Abydos (Asia Minor)
Abydos ( Ἄβυδος ) was an important port city in Asia Minor in ancient times at the narrowest point of the Dardanelles on the Asian side, today 5 km north of Çanakkale on the headland of Cape Nağara or Nara in a restricted military area.
Abydos was the most important Greek city on the Hellespont due to its strategic location, its safe harbor and the income from customs duties, fishing and mineral resources.
It was founded as a colony of the Milesians together with the cities of Priapus and Prokonnesos in the first half of the 7th century BC. Founded. Abydos is mentioned in the Iliad as an ally of Troy ; according to Strabo , it was occupied by the Thracians after the Trojan War . Strabo says that Gyges , the king of Lydia , gave his consent for the city to be founded. Abydos was ruled by Daphnis, a persophile tyrant , in the 520s and ruled in 514 or 496 BC. Occupied by the Persians. The Achaemenid ruler Dareios I destroyed the city in his Scythian campaign in 512 BC. In 480 BC, Xerxes I and his army stopped in Abydos when he started the Second Persian War . For this he had two ship bridges built over the Hellespont from Asia to Europe. 334 BC In BC Alexander the Great took the opposite route from Sestos to Abydos. The city was since 480/79 BC. B.C. Member of the Attic League until it was founded in 411 BC. BC rebelled and entered into an alliance with Sparta . With the King's Peace in 387/6 BC It came under Persian rule. After 281 BC The city belonged to the Seleucid Empire . 200 BC It was destroyed by Philip V after unsuccessful resistance . After 188 BC Abydos was owned by Pergamene ; with the transition of the Pergamene Empire to Rome in 133 BC The city became Roman. In Byzantine times it was used as a customs post and a bishopric.
In the Middle Ages Abydos was abandoned by the Turks who built the city of Çanakkale with a fortress to protect the Dardanelles not far from it . A Bronze Age hill was discovered near the city.
In Greek mythology, Hero and Leander are native to Sestos and Abydos.
Today only insignificant remains are preserved, the place is in a military restricted area.
literature
- George Ewart Bean : Abydos (Nağara Point) Turkey . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .
- Gustav Hirschfeld : Abydos 1 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume I, 1, Stuttgart 1893, Col. 129 f.
- John Manuel Cook: The Troad. An archaeological and topographical study. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1973, ISBN 0-19-813165-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Polybios , Historien XVI.29.
- ↑ a b c Mitchell (2005)
- ↑ a b Bean (1976), p. 5
- ↑ a b Hansen & Nielsen (2004), p. 1003
Coordinates: 40 ° 11 ′ 43 ″ N , 26 ° 24 ′ 18 ″ E