. The city lies by a lofty mountain, which is surrounded by the city-wall. At the top of the mountain is a well, from which a man appointed for that purpose directs the water by means of twenty subterranean passages to the houses of the great men of the city. The other part of the city is surrounded by the river. It is a strongly fortified city, and is under the sway of Prince Boemond Poitevin, surnamed le Baube. Ten Jews dwell here, engaged in glass-making, and at their head are R. Mordecai, R. Chayim, and R. Samuel. From here it is two days' journey to Lega, or Ladikiya, where there are about 100 Jews, at their head being R. Chayim and R. Joseph". 

Footnotes to this text elaborate that by "10 Jews" he actually met heads of families, so the community would have been a multiple of this number.

An interesting thing to note is that seemingly the aqueduct system was still functioning at this time. 

A source for Jewish communities under the Byzantine Empire is here. 

An Expanded (Yet Abridged) Bibliography

In Memoriam: Aaron Swartz (1986-2013)

"May a hero and founder of our open world rest in peace."

Here we offer a bibliography of Antioch.. not complete by any means but large. This is the bibliography that accompanied the Antioch: the Lost Ancient City Exhibition held March 25 – June 3, 2001 at the  Cleveland Museum of Art. Not surprisingly it has much more of an art bias than a history slant. It was compiled by the library and archives staff. Our own far more focused bibliography for postings up until that time can be found here. 

Exhibition Catalogue

Kondoleon, Christine. Antioch: the lost ancient city. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press in association with the Worcester Art Museum, 2000.

Related Materials

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Comstock, Mary B., Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule and Ariel Herrmann. Sculpture in stone and bronze in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: additions to the collections of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art, 1971-1988. Boston: The Museum, 1988.

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The Dog Gate Excavations

In the excavation season of 1934 some attention was turned to the so-called Dog Gate (Porte du Chien) which had figured so prominently in the campaigns of the Crusaders to capture the city in 1098. The Dog Gate has been placed in some map versions reconstructing the street layout as the point at which the street running the length of the East side of the circus reaches the branch of the Orontes and then turns to meet the different orientation of the Hippodamian grid on the south-east side of the river.

We have discussed some aspects of this gate elsewhere but some more elucidation is now possible. The report from the season of that year in Volume I of the series Antioch-on-the-Orontes gives a scant paragraph to these efforts even though they went on for month at least:

"Other investigations carried on at Antioch included an excavation lasting about a month in the sector Antioch 12-N where, at an angle of the wall of Justinian, local tradition placed a gateway, known as Bab-El-Kelb, from the figure of a dog (?) carved on the stonework. During the past century the superstructure of the gate has been entirely removed by pilferers of stone, but the excavations revealed the fact that in antiquity there was, actually, a gate at this point."     

The recent release of the Princeton Photo Archives allows us to now see the images taken at the site during this work. Unfortunately the images are very small, without a click to enlarge component. However we have downloaded the thumbnails and readers can blow them up as best they can to see detail.

Porphyry columns under Byzantine level.

General view of the basalt pavement outside the city wall.

Detail of the basalt pavement outside the city wall.

Basalt pavement inside and outside the city gate.

Limestone staircase and pavement inside the city wall.

Limestone staircase, pavement and wall.

City wall and rough pavement.

Cement level under basalt pavement.

Detail of wall under late staircase.

Foundation of Justinian wall and more ancient walls.

View of trench west of basalt pavement showing retaining walls, pavement and pipes

View of trench west of basalt pavement showing foundation of cement pavement and walls.

West trench with brick walls.

West trench with brick walls.

General view of excavations in the West Trench.

Detail of brick walk in the West Trench

View of brick wall with big niche in the West Trench.

View of brick wall with big niche in the West Trench.

Trench following the remains of the ancient wall.

Marble entablature.

Marble entablature.

Also we might note that this extensive excavation effort was never written up with more than the scant comment above and so thus we would strongly suspect that the excavation notes/plans moulder away unpublished in some box in the basement at Princeton to this day. 

Life After Baibars - A Sultan's Progress

Usually we try to avoid the more "recent" aspects of Antioch's history, but the city's relevance is popularly believed to have ended with the destruction wrought by Sultan Baibars in 1268.

I have stumbled upon an interesting text relating a progress made around his domains by the Sultan Qa'itbay in the mid-14th century. This translation and commentary was written by Henriette Devonshire in the Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in 1922.  BIFAO 20 (1922), p. 1-43 : "[al-qawl al-mustazraf fî safar mawlânâ al-malik al-Ashraf.] Relation d'un voyage du sultan Qâitbây en Palestine et en Syrie".

Qa'itbay was the Sultan of Egypt from 872-901 A.H. (AD 1468-1496).  He toured around the northern extremities of his domains that stretched as far as Antioch and Aleppo. After heading up the coast as far as Latakia, he headed inland to Antakiya. While Antioch is only briefly mentioned it does give some colour from a period where there are virtually no texts. 

"Nous trouvâmes dans cette ville d'immenses et solides constructions; les murs enormes et garnis de tours vont de haut de la montagne jusqu'a l'embouchure de la riviere, de sorte que la ville entiere avec ses cultures, ses champs, ses proprietes et sa riviere se trouve a l'interieur des murailles. La ville meme contient sept collines sur une desquelles se trouve une citadelle; la longeur des murs est de 12 milles; les tours sont au nombre de 136 et les creneaux de 24,000. Antakiya fut conquise par El Malik ez Zahir Beibars; elle contient beaucoup de boutiques, des marches, et la population en est nombreuse. Mais ce sont Turcomans peu civilises et leurs maisons ont des pignons dont les toits en pente sont de bois recouvert de fascines de chaume que l'on appelle bourda. C'est la que se trouve le Sanctuaire de Sidi Djib en Nadjdjar - que Dieu nous soit propice par ses vertus! - situe entre deux larges collines a pentes douces."

The report tells us what we already knew, that of all things, the walls and fortress of Antioch survived far longer than the structures of the graeco-roman city. However, it seems here that some 200 years after Baibars destruction of the city, the place was fairly lively with an active commercial life. This must be taken in context that what looked like a thriving city in the mid-1400s was all relative when many great cities had shrunk to small towns and so any conurbation of more than 10,000 people looked like a metropolis.   

The city had clearly become mainly Turkish by this point and that population lived in structures which struck the author for their flimsiness and their thatched roofs which were not common in urban settings in the Middle East at that time. 

The seven hills are mentioned for the first time we have heard. We cannot imagine what these are. It is notable though because both Rome and Constantinople had their "seven hills" and Qa'itbay did not come from that tradition of giving import to this topographical distinction.  

A river "inside the walls" is mentioned, presumably the Parmenios. We have what I think is the first mention I have found of the Najjar mosque.  

Porphyrius and His Mob

The circus factions were as lively in Antioch as the other major cities of the Empire and in some ways Antioch was closer to Constantinople in suffering from fans of the Blues and Greens that went the extra mile in lootings, riotous behaviour and creating mayhem. They were the soccer hooligans of their day and more, bringing down governments and burning large parts of the cities went their enthusiasms got the better of them. 

Mostly they were led by individuals with a penchant for political maneuvering and the factions were the instruments of their wielding of power. These were not typically actual participants in the sport. However there are a few examples of chariot drivers becoming initiators in a fracas. Once such was a driver in the 6th century called Porphyrius, who was supposedly born in Africa (Libya), but was reared in Constantinople, where he began racing with the Blue faction while still very young but then changed to the Greens under the emperor Anastasius and back to the Blues under Justin I.

He continued to race even into his sixties and seems to have adopted Calliopas as his name later in life. As the epigrams proclaim, he was the first charioteer to have his statues erected in the Hippodrome while still competing and the first to have a statue (indeed, at least two) from each faction. Malalas records for the year AD 507 that Kalliopas (Calliopas, the name by which Porphyrius is addressed in five of the epigrams), "an ex-factionarius [the most senior charioteer who drove for either the Blues or Greens] from Constantinople....took over the stable of the Green faction, which was vacant, and was completely victorious".

The interesting thing from our point of view is that like an early version of Beckham he toured the known world exercising his charioteering skills and even led an attack on the Jewish synagogue in Antioch in AD 507. "They set fire to it, plundered everything that was in the synagogue and massacred many people," setting up a cross there and turning the site into a martyrium (Chronicle, XVI.6). Whether this was on instructions from a higher power or not is not recorded. 

However, Porphyrius was clearly partisan to the "powers that were" for in a fragment, Malalas also relates that Porphyrius helped rally support for the Emperor Anastasius during the revolt of Vitalian in AD 515 (cf. Epigram 350, where the emperor, "with the Greens to assist him, warred with the furiously raging enemy of the throne"). In appreciation, Anastasius, who, himself, favored the Reds, restored the privileges of the Greens and permitted them to erect a new statue of Porphyrius.