1.
Ankara
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Ankara, formerly known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of the Republic of Turkey. With a population of 4,587,558 in the center and 5,150,072 in its province. Ankara was Atatürks headquarters from 1920 and has been the capital of the Republic since its founding in 1923, the government is a prominent employer, but Ankara is also an important commercial and industrial city, located at the center of Turkeys road and railway networks. The city gave its name to the Angora wool shorn from Angora rabbits, the long-haired Angora goat, the area is also known for its pears, honey, and muscat grapes. Ankara is an old city with various Hittite, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine. The historical center of town is a hill rising 150 m over the left bank of the Ankara Çayı, a tributary of the Sakarya River. The hill remains crowned by the ruins of the old citadel, as with many ancient cities, Ankara has gone by several names over the ages. It has been identified with the Hittite cult center Ankuwaš, although remains a matter of debate. In classical antiquity and during the period, the city was known as Ánkyra in Greek and Ancyra in Latin. Following its annexation by the Seljuk Turks in 1073, the city known in many European languages as Angora. The form Angora is preserved in the names of breeds of different kinds of animals. The oldest settlements in and around the city center of Ankara belonged to the Hattic civilization which existed during the Bronze Age and was gradually absorbed c, 2000–1700 BC by the Indo-European Hittites. In Phrygian tradition, King Midas was venerated as the founder of Ancyra, but Pausanias mentions that the city was far older. Persian sovereignty lasted until the Persians defeat at the hands of Alexander the Great who conquered the city in 333 BC, Alexander came from Gordion to Ankara and stayed in the city for a short period. After his death at Babylon in 323 BC and the subsequent division of his empire among his generals, Ankara, by that time the city also took its name Ἄγκυρα which, in slightly modified form, provides the modern name of Ankara. Other centers were Pessinos, todays Balhisar, for the Trocmi tribe, the city was then known as Ancyra. The Celtic element was probably relatively small in numbers, an aristocracy which ruled over Phrygian-speaking peasants. However, the Celtic language continued to be spoken in Galatia for many centuries
2.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
3.
Ankara Castle
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Ankara Castle is a fortification from ancient or medieval era in Ankara, Turkey. It is not known exactly when it was made, however, it is known that at the beginning of the 2nd century BC there was a castle during the settlement of Galatians in Ankara. The exact date of its construction is unknown, having been controlled by Romans and Byzantines earlier, it was captured by Seljuq Turks in 1073, by Crusaders in 1101, who gave it back again to the Byzantine and again by Seljuqs in 1227. The castle saw extensive repair by the order of İbrahim Paşa in 1832 during the Ottoman era, the outer citadel surrounds the old Ankara. There are 42 pentagonal towers along the walls, which range between 14–16 m in height, the inner castle covers around 43 km2. Its southern and western walls intersect in an angle, the eastern walls follow the ledges of the hill. History of Ankara Ankara Castle Municipality of Ankara
4.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
5.
Hittites
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The Hittites were an Ancient Anatolian people who established an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 BC. Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC the Hittite Empire came into conflict with the Egyptian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, the Assyrians eventually emerged as the dominant power and annexed much of the Hittite empire, while the remainder was sacked by Phrygian newcomers to the region. They referred to their land as Hatti. The conventional name Hittites is due to their identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology. Before the discoveries, the source of information about Hittites had been the Old Testament. Francis William Newman expressed the view, common in the early 19th century. Uriah was a captain in King Davids army and counted among one of his mighty men in 1 Chronicles 11, french scholar Félix Marie Charles Texier discovered the first Hittite ruins in 1834, but did not identify them as Hittite. The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the Assyrian colony of Kültepe, some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearly Indo-European. The script on a monument at Boğazköy by a People of Hattusas discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo, in 1887, excavations at Tell El-Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton. Shortly after this, Archibald Sayce proposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia was identical with the kingdom of Kheta mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Others, such as Max Müller, agreed that Khatti was probably Kheta, sayces identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century, and the name Hittite has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy. He also proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of the capital of an empire that, at one point, under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute, excavations at Hattusa have been under way since 1907, with interruptions during the world wars. Kültepe was successfully excavated by Professor Tahsin Özgüç from 1948 until his death in 2005, the Hittites used Mesopotamian Cuneiform script. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey houses the richest collection of Hittite, the Hittite kingdom was centred on the lands surrounding Hattusa and Neša, known as the land Hatti. For example, the reward for the capture of a slave after he managed to flee beyond the Halys is higher than that for a slave caught before he could reach the river. To the west and south of the core territory lay the region known as Luwiya in the earliest Hittite texts and this terminology was replaced by the names Arzawa and Kizzuwatna with the rise of those kingdoms. Nevertheless, the Hittites continued to refer to the language originated in these areas as Luwian. Prior to the rise of Kizzuwatna, the heart of territory in Cilicia was first referred to by the Hittites as Adaniya
6.
Anatolia
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Anatolia, in geography known as Asia Minor, Asian Turkey, Anatolian peninsula, or Anatolian plateau, is the westernmost protrusion of Asia, which makes up the majority of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean Seas through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the European mainland. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea to the Armenian Highlands, thus, traditionally Anatolia is the territory that comprises approximately the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. The Turkification of Anatolia began under the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century, however, various non-Turkic languages continue to be spoken by minorities in Anatolia today, including Kurdish, Assyrian, Armenian, Arabic, Laz, Georgian, and Greek. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the Black Sea. This traditional geographical definition is used, for example, in the latest edition of Merriam-Websters Geographical Dictionary, under this definition, Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Armenian Highlands, and the Euphrates before that river bends to the southeast to enter Mesopotamia. To the southeast, it is bounded by the ranges that separate it from the Orontes valley in Syria, the first name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula was Ἀσία, presumably after the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. As the name of Asia came to be extended to areas east of the Mediterranean. The name Anatolia derives from the Greek ἀνατολή meaning “the East” or more literally “sunrise”, the precise reference of this term has varied over time, perhaps originally referring to the Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor. In the Byzantine Empire, the Anatolic Theme was a theme covering the western, the modern Turkish form of Anatolia is Anadolu, which again derives from the Greek name Aνατολή. The Russian male name Anatoly and the French Anatole share the same linguistic origin, in English the name of Turkey for ancient Anatolia first appeared c. It is derived from the Medieval Latin Turchia, which was used by the Europeans to define the Seljuk controlled parts of Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert. Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to the Paleolithic, neolithic Anatolia has been proposed as the homeland of the Indo-European language family, although linguists tend to favour a later origin in the steppes north of the Black Sea. However, it is clear that the Anatolian languages, the oldest branch of Indo-European, have spoken in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BC. The earliest historical records of Anatolia stem from the southeast of the region and are from the Mesopotamian-based Akkadian Empire during the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC, scholars generally believe the earliest indigenous populations of Anatolia were the Hattians and Hurrians. The region was famous for exporting raw materials, and areas of Hattian-, one of the numerous cuneiform records dated circa 20th century BC, found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh, uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language, originating from Nesa, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BC, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations. According to the most widely accepted Kurgan theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland, however, the Hittites adopted the cuneiform script, invented in Mesopotamia
7.
Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
8.
Karain Cave
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For other uses of Karain, see Karain. Karain Cave is a Paleolithic archaeological site located at Yağca Village 27 km northwest of Antalya city in the Mediterranean region of Turkey, Karain is a complex of caves that consists of three main chambers and corridors, separated by calcite walls, narrow curves and passageways. A fragment of a Neanderthal cranium discovered and dated confirms human habitation since the early Paleolithic age between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. Researchers documented the continuity of presence in the cave for a period of more than 25,000 years, from the Mesolithic, through the Neolithic. Paleolithic and Neolithic flint blades, scrapers and arrowheads, some made in Levallois technique were discovered, in the subsequent layers lithic figurines and bone sculptures have been found, that suggest relations to the nearby Hacılar culture. This discovery may corroborate a relationship of the population of southern Asia Minor. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations hosts a collection of Karain artifacts. Antalya governors official website - Karain Some artifacts found during the excavations at Karain
9.
Gordium
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Gordium was the capital city of ancient Phrygia. It was located at the site of modern Yassıhüyük, about 70–80 km southwest of Ankara, Excavations have continued at the site under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania Museum with an international team. Gordium lies where the ancient road between Lydia and Assyria/Babylonia crossed the Sangarius river, in the 12th century BCE, Gordium was settled by Brygians who had migrated from southeastern Europe. During the 9th and 8th centuries BCE, the city grew into the capital of a kingdom that controlled much of Asia Minor west of the river Halys, the kings of Phrygia built large tombs near Gordium called tumuli, which consist of artificial mounds constructed over burial chambers. There are about one hundred of them, covering both cremations and inhumations, in the 8th century, the lower city and the area to the north of the citadel was surrounded by a circuit wall with regularly spaced towers. The most famous king of Phrygia was the quasi-legendary Midas, contemporary Assyrian sources dating between c.718 and 709 BCE call him Mit-ta-a. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, King Midas was the first foreigner to make an offering at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, dedicating the throne from which he gave judgment. During his reign, according to Strabo, the nomadic Cimmerians invaded Asia Minor, in Strabos account, King Midas committed suicide by drinking bulls blood when the Cimmerians overran the city. Tumulus MM, the Great Tumulus, is the largest burial mound at Gordium, standing over 50 meters high today, with a diameter of about 300 meters. The Tumulus MM funeral ceremony has been reconstructed, and scientists have determined that the guests at the banquet ate lamb or goat stew and it is now generally assumed to be the tomb of Midas father Gordias, and was probably the first monumental project of Midas after his accession. There is ample evidence of burning of the city mound of Gordium. Archaeologists at first interpreted the destruction level as the remains of a Cimmerian attack, the traces were later reinterpreted as dating to c.800 BCE, largely on the basis of dendrochronology and radiocarbon analysis, and with reference to the types of objects found in the burned level. If this reinterpretation is correct, then the destruction would seem to have been caused by a conflagration unrelated to a Cimmerian attack. The earlier date, though, is contested, primarily on the basis of the types and styles of objects excavated in the destruction level, the radiocarbon date seems to have a range wide enough to accommodate both proposed archaeological dates. Although the date of the destruction continues to be debated, a date of c.800 BCE is now most-commonly accepted. According to ancient tradition, in 333 BCE Alexander the Great cut the Gordian Knot, the wagon was associated with Midas or Gordias, and was connected with the dynastys rise to power. A local prophecy had decreed that whoever could loosen the knot was destined to become the ruler of Asia. Peter Grave, Lisa Kealhofer, Ben Marsh, G. Kenneth Sams, Mary Voigt, Keith DeVries, Ceramic production and provenience at Gordion, Central Anatolia, Journal of Archaeological Science,36, Gordion Excavations Final Reports Vol. III, The Bronze Age
10.
European Museum of the Year Award
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The European Museum of the Year Award is the longest running and most prestigious museum award in Europe, presented each year by the European Museum Forum under the auspices of the Council of Europe. It was founded in 1977 by journalist, anti-museologist, broadcaster, museums in 47 European countries, all members of the Council of Europe, can take part in the competition if they are newly opened or have undergone modernization or expansion in the past two years. Aim of the European Museum of the Year Award is to excellence in the European museum scene and to encourage. EMYA is awarded to two kinds of museums, Established museums that have undergone modernization or expansion during the past two years, new museums opened to the public in the previous two years. Two more awards are presented by the European Museum Forum, the Kenneth Hudson Award. See European Museum Forum for more information, Kenneth Hudson Award Europa Nostra The Best in Heritage European Museum Forum Official Website
11.
Artifact (archaeology)
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An artifact or artefact is. something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest. In archaeology, however, the word has become a term of particular nuance and is defined as, an object recovered by archaeological endeavor, which may have a cultural interest. However, modern archaeologists take care to distinguish material culture from ethnicity, examples include stone tools, pottery vessels, metal objects such as weapons, and items of personal adornment such as buttons, jewelry and clothing. Bones that show signs of modification are also examples. Natural objects, such as fire cracked rocks from a hearth or plant material used for food, are classified by archeologists as ecofacts rather than as artifacts, natural objects that humans have moved but not changed are called manuports. Examples include seashells moved inland, or rounded pebbles placed away from the action that made them. For instance, a bone removed from a carcass is a biofact. Similarly there can be debate over early stone objects that could be either crude artifacts or naturally occurring and it can be difficult to distinguish the differences between actual man-made lithic artifacts and geofacts – naturally occurring lithics that resemble man-made tools. It is possible to authenticate artifacts by examining the general attributed to man-made tools. Artifact Collection at the Royal Military College of Canada Museum in Kingston, Ontario
12.
Education
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Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has an effect on the way one thinks, feels. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy, in most regions education is compulsory up to a certain age. Etymologically, the education is derived from the Latin ēducātiō from ēducō which is related to the homonym ēdūcō from ē-. Education began in prehistory, as trained the young in the knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation, story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be learned through imitation. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom, plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, there, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE476, after the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early Middle Ages as centres of advanced education, some of these establishments ultimately evolved into medieval universities and forebears of many of Europes modern universities. During the High Middle Ages, Chartres Cathedral operated the famous, founded in 1088, the University of Bologne is considered the first, and the oldest continually operating university. The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry and appreciation of ancient Greek, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education in philosophy, religion, arts, the Enlightenment saw the emergence of a more secular educational outlook in Europe. In most countries today, full-time education, whether at school or otherwise, is compulsory for all children up to a certain age, formal education occurs in a structured environment whose explicit purpose is teaching students. Usually, formal education takes place in a environment with classrooms of multiple students learning together with a trained, certified teacher of the subject. Most school systems are designed around a set of values or ideals that govern all educational choices in that system, such choices include curriculum, organizational models, design of the physical learning spaces, student-teacher interactions, methods of assessment, class size, educational activities, and more
13.
Caravanserai
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A caravanserai (/kærəˈvænsəri/, was a roadside inn where travelers could rest and recover from the days journey. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the network of routes covering Asia, North Africa. Major urban caravanserais were built along the Grand Trunk Road in the Indian subcontinent. The word is rendered as caravansary, caravansaray, caravanseray. The Persian word کاروانسرای kārvānsarāy is a word combining kārvān caravan with sarāy palace, building with enclosed courts. Here caravan means a group of traders, pilgrims, or other travelers, the word serai is sometimes used with the implication of caravanserai. The Persian caravanserai was built as a road station, outside of towns. An inn built inside a town would be smaller and was known in Persian as a khan, in the Middle-East the term khan covers both meanings, of roadside inn as well as of inner-town inn. In Turkish the word is rendered as han, the same word was used in Bosnian, having arrived through Ottoman conquest. Welcoming all, thus meaning inn, led to funduq in Arabic, pundak in Hebrew, fundaco in Venice, fondaco in Genoa and alhóndiga in Spanish. Guards were stationed at every gate to ensure that taxes for these goods be paid in full, most typically a caravanserai was a building with a square or rectangular walled exterior, with a single portal wide enough to permit large or heavily laden beasts such as camels to enter. Caravanserais provided water for human and animal consumption, washing, and ritual purification such as wudu and they also kept fodder for animals and had shops for travelers where they could acquire new supplies. In addition, some shops bought goods from the traveling merchants, turkishhan. org, The Seljuk Han in Anatolia. Encyclopædia Iranica, p. 798-802 Erdmann, Kurt, Erdmann, berlin, Mann,1976, ISBN 3-7861-2241-5 Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture, Form, function and meaning, reprinted from, Traditions Architecturales en Iran, Tehran, No.2 &3,1976. Caravanserai, Traces, Places, Dialogue in the Middle East, milan,5 Continents Editions, ISBN 978-88-7439-604-7 Yavuz, Aysil Tükel. The Concepts that Shape Anatolian Seljuq Caravansara, muqarnas XIV, An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World. Shah Abbasi Caravanserai, Tishineh Caravansara Pictures Consideratcaravanserai. net, Texts and photos on research on caravanserais and travel journeys in Middle East, caravanserais in Turkey The Seljuk Han in Anatolia
14.
Mehmed the Conqueror
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Mehmed II, commonly known as Mehmed the Conqueror, was an Ottoman sultan who ruled first for a short time from August 1444 to September 1446, and later from February 1451 to May 1481. At the age of 21, he conquered Constantinople and brought an end to the Eastern Roman Empire, Mehmed continued his conquests in Anatolia with its reunification and in Southeast Europe as far west as Bosnia. Mehmed is considered a hero in modern-day Turkey and parts of the wider Muslim world, among other things, Istanbuls Fatih district, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge and Fatih Mosque are named after him. Mehmed II was born on 30 March 1432, in Edirne and his father was Sultan Murad II and his mother Hüma Valide Hatun, born in the town of Devrekani, Kastamonu. When Mehmed II was eleven years old he was sent to Amasya to govern and thus gain experience, Sultan Murad II also sent a number of teachers for him to study under. This Islamic education had an impact in molding Mehmeds mindset. He was influenced in his practice of Islamic epistemology by practitioners of science - particularly by his mentor, Molla Gürani -, after Murad II made peace with the Karamanids in Anatolia in August 1444, he abdicated the throne to his 12-year-old son Mehmed II. In Mehmed IIs first reign, he defeated the crusade led by János Hunyadi after the Hungarian incursions into his country broke the conditions of the truce Peace of Szeged. Cardinal Julian Cesarini, the representative of the pope, had convinced the king of Hungary that breaking the truce with Muslims was not a betrayal, at this time Mehmed II asked his father Murad II to reclaim the throne, but Murad II refused. Angry at his father, who had long retired to a contemplative life in southwestern Anatolia, Mehmed II wrote, If you are the Sultan, come. If I am the Sultan I hereby order you to come and it was only after receiving this letter that Murad II led the Ottoman army and won the Battle of Varna in 1444. When Mehmed II ascended the throne again in 1451 he devoted himself to strengthening the Ottoman navy, having completed his fortresses, Mehmed proceeded to levy a toll on ships passing within reach of their cannon. Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, the companion and standard bearer of Muhammad, had died during the first Siege of Constantinople, as Mehmed IIs army approached Constantinople, Mehmeds sheikh Akshamsaddin discovered the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. After the conquest, Mehmed built Eyüp Sultan Mosque at the site to emphasize the importance of the conquest to the Islamic world, in early April, the Siege of Constantinople began. At first, the walls held off the Turks, even though Mehmeds army used the new bombard designed by Orban. The harbor of the Golden Horn was blocked by a boom chain, thus the Byzantines stretched their troops over a longer portion of the walls. About a month later, Constantinople fell, on 29 May, after this conquest, Mehmed moved the Ottoman capital from Adrianople to Constantinople. The contemporary scholar George of Trebizond supported his claim, the claim was recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church, but not by the Catholic Church and most of, if not all, Western Europe
15.
Istanbul
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Istanbul, historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium, is the most populous city in Turkey and the countrys economic, cultural, and historic center. Istanbul is a city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosphorus strait between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives on the Asian side, the city is the administrative center of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, both hosting a population of around 14.7 million residents. Istanbul is one of the worlds most populous cities and ranks as the worlds 7th-largest city proper, founded under the name of Byzantion on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE, the city developed to become one of the most significant in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE, it served as a capital for almost 16 centuries, during the Roman and Byzantine, the Latin. Overlooked for the new capital Ankara during the period, the city has since regained much of its prominence. The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in, arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established at the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today. Infrastructure improvements have produced a complex transportation network, considered a global city, Istanbul has one of the fastest-growing metropolitan economies in the world. It hosts the headquarters of many Turkish companies and media outlets and accounts for more than a quarter of the gross domestic product. Hoping to capitalize on its revitalization and rapid expansion, Istanbul has bid for the Summer Olympics five times in twenty years, the first known name of the city is Byzantium, the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE. The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin. He also attempted to promote the name Nova Roma and its Greek version Νέα Ῥώμη Nea Romē, the use of Constantinople to refer to the city during the Ottoman period is now considered politically incorrect, even if not historically inaccurate, by Turks. By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, pera was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu. The name İstanbul is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase εἰς τὴν Πόλιν and this reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was reflected by its Ottoman name Der Saadet meaning the gate to Prosperity in Ottoman. An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from the name Constantinople, with the first, a Turkish folk etymology traces the name to Islam bol plenty of Islam because the city was called Islambol or Islambul as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire
16.
Palaeolithic Age
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The Paleolithic is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools and covers roughly 95% of human technological prehistory. It extends from the earliest known use of tools, probably by Homo habilis initially,2.6 million years ago. The Paleolithic era is followed by the Mesolithic, the date of the Paleolithic–Mesolithic boundary may vary by locality as much as several thousand years. During the Paleolithic period, humans grouped together in small societies such as bands, the Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers, however, due to their nature, surviving artifacts of the Paleolithic era are known as paleoliths. About 50,000 years ago, there was a increase in the diversity of artifacts. For the first time in Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archaeological record, the first evidence of human fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. The new technology generated an explosion of modern humans which is believed to have led to the extinction of the Neanderthals. Humankind gradually evolved from members of the genus Homo—such as Homo habilis. The climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures, by c. 50,000 – c. 40,000 BP, the first humans set foot in Australia. By c. 45,000 BP, humans lived at 61°N latitude in Europe, by c. 30,000 BP, Japan was reached, and by c. 27,000 BP humans were present in Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed Beringia, the term Paleolithic was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek, παλαιός, palaios, old, and λίθος, lithos, stone, human evolution is the part of biological evolution concerning the emergence of anatomically modern humans as a distinct species. The Paleolithic Period coincides almost exactly with the Pleistocene epoch of geologic time and this epoch experienced important geographic and climatic changes that affected human societies. During the preceding Pliocene, continents had continued to drift from possibly as far as 250 km from their present locations to positions only 70 km from their current location. South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama, most of Central America formed during the Pliocene to connect the continents of North and South America, allowing fauna from these continents to leave their native habitats and colonize new areas. Africas collision with Asia created the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean, climates during the Pliocene became cooler and drier, and seasonal, similar to modern climates. The formation of an Arctic ice cap around 3 million years ago is signaled by a shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic
17.
Neolithic
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It ended when metal tools became widespread. The Neolithic is a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant about 10, 200–8800 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufian period was between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, and the so-called proto-Neolithic is now included in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic between 10,200 and 8800 BC. By 10, 200–8800 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa, Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order, the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture, unlike the Paleolithic, when more than one human species existed, only one human species reached the Neolithic. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, new and λίθος líthos, stone, the term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC, early development occurred in the Levant and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards, the Neolithic 1 period began roughly 10,000 years ago in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated around 9500 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, Israel, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming, in the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour, emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated
18.
Mount Hasan
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Mount Hasan is an inactive stratovolcano in Aksaray province, Turkey. With an elevation of 3,268 m, it ranks as the second highest mountain of central Anatolia, a caldera 4-5 kilometres wide formed near the current summit around 7500 BC, in an eruption recorded in Neolithic paintings. The ancient settlement of Çatalhöyük collected obsidian from the area of Hasan Dağ, obsidian mirrors and flakes have also been found. It was the mountain from the south in the Byzantine beacon system used to warn the Byzantine capital of Constantinople of incursions during the Arab–Byzantine wars. Approximately a six hours walk is required to climb to the top of the mountain from the highest point accessible by car, the summit offers a fabulous view over the central Anatolian plateau, including distant Cappadocia. List of volcanoes in Turkey List of Ultras of West Asia Hasan Dagi
19.
Chalcolithic
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The Copper Age was originally defined as a transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The archaeological site of Belovode on the Rudnik mountain in Serbia contains the worlds oldest securely dated evidence of copper smelting from 5000 BCE, the multiple names result from multiple recognitions of the period. Originally, the term Bronze Age meant that either copper or bronze was being used as the hard substance for the manufacture of tools. In 1881, John Evans, recognizing that the use of copper often preceded the use of bronze and he did not include the transitional period in the tripartite system of Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age but placed it at the beginning outside of it. He did not, however, present it as a fourth age, in 1884, Gaetano Chierici, perhaps following the lead of Evans, renamed it in Italian as the Eneo-litica, or Bronze-stone transition. The phrase was never intended to mean that the period was the one in which both bronze and stone were used. The Copper Age features the use of copper, excluding bronze, moreover, litica simply names the Stone Age as the point from which the transition began and is not another -lithic age. Subsequently, British scholars used either Evanss Copper Age or the term Eneolithic, around 1900, many writers began to substitute Chalcolithic for Eneolithic, to avoid the false segmentation. It was then that the misunderstanding began among those who did not know Italian, the -lithic was seen as a new -lithic age, a part of the Stone Age in which copper was used, which may appear paradoxical. Today Copper Age, Eneolithic and Chalcolithic are used synonymously to mean Evanss original definition of Copper Age, there was an independent invention of copper and bronze smelting first by Andean civilizations in South America extended later by sea commerce to the Mesoamerican civilization in West Mexico. The literature of European archaeology, in general, avoids the use of Chalcolithic, the Copper Age in the Middle East and the Caucasus began in the late 5th millennium BCE and lasted for about a millennium before it gave rise to the Early Bronze Age. The transition from the European Copper Age to Bronze Age Europe occurs about the same time, an archaeological site in Serbia contains the oldest securely dated evidence of coppermaking from 7,500 years ago. In Serbia, an axe was found at Prokuplje, which indicates that humans were using metals in Europe by 7,500 years ago. Knowledge of the use of copper was far more widespread than the metal itself, the European Battle Axe culture used stone axes modeled on copper axes, even with imitation mold marks carved in the stone. Ötzi the Iceman, who was found in the Ötztal Alps in 1991, examples of Chalcolithic cultures in Europe include Vila Nova de São Pedro and Los Millares on the Iberian Peninsula. Pottery of the Beaker people has found at both sites, dating to several centuries after copper-working began there. The Beaker culture appears to have copper and bronze technologies in Europe. The term Chalcolithic is not generally used by British prehistorians, who disagree whether it applies in the British context, in Bhirrana, the earliest Indus civilization site, copper bangles and arrowheads were found
20.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
21.
Hattusa
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Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the loop of the Kızılırmak River. Hattusa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1986, the landscape surrounding the city included rich agricultural fields and hill lands for pasture as well as woods. Smaller woods are found outside the city, but in ancient times. This meant the inhabitants had an excellent supply of timber when building their houses, the fields provided the people with a subsistence crop of wheat, barley and lentils. Flax was also harvested, but their source for clothing was sheep wool. They also hunted deer in the forest, but this was only a luxury reserved for the nobility. There were several settlements in the vicinity, such as the rock shrine at Yazılıkaya. Since the rivers in the area are unsuitable for major ships, all transport to, before 2000 BC, the apparently indigenous Hattian people established a settlement on sites that had been occupied even earlier and referred to the site as Hattush. The Hattians built their settlement on the high ridge of Büyükkale. The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the sixth millennium BC, in the 19th and 18th centuries BC, merchants from Assur in Assyria established a trading post there, setting up in their own separate quarter of the city. The center of their network was located in Kanesh. Business dealings required record-keeping, the network from Assur introduced writing to Hattusa. A carbonized layer apparent in excavations attests to the burning and ruin of the city of Hattusa around 1700 BC, only a generation later, a Hittite-speaking king chose the site as his residence and capital. The Hittite language had been gaining speakers at the expense of Hattic for some time, the Hattic Hattush now became the Hittite Hattusa, and the king took the name of Hattusili, the one from Hattusa. Hattusili marked the beginning of a non-Hattic-speaking Hittite state and of a line of Hittite Great Kings,27 of whom are now known by name. After the Kaskas arrived to the north, they twice attacked the city to the point where the kings had to move the royal seat to another city. Under Tudhaliya I, the Hittites moved north to Sapinuwa, returning later, under Muwatalli II, they moved south to Tarhuntassa but assigned Hattusili III as governor over Hattusa
22.
Battle of Kadesh
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The battle is generally dated to 1274 BC in the conventional Egyptian chronology, and is the earliest battle in recorded history for which details of tactics and formations are known. It is believed to have been the largest chariot battle ever fought, as a result of the multiple Kadesh inscriptions, it is the best documented battle in all of ancient history. After expelling the Hyksos 15th dynasty around 1550 BC, the native Egyptian New Kingdom rulers became more aggressive in reclaiming control of their states borders. Thutmose I, Thutmose III and his son and coregent Amenhotep II fought battles from Megiddo north to the Orontes River, many of the Egyptian campaign accounts between c.1400 and 1300 BC reflect the general destabilization of the region of the Djahi. The reigns of Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III were undistinguished, except that Egypt continued to lose territory to Mitanni in northern Syria, during the late Egyptian 18th dynasty, the Amarna Letters tell the story of the decline of Egyptian influence in the region. The Egyptians showed flagging interest here until almost the end of the dynasty, horemheb, the last ruler of this dynasty, campaigned in this region, finally beginning to turn Egyptian interest back to this region. This process continued in the 19th Dynasty, like his father Ramesses I, Seti I was a military commander and set out to restore Egypts empire to the days of the Tuthmosis kings almost a century before. Inscriptions on Karnak temple walls record the details of his campaigns into Canaan and he took 20,000 men and reoccupied abandoned Egyptian posts and garrisoned cities. He made a peace with the Hittites, took control of coastal areas along the Mediterranean. A second campaign led to his capture of Kadesh and Amurru and his son and heir Ramesses II campaigned with him. There are historical records that record a large weapons order by Ramesses II in the prior to the expedition he led to Kadesh in his fifth regnal year. However, at point, both regions may have lapsed back into Hittite control. What exactly happened to Amurru is disputed, the Hittitologist Trevor Bryce suggests that, although it may have fallen once again under Hittite control, it is more likely Amurru remained a Hittite vassal state. The immediate antecedents to the Battle of Kadesh were the campaigns of Ramesses II into Canaan. In the fourth year of his reign, he marched north into Syria, either to recapture Amurru or, as an effort, to confirm his vassals loyalty. The recovery of Amurru was Muwatallis stated motivation for marching south to confront the Egyptians, Ramesses marched north in the fifth year of his reign and encountered the Hittites at Kadesh. Ramesses army crossed the Egyptian border in the spring of year five of his reign and, after a months march, in the spring of the fifth year of his reign, in May 1274 BC, Ramesses II launched his campaign from his capital Pi-Ramesses. The army moved beyond the fortress of Tjel and along the coast leading to Gaza, Ramesses led an army of four divisions, Amun, Re, Seth and the apparently newly formed Ptah division
23.
Phrygia
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In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, centered on the Sakarya River. This later Midas was, however, also the last independent king of Phrygia before Cimmerians sacked the Phrygian capital, Gordium, Phrygia then became subject to Lydia, and then successively to Persia, Alexander and his Hellenistic successors, Pergamon, Rome and Byzantium. Phrygians gradually became assimilated into other cultures by the medieval era, after the Turkish conquest of Anatolia. Phrygia describes an area on the end of the high Anatolian plateau. The climate is harsh with hot summers and cold winters, olives will not easily grow here and the land is used for livestock grazing. South of Dorylaeum, there is another important Phrygian settlement, Midas City, situated in an area of hills, to the south again, central Phrygia includes the cities of Afyonkarahisar with its marble quarries at nearby Docimium, and the town of Synnada. At the western end of Phrygia stood the towns of Aizanoi, from here to the southwest lies the hilly area of Phrygia that contrasts to the bare plains of the regions heartland. Southwestern Phrygia is watered by the Maeander and its tributary the Lycus, one of the so-called Homeric Hymns describes the Phrygian language as not mutually intelligible with that of Troy. According to ancient tradition among Greek historians, the Phrygians anciently migrated to Anatolia from the Balkans, Herodotus says that the Phrygians were called Bryges when they lived in Europe. Some classical writers also connected the Phrygians with the Mygdones, the name of two groups of people, one of which lived in northern Macedonia and another in Mysia. The classical historian Strabo groups Phrygians, Mygdones, Mysians, Bebryces, Phrygian continued to be spoken until the 6th century AD, though its distinctive alphabet was lost earlier than those of most Anatolian cultures. The so-called Handmade Knobbed Ware found in Western Anatolia during this period has been identified as an import connected to this invasion. These scholars seek instead to trace the Phrygians origins among the nations of western Anatolia who were subject to the Hittites. Some scholars dismiss the claim of a Phrygian migration as a mere legend, no one has conclusively identified which of the many subjects of the Hittites might have represented early Phrygians. Josephus called Togarmah the Thrugrammeans, who, as the Greeks resolved, were named Phrygians, however, the Greek source cited by Josephus is unknown, and it is unclear if there was any basis for the identification other than name similarity. Scholars of the Hittites believe Tegarama was in eastern Anatolia - some locate it at Gurun - far to the east of Phrygia, some scholars have identified Phrygia with the Assuwa league, and noted that the Iliad mentions a Phrygian named Asios. Another possible early name of Phrygia could be Hapalla, the name of the easternmost province that emerged from the splintering of the Bronze Age western Anatolian empire Arzawa, however, scholars are unsure if Hapalla corresponds to Phrygia or to Pisidia, further south. Herodotus also claims that Phrygian colonists founded the Armenian nation, however, little is known about these eastern Mygdones, and no evidence of Phrygian language in that region has been found
24.
Syro-Hittite states
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They proceeded to destroy almost all Hittite sites but were finally defeated by the Assyrians beyond the southern borders near the Tigris. Hatti, Arzawa, Alashiya, Ugarit and Alalakh were destroyed, hattusa, the Hittite capital, was completely destroyed. Syro-Hittite states emerged in the process of major landscape transformation, in the form of regional states with new political structures. The Syro–Hittite states may be divided into two groups, a group where Hittite rulers remained in power, and a southern group where Aramaeans came to rule from about 1000 BC. These states were highly decentralised structures, some appear to have been only loose confederations of sub-kingdoms, the Early Iron Age in Northern Mesopotamia also saw a gradual spread of alphabetic writing in Aramaic and Phoenician. Assyria Aramaeans Aram Damascus Bronze Age collapse Stele of Zakkur Sakçagözü Neo-Hittite Monuments
25.
Malatya
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Malatya is a large city in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and the capital of Malatya Province. The city has been a settlement for thousands of years. The Assyrians called the city Meliddu, Strabo says that the city was known to the ancients as Melitene, a name adopted by the Romans following Roman expansion into the east. According to Strabo, the inhabitants of Melitene shared with the nearby Cappadocians and Cataonians the same language, the site of ancient Melitene lies a few kilometres from the modern city in what is now the village of Arslantepe and near the dependant district center of Battalgazi. Present-day Battalgazi was the location of the city of Malatya until the 19th century, battalgazis official name was Eskimalatya, until recently, it was a name used locally. Arslantepe has been inhabited since the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, from the Bronze Age, the site became an administrative center of a larger region in the kingdom of Isuwa. The city was fortified, probably due to the Hittite menace from the west. The Hittites conquered the city in the fourteenth century B. C, in Hittite, melid or milit means honey, offering a possible etymology for the name, which was mentioned in the contemporary sources of the time under several variations. After the end of the Hittite empire, the city became the center of the Neo-Hittite state of Kammanu, the city continued old Hittite traditions and styles. Researchers have discovered a palace inside the city walls with statues, the people erected a palace, accompanied by monumental stone sculptures of lions and the ruler. Kammanu was vassal state of Urartu between 804 and 743, the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I forced the kingdom of Malidiya to pay tribute to Assyria. Malidiya continued to prosper until the Assyrian king Sargon II sacked the city in 712 BC, at the same time, the Cimmerians and Scythians invaded Asia Minor and the city declined. Some occupation continued on the site into the Hellenistic and Roman periods — a smithy with four ovens has been excavated from the Roman period, there was a long gap in occupation between the mid-7th century and renewed use of the site in the late 12th or early 13th century. Archeologists first began to excavate the site of Arslantepe in the 1930s, since 1961, an Italian team of archaeologists, today led by Marcella Frangipane, has been working at the site. The Kingdom of Cappadocia, ruled by the House of Ariobarzanes, after the Kingdoms annexation by the Roman Empire in 17 AD, the settlement was re-established as Melitene in 72 AD on a different site, as the base camp of Legio XII Fulminata. The legionary base of Melitene controlled access to southern Armenia and the upper Tigris and it was the end point of the important highway running east from Caesarea. The camp attracted a population and was probably granted city status by Trajan in the early 2nd century AD. It is known for being a source of imperial coins minted from the 3rd to the early 5th centuries
26.
Melid
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Melid was an ancient city on the Tohma River, a tributary of the upper Euphrates rising in the Taurus Mountains. It has been identified with archaeological site Arslantepe near Malatya. The site has been inhabited since the development of agriculture in the fertile crescent dating to the Uruk period, around 3000 BCE, there was widespread burning and destruction, after which Kura-Araxes culture pottery appeared in the area. This was a mainly pastoralist culture connected with Caucasus mountains, numerous similarities have been found between these early layers at Arslantepe, and the somewhat later site of Birecik, also in Turkey, to the southwest of Melid. From the Bronze Age the site became a center of a larger region in the kingdom of Isuwa. The city was fortified, probably due to the Hittite threat from the west. The Hittites conquered the city in the fourteenth century BC, in the mid 14th century BC, Melid was the base of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I on his campaign to sack the Mitanni capital Wassukanni. After the end of the Hittite empire, from the 12th to 7th century BC, a palace was built and monumental stone sculptures of lions and the ruler erected. The encounter with the Assyrian king of Tiglath-Pileser I resulted in the kingdom of Melid being forced to pay tribute to Assyria, Melid remained able to prosper until the Assyrian king Sargon II sacked the city in 712 BC. At the same time, the Cimmerians and Scythians invaded Anatolia, Arslantepe was first investigated by the French archaeologist Louis Delaporte from 1932 to 1939. From 1946 to 1951 Claude F. A. Schaeffer carried out some soundings, the first Italian excavations at the site of Arslantepe started in 1961, and were conducted under the direction of Professors Piero Meriggi and Salvatore M. Puglisi until 1968. Majestic remains of this period were known from Arslantepe since the 30s, alba Palmieri took over the supervision of the excavation during the 1970s. Today the archaeological investigation is led by Marcella Frangipane, the first swords were claimed for the Early Bronze Age, based on finds at Arslantepe by Marcella Frangipane of Rome University. A cache of nine swords and daggers was found, they are composed of arsenic-copper alloy, among them, three swords were beautifully inlaid with silver. These are the weapons of a length of 45 to 60 cm which could be described as either short swords or long daggers. These discoveries were made back in the 1980s and they belong to the local phase VI A. Also,12 spearheads were found. Phase VI A at Arslantepe ended in destruction - the city was burned, and later on, some new occupants also left some bronze weapons, including swords. They were found in the tomb of Signori Arslantepe or Signor Arslantepe
27.
Carchemish
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Carchemish, also spelled Karkemish, was an important ancient capital in the northern part of the region of Syria. At times during its history the city was independent, but it was part of the Mitanni, Hittite. Today it is on the frontier between Turkey and Syria and it was the location of an important battle, about 605 BC, between the Babylonians and Egyptians, mentioned in the Bible. Carchemish is now a set of ruins, located on the West bank of Euphrates River, about 60 kilometres southeast of Gaziantep, Turkey. The site is crossed by the Baghdad Railway that now forms the Turco-Syrian border, a Turkish military base has been built on the Carchemish acropolis and Inner Town, and access to that part of the site is presently restricted. Most of the Outer Town lies in Syrian territory, Carchemish has always been well known to scholars because of several references to it in the Bible and in Egyptian and Assyrian texts. However, its location was identified only in 1876 by George Smith, the site was excavated by the British Museum, between 1878 and 1881 through Consul Patrick Henderson and between 1911 and 1914 under the direction of D. G. Hogarth. In 1911 on the field there were D. G. Hogarth himself, R. C. Thompson, and T. E. Lawrence, from 1912 to 1914 C. L. Woolley and T. E. Lawrence, while a last campaign took place in 1920 with C. L. Woolley and Philip Langstaffe Ord Guy. Excavations were interrupted in 1914 by World War I and then ended in 1920 with the Turkish War of Independence, with the completion of mine clearing operations on the Turkish portion of the site, archaeological work was resumed in September 2011. Excavations in the Inner and Outer Towns were carried out by a joint Turco-Italian team from the Universities of Bologna, Gaziantep and Istanbul under the direction of Prof. Dr. Nicolò Marchetti. The second season, from August to November 2012, brought new art findings and archaeological discoveries. In the Neo Assyrian period that courtyard was covered by a floor made of river pebbles forming squares alternating in black. Lawrences excavation house was completely excavated, the sixth season, from 2 May to 20 July 2016, saw a number of excavation areas opened also near the border, due to the added security represented by the construction of the wall. Thus, in 2016 a complete record was obtained also for peripheral areas. Among the finds, in addition to new sculpted artworks from the Iron Age, fragments of Imperial Hittite clay cuneiform tablets, conservation and presentation works have now been completed in view of the opening on 2 May 2017 of an archaeological park at the site. The field assessment of the Syrian part of the Outer Town documented that parts of the border town of Jerablus encroached upon the Outer Town. In February 2016, a prefabricated security wall has been completed by the Turkish Army to the south of the railway, the site has been occupied since the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, with cist tombs from ca.2400 BC
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Urartu
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Urartu, also known as Kingdom of Van, was an Iron Age kingdom centred on Lake Van in the Armenian Highlands. It corresponds to the biblical Kingdom of Ararat, the language appears in cuneiform inscriptions. It is argued on linguistic evidence that came in contact with Urartian at an early date. That a distinction should be made between the geographical and the entity was already pointed out by König. The landscape corresponds to the plateau between Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Iranian Plateau, and the Caucasus Mountains, later known as the Armenian Highlands. The kingdom rose to power in the mid-ninth century BC, the heirs of Urartu are the Armenians and their successive kingdoms. The name Urartu comes from Assyrian sources, Shalmaneser I recorded a campaign in which he subdued the entire territory of Uruatri, the Shalmaneser text uses the name Urartu to refer to a geographical region, not a kingdom, and names eight lands contained within Urartu. Urartu is cognate with the Biblical Ararat, Akkadian Urashtu and Armenian Ayrarat, the Urartian toponym Biainili was adopted in the Old Armenian as Van, Վան. Hence the names Kingdom of Van or Vannic Kingdom, scholars such as Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Lehmann-Haupt believed that the people of Urartu called themselves Khaldini after the god Ḫaldi. Boris Piotrovsky wrote that the Urartians first appear in history in the 13th century BC as a league of tribes or countries which did not yet constitute a unitary state. In the Assyrian annals the term Uruatri as a name for this league was superseded during a period of years by the term land of Nairi. Scholars believe that Urartu is an Akkadian variation of Ararat of the Old Testament, indeed, Mount Ararat is located in ancient Urartian territory, approximately 120 kilometres north of its former capital. In addition to referring to the famous Biblical mountain, Ararat also appears as the name of a kingdom in Jeremiah 51,27, mentioned together with Minni, in the early sixth century BC, Urartu was replaced by the Armenian Orontid Dynasty. Shupria was part of the Urartu confederation, later, there is reference to a district in the area called Arme or Urme, which some scholars have linked to the name of Armenia. At its apogee, Urartu stretched from the borders of northern Mesopotamia to the southern Caucasus, including present-day Armenia, archaeological sites within its boundaries include Altintepe, Toprakkale, Patnos and Haykaberd. Urartu fortresses included Erebuni, Van Fortress, Argishtihinili, Anzaf, Haykaberd, schulz discovered and copied numerous cuneiform inscriptions, partly in Assyrian and partly in a hitherto unknown language. Schulz also re-discovered the Kelishin stele, bearing an Assyrian-Urartian bilingual inscription, a summary account of his initial discoveries was published in 1828. Schulz and four of his servants were murdered by Kurds in 1829 near Başkale and his notes were later recovered and published in Paris in 1840
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Van, Turkey
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Van is a city in eastern Turkeys Van Province, located on the eastern shore of Lake Van. The city has a history as a major urban area. It has been a city since the first millennium BC, initially as the capital of Urartu in the 9th century BC. It remained an important center of Armenian culture until the Armenian Genocide of 1915, today, Van has a Kurdish majority and a sizeable Turkish minority. The Van Central district stretches over 2,289 square kilometres, archaeological excavations and surveys carried out in Van province indicate that the history of human settlement in this region goes back at least as far as 5000 BC. The Tilkitepe Mound, which is on the shores of Lake Van, under the ancient name of Tushpa, Van was the capital of the Urartian kingdom in the 9th century BC. The early settlement was centered on the bluff now known as Van Castle, close to the edge of Lake Van. Here have been found Urartian cuneiform inscriptions dating to the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in the trilingual Behistun inscription, carved in the order of Darius the Great of Persia, the country referred to as Urartu in Babylonian is called Armenia in Old Persian. The name Van comes from the Urartian Biaina, the region came under the control of the Orontids in the 7th century BC and quickly later the Persians in the mid 6th century BC. The inscription survives in perfect condition and is divided into three columns of 27 lines written in Old Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite. In 331 BC, Van was conquered by Alexander the Great, by the early 2nd century BC it was part of the Kingdom of Armenia. It became an important center during the reign of the Armenian king, Tigranes II, in the early centuries BC, it fell to the emerging Arsacid dynasty of Parthia until the 3rd century AD. However, it fell once to the Arsacid Dynasty of Armenia in this timespan. In the History of Armenia attributed to Movses Khorenatsi, the city is called Tosp, following the fall of the Parthians and the emergence of the Neo-Persian Empire, better known as the Sassanian Empire, the town naturally fell into the possession of the latter. During the over 700 years lasting Roman-Persian Wars, some of the wars razed at or around the location of modern-day Van, decline in Arab power eventually allowed local Armenian rulers to re-emerge, with the Artsruni dynasty soon becoming the most powerful. Initially dependent on the rulers of the Kingdom of Ani, they declared their independence in 908, the kingdom had no specific capital, the court would move as the king transferred his residence from place to place, such as Van city, Vostan, Aghtamar, etc. In 1021 the last king of Vaspurakan, John-Senekerim Artsruni, ceded his kingdom to the Byzantine empire. Incursions by the Seljuk Turks into Vaspurakan started in the 1050s, after their victory in 1071 at the battle of Manzikert the entire region fell under their control
30.
Lydia
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Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, with Sardis as its capital, tabalus, appointed by Cyrus the Great, was the first satrap. Lydia was later the name of a Roman province, coins are said to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century BC. The endonym Śfard survives in bilingual and trilingual stone-carved notices of the Achaemenid Empire and these in the Greek tradition are associated with Sardis, the capital city of King Gyges, constructed during the 7th century BC. The region of the Lydian kingdom was during the 15th-14th centuries part of the Arzawa kingdom, the Lydian language is not part of the Luwian subgroup. An Etruscan/Lydian association has long been a subject of conjecture, however, recent decipherment of Lydian and its classification as an Anatolian language mean that Etruscan and Lydian were not even part of the same language family. The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries and it was bounded first by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal Ionia. Later, the power of Alyattes II and Croesus expanded Lydia. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions, the Lydian language was an Indo-European language in the Anatolian language family, related to Luwian and Hittite. It used many prefixes and grammatical particles, Lydian finally became extinct during the 1st century BC. Lydia developed after the decline of the Hittite Empire in the 12th century BC, in Hittite times, the name for the region had been Arzawa. According to Greek source, the name of the Lydian kingdom was Maionia, or Maeonia. Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde, Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis was located. Later, Herodotus adds that the Meiones were renamed Lydians after their king Lydus, son of Atys and this etiological eponym served to account for the Greek ethnic name Lydoi. During Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were famous archers, some Maeones still existed during historical times in the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town named Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder and Hierocles. In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization. Omphale, daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler of Lydia, all three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming Heracles as their ancestor
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Iron Age
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The Iron Age is an archaeological era, referring to a period of time in the prehistory and protohistory of the Old World when the dominant toolmaking material was iron. It is commonly preceded by the Bronze Age in Europe and Asia with exceptions, meteoric iron has been used by humans since at least 3200 BC. Ancient iron production did not become widespread until the ability to smelt ore, remove impurities. The start of the Iron Age proper is considered by many to fall between around 1200 BC and 600 BC, depending on the region, the earliest known iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200 BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh, Lower Egypt. They have been identified as meteoric iron shaped by careful hammering, meteoric iron, a characteristic iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. Such iron, being in its metallic state, required no smelting of ores. Smelted iron appears sporadically in the record from the middle Bronze Age. While terrestrial iron is abundant, its high melting point of 1,538 °C placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tins low melting point of 231, similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800 BC. By the Middle Bronze Age, increasing numbers of smelted iron objects appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC. Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of iron production in around 1200 BC. Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC, diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of objects was fast. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during this time, more widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger, and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently. Increasingly, the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India, ancient Iran, and ancient Greece. In other regions of Europe, the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe, the Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age, during the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, particularly alloys which were produced with a carbon content between approximately 0. 30% and 1. 2% by weight. Steel weapons and tools were nearly the same weight as those of bronze, however, steel was difficult to produce with the methods available, and alloys that were easier to make, such as wrought iron, were more common in lower-priced goods
32.
Gyges of Lydia
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Gyges was the founder of the third or Mermnad dynasty of Lydian kings and reigned from 716 BC to 678 BC. He was succeeded by his son Ardys II, Gyges was the son of Dascylus. Dascylus was recalled from banishment in Cappadocia by the Lydian king Candaules, on the way Gyges fell in love with Tudo, who complained to Sadyates of his conduct. Forewarned that the king intended to punish him with death, Gyges assassinated Candaules in the night and seized the throne. In his turn, the Lydian king took as his paidika Magnes, one day he was singing poetry to the local women, which outraged their male relatives, who grabbed Magnes, stripped him of his clothes and cut off his hair. According to Plutarch, Gyges seized power with the help of Arselis of Mylasa, the captain of the Lydian bodyguard, whom he had won over to his cause. In the account of Herodotus, which may be traced to the poet Archilochus of Paros, Gyges was a bodyguard of Candaules, finally, in the more allegorical account of Plato, a parallel account may be found. Here, Gyges was a shepherd, who discovered a ring of invisibility, by means of which he murdered the King. This account bears marked similarity to that of Herodotus, in all cases, civil war ensued on the death of the King, which was only ended when Gyges sought to justify his ascendance to the throne by petitioning for the approval of the Oracle at Delphi. According to Herodotus, he plied the Oracle with numerous gifts, Smyrna was besieged and alliances were entered into with Ephesus and Miletus. To the north, the Troad was brought under Lydian control, the armies of Gyges pushed back the Cimmerians, who had ravaged Asia Minor and caused the fall of Phrygia. During his campaigns against the Cimmerians, an embassy was sent to Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh in the hope of obtaining his help against the Cimmerians. But the Assyrians were otherwise engaged, and Gyges turned to Egypt, Gyges later fell in a battle against the Cimmerii under Dugdamme, who had previously advanced as far as the town of Sardis. Gyges was succeeded by his son Ardys II, many Bible scholars believe that Gyges of Lydia was the Biblical figure of Gog, ruler of Magog, who is mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation. Like many kings of antiquity, including Midas of Phrygia and even the more historically documented Alexander III of Macedon. The motives for such stories are many, one possibility is that the myths embody religious beliefs or practices. In the second book of Platos philosophical work The Republic, Glaucon recounts the story of the Ring of Gyges to Socrates, using it to illustrate a point about human nature. Some scholars have suggested that Platos story was based on a now-lost older version of the myth and it told of a man named Gyges who lived in Lydia, an area in modern Turkey
33.
Croesus
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Croesus was the king of Lydia who, according to Herodotus, reigned for 14 years, from 560 BC until his defeat by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 546 BC. Croesus was renowned for his wealth, Herodotus and Pausanias noted that his gifts were preserved at Delphi, the fall of Croesus made a profound impact on the Greeks, providing a fixed point in their calendar. By the fifth century at least, J. A. S, evans has remarked, Croesus had become a figure of myth, who stood outside the conventional restraints of chronology.1, and Ctesias, whose account is also an encomium of Cyrus. Croesus is a descendant of Gyges, of the Myrmnadae Clan, born about 595 BC, Croesus received tribute from the Ionian Greeks but was friendlier to the Hellenes than his father had been. Croesus is credited with issuing the first true gold coins with a standardised purity for general circulation, however, they were quite crude, and were made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow alloy of gold and silver. The composition of these first coins was similar to alluvial deposits found in the silt of the Pactolus river, later coins, including some in the British Museum, were made from gold purified by heating with common salt to remove the silver. King Croesus gold coins follow the first silver coins that had been minted by King Pheidon of Argos around 700 BC, in Greek and Persian cultures the name of Croesus became a synonym for a wealthy man. Croesus wealth remained proverbial beyond classical antiquity, in English, expressions such as rich as Croesus or richer than Croesus are used to great wealth to this day. According to Herodotus, Croesus encountered the Greek sage Solon and showed him his enormous wealth, Solon goes on to explain that Croesus cannot be the happiest man because the fickleness of fortune means that the happiness of a mans life cannot be judged until after his death. The interview is in the nature of a philosophical disquisition on the subject Which man is happy and it is legendary rather than historical. Thus the happiness of Croesus is presented as an exemplum of the fickleness of Tyche. The story was retold and elaborated by Ausonius in The Masque of the Seven Sages, in the Suda. According to Herodotus, Croesus desired to discover which of the well known oracles of his time gave trustworthy omens. Then on the 100th day the envoys entered the oracle of Delphi in order to ask for the omen, the Pythia answered in verse, I know the sands number, I understand the mute and hear him though he does not speak. The smell has come to my senses of a hard-shelled tortoise Being cooked in bronze together with meat, There is bronze beneath it. The envoys wrote down the answer and returned to Sardis, Croesus read all the answers brought by his envoys from all the oracles. As soon as he read the answer of the Pythia he bowed, because he was persuaded that it was the only real oracle, along with that of Amphiaraus. Indeed, on the specific date Croesus had put pieces of a tortoise and lamb to boil together in a bronze cauldron, then, Croesus wanted to thank and take on his side the oracle of Delphi
34.
Chimera (mythology)
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The Chimera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal. The seeing of a Chimera was an omen for disaster, elsewhere in the Iliad, Homer attributes the rearing of Chimera to Amisodorus. Her did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay, the author of the Bibliotheca concurs, descriptions agree that she breathed fire. The Chimera is generally considered to have been female despite the mane adorning her head, the inclusion of a close mane often was depicted on lionesses, sighting the Chimera was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, and natural disasters. While there are different genealogies, in one version the Chimera mated with her brother Orthrus and was the mother of the Sphinx, the Chimera finally was defeated by Bellerophon with the help of Pegasus, at the command of King Iobates of Lycia. Since Pegasus could fly, Bellerophon shot the Chimera from the air, safe from her heads, robert Graves suggests, The Chimera was, apparently, a calendar-symbol of the tripartite year, of which the seasonal emblems were lion, goat, and serpent. The Chimera was situated in foreign Lycia, but her representation in the arts was wholly Greek, an autonomous tradition, one that did not rely on the written word, was represented in the visual repertory of the Greek vase-painters. The Corinthian type is fixed, after some hesitation, in the 670s BC. The fascination with the monstrous devolved by the end of the century into a decorative Chimera-motif in Corinth. Two vase-painters employed the motif so consistently they are given the pseudonyms the Bellerophon Painter, a fire-breathing lioness was one of the earliest of solar and war deities in Ancient Egypt and influences are feasible. The lioness represented the war goddess and protector of both cultures that would unite as Ancient Egypt, sekhmet was one of the dominant deities in upper Egypt and Bast in lower Egypt. As divine mother, and more especially as protector, for Lower Egypt, Bast became strongly associated with Wadjet, in Etruscan civilization, the Chimera appears in the Orientalizing period that precedes Etruscan Archaic art, that is to say, very early indeed. The Chimera appears in Etruscan wall-paintings of the fourth century BC, in Medieval art, although the Chimera of antiquity was forgotten, chimerical figures appear as embodiments of the deceptive, even satanic forces of raw nature. Provided with a face and a scaly tail, as in Dantes vision of Geryon in Inferno xvii. The myths of the Chimera may be found in the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, the Iliad by Homer, the Fabulae 57 and 151 by Hyginus, the Metamorphoses, and the Theogony 319ff by Hesiod. Virgil, in the Aeneid employs Chimaera for the name of ship of Gyas in the ship-race. Pliny the Elder cited Ctesias and quoted Photius identifying the Chimera with an area of permanent gas vents that still may be found by hikers on the Lycian Way in southwest Turkey, the vents emit burning methane thought to be of metamorphic origin. The fires of these were landmarks in ancient times and used for navigation by sailors, the Neo-Hittite Chimera from Carchemish, dated to 850–750 BC, which is now housed in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, is believed to be a basis for the Greek legend
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Midas
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Midas is the name of at least three members of the royal house of Phrygia. The most famous King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold and this came to be called the golden touch, or the Midas touch. The Phrygian city Midaeum was presumably named after this Midas, according to Aristotle, legend held that Midas died of starvation as a result of his vain prayer for the gold touch. However, Homer does not mention Midas or Gordias, while instead mentioning two other Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus. Another King Midas ruled Phrygia in the late 8th century BC, up until the sacking of Gordium by the Cimmerians, when he is said to have committed suicide. Most historians believe this Midas is the person as the Mita, called king of the Mushki in Assyrian texts. Phrygia was by that time a Lydian subject, Herodotus says that Croesus regarded the Phrygian royal house as friends but does not mention whether the Phrygian royal house still ruled as kings of Phrygia. There are many, and often contradictory, legends about the most ancient King Midas. In one, Midas was king of Pessinus, a city of Phrygia, who as a child was adopted by King Gordias and Cybele, the goddess whose consort he was, and who was the goddess-mother of Midas himself. According to some accounts, Midas had a son, Lityerses, the reaper of men. According to other accounts he had a son Anchurus, arrian gives an alternative story of the descent and life of Midas. According to him, Midas was the son of Gordios, a peasant. While they were still deliberating, Midas arrived with his father and mother and they, comparing the oracular response with this occurrence, decided that this was the person whom the god told them the wagon would bring. They therefore appointed Midas king and he, putting an end to their discord, in addition to this the following saying was current concerning the wagon, that whosoever could loosen the cord of the yoke of this wagon, was destined to gain the rule of Asia. This someone was to be Alexander the Great, in other versions of the legend, it was Midas father Gordias who arrived humbly in the cart and made the Gordian Knot. However, some believe that this throne was donated by the later. One day, as Ovid relates in Metamorphoses XI, Dionysus found that his old schoolmaster and foster father, the old satyr had been drinking wine and wandered away drunk, to be found by some Phrygian peasants who carried him to their king, Midas. Midas recognized him and treated him hospitably, entertaining him for ten days and nights with politeness, while Silenus delighted Midas and his friends with stories, on the eleventh day, he brought Silenus back to Dionysus in Lydia
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