On Cemeteries

I do not usually deal much with the Christian period in Antioch but a piece recently came to my attention that deals with the evolution of the Christian cemeteries and the martyrions that were located at Antioch or thereabouts. The texts in question are Eric Rebillard's piece "Tombe, Tombe Sainte, Necropole" in MEFRA 1993 (2).

Rebillard discusses the presence, or not, within the city of a "cemetery" in which the Martyrs were interred. The focus of the piece is a reference to a place called το κοιμητηριον which he refers to as a "cemetery par excellence". The main argument relates to John Chrysostom's sermon for a Good Friday. This speech was given in a place where the Church celebrated the Resurrection. Rebillard feels that this place was probably a special cemetery outside the city walls where their existed Martyrions, or shrines to the local martyrs. Prominent amongst these were Saint Babylas and Saint Ignatius but also some other saints who have lasted the distance in hagiographies.

The Romans and Greeks were not inclined to having burials within the city walls. In Rome we can see the Via Appia lined with tombs and the only interments within the walls, of note, being the Mausoleums of Hadrian and Augustus. Quite a number of the grave goods found in Antioch have been outside the walls along the roads approaching the city. It has long been felt that there was an extensive necropolis outside the Daphne Gate.

In light though of the discovery of the Martyrion of Saint Babylas opposite the Island (and Palace) on the north bank of the Orontes, we might presume that the zone for "saints" was in this direction. Rebillard analyses Chrysostom's words and going back through his history of sermonising comes to the conclusion that his use of the word το κοιμητηριον is unique and represents not merely a necropolis but rather a very special location for saints and martyrs.

One might also presume that if the Martyrion found in the 1930s was a centerpiece of this complex then further excavations in this zone might throw up the tombs of lesser lights in the religious sphere.

He makes mention also of the fact that a migration of relics from this site outside the city began when the Christian tide started to overwhelm the old ways. Specifically he refers to the remains of Saint Ignatius being brought into the city and placed in what had been the Temple of Fortune. This sounds rather like the site of the famous statue of Tyche. Presumably the statue was displaced (and need we mention that Antioch's fortunes were never so healthy again). Rather intriguingly, Ignatius was said to have been martyred by being thrown the lions in the Coloseum in Rome. How he had any remains from this experience to be transferred back to Antioch is truly a miracle!

In other places there are accounts of the peregrinations of the remains of Saint Babylas that at one time had the Temple of Apollo in Daphne as their shrine, until Julian ousted them to be reburied at the original gravesite. It was after this that the substantial Martyrion was constructed for him.

More on the Basilicas

We came across this small comment in an article "Notes on Christian Mosaics: Lost Mosaics of the East" by A.L.Frothingham Jnr in the American Journal of Archaeology, Volume 4, 1888.

"BASILICAS OF ANTIOCH - Later in the century we hear of a group of four basilicas erected in the forum of Antioch by the Emperor Valens 364-79 and which the historian Malalas (lib xiv) tells us were decorated with mosaics and many colored marbles The same writer says that the prefect Anatolios in building the basilica in Antioch called by his name and surnamed "the luminous" (διαφωτοζ) placed in it the inscription in mosaic (Εργον Θεοδοζιον βαζιλεοζ) and above it the figures of the two emperors Theodosios II and Valentinian III"

On Caravans and Camels

When Jacques Weulersse wrote his work on the street patterns of Antakieh in the early 1930s the memory of the camel trains to the town was very fresh. In fact this means of transport had only faded away ten years before in the first year of the French Mandate when the break-up of the Ottoman Empire meant that "free trade" across the region was thwarted and the camel trains no longer connected together those far-flung parts of the faded Empire that used to buy and sell from Antakieh. In their sunset years, the camels had primarily moved soap, the main local product, to the four corners of the Ottoman domain.

The infrastructure was still in place and this consisted of the khans where the traders and their beasts stayed and the specialised souqs where the goods were traded. With the end of the camel trains came also the extinguishing of an activity that had been undertaken in the city since its founding in 300 B.C.

Antioch was a great commercial centre in its heyday and a far cry from the soap and leather-focused provincial backwater that Antakya had become. To get an idea of the intense interchange of goods between Antioch and the rest of the Roman Empire and beyond, the best source is Commercial Syria under the Roman Empire by Louis C. West in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Vol. 55 1924, pp. 159-189) Despite the work being amazingly detailed and encompassing, the one thing that author does not discuss is how the goods moved around.

The map below shows the chief trade routes of the Syrian region of the Roman Empire.


Antioch in its heyday was one of the chief entrepots of the Roman Empire as far as the China trade was concerned. Friedrich Hirth is his book, China and the Roman Orient, researches into their ancient and medieval relations. as represented in old Chinese records. Leipzig, 1885 sheds a totally new light on the Antioch story because he finds references to Chinese visitors who made it to the Roman Orient and carried back their views of what they had seen and put them to paper. An important component of this trade was silk, which arrived in Antioch and was then sent down to the Lebanese coast which was the main production centre for Tyrian Purple dyes for silk.

Interesting to note also is that the Byzantine Empire moved silk production to Constantinople thus removing the middleman role of Antioch in this trade. Also we would note that the China trade fell off heavily after Diocletian when the Roman Empire ran short of gold to fund its purchases in what was mainly a one-way trade situation with China.

It would indeed be interesting to find "China goods" if ever excavations of Antioch's ruins can be revived.

With the waning of the Roman Empire and its demand for luxury goods there must have been a severe crimping of Antioch's role as a trade centre and as an industrial converter of raw materials from the East into products for the rest of the Empire. Such was the city's importance in its heyday that the traffic in camels must have been truly enormous through and around the city.

Further Finds under the Streets

My trusty colleague Jorgen Christensen-Ernst sent a recent dispatch on some further street finds this time in the Hurriyet Caddesi. This street runs south from the major junction at the old bridge.

 

Thus what we see in the following photos is a structure that is parallel to the river bank. Without more information we can only conjecture but there is clearly a series of arches (below) of some form visible.

Then here is a single arch.

And some less distinct images.

This is a very interesting find. Note how close to the surface these ruins are. it would be interesting to know the exact orientation of these arches and whether they run in the direction of the Hippodamian Plan of the Greek city.

Visualising Antioch - a major breakthrough

Some time ago a comment was left on a post that referred to a project that the commenter was working on to create a recreation, using CAD/CAM software, of the city of Antioch in its glory days. The commenter was I think in Japan or Thailand but could never get any more detail as they never left an email address.

Now up pops a comment from Dr.Kayhan KAPLAN, at Hatay's Mustafa Kemal University, on one of my weekend postings that indicates that he has recreated the city from four different angles using computer graphics. Frankly it is a major contribution to visualising the city and a great start to the task of making Ancient Antioch real for people for whom a  map is a mystery. 

The recreation is obviously modeled on Wilber's map. I now subscribe to the Poccardi and Uggeri visions of a longer pointed island towards the southern end rather than Wilber's "roundish" island.

Some comments I would note:

• The river branches are wider than I suspect they were. 
• I have my doubts about the amphitheater on the Island (this would seem to have been on the mountain slopes where the recreation also shows another amphitheater) 
• The aqueducts (there were two) ran partly underground on the slopes of Mt Silpius so weren't always visible from a bird's eye view. 
• Most evidence seems to suggest the palace was parallel to the hippodrome and abutted it along own side rather than being at a 45 degree angle as portrayed here
• The street patterns of the Island are clearly shown to be at a different angle to the rest of the city which is as Poccardi theorises
• The blocks of the city don't seem to be as dense as they probably were (or as many of in number, over 200 in some estimations) to accommodate 400-500,000 inhabitants. 
• The palace recreation is clearly based on Split which is entirely understandable and does a great service in making the loggia facing the suburbs (as per Libanius) make sense
• I doubt the area outside the Gate of the Cherubim was as extensive or as rural as portrayed
• I also think the walls along the Orontes branch running through the city were probably much lower and less important than shown here. With the Theodosian rebuild they became more important.

This is truly a great job and certainly something the raises the challenge of getting some real digs going to underpin this vision. In the good old days, Dr Kaplan might have been cheered along the Colonnaded Street for this job!

Some Aqueduct Views

JCE has been out and about in the spring weather and sent me some recent photos of the remains of one of the aqueducts that fed the city with water from the springs at Daphne. 

By way of contrast we include a postcard from around 1900 that shows part of the aqueduct.

The Niebuhr Map

JCE came across this map (click to enlarge) from Niebuhr and kindly sent it to me. He was visiting the Danish Institute in Damascus and found the Danish translation of Carsten Niebuhr's journeys in the Middle East (German 1774) which includes this map of Antioch. Thus it is from the second half of the 18th century. 

Accurate in detail but seems to compact the non-urban part of the city within the old walls. Not as good as Rey's map but still a useful snapshot of a point in time.