Akkale (Cilicia)
Coordinates: 36 ° 31 ′ 44 ″ N , 34 ° 13 ′ 22 ″ E
Akkale ( Turkish White Castle ) is the Turkish name for a field of ruins from the late Roman or Byzantine period near Elaiussa Sebaste in the historic landscape of Cilicia in southern Turkey .
location
Akkale located in the former municipality Kumkuyu in district Erdemli of the Turkish province of Mersin . About seven kilometers northeast of the Roman city of Elaiussa Sebaste, which is located in the center of Ayaş , a signposted road branches off to the right from the coastal road D-400, which leads into the ruins of Akkale. The complex is located about 300 meters from the sea on terrain that slopes gently towards the water. The small bay that formed the harbor is now partially silted up and built over by a marina. The river Lamos (today Limonlu Çayı ) , which forms the border between the plains (Kilikia Pedias) and the Rough Kilikien (Kilikia Tracheia) , flows three kilometers to the northeast .
history
From an architectural point of view, the building is generally dated to the early Byzantine period, at the latest to the 5th century AD. There is also agreement that it is a palace with an associated domain. Friedrich Hild and Hansgerd Hellenkemper assumed that the builder was a certain Illos, whose name was read in an inscription above the door of the bathing facility. The same name appears as the founder of the restoration of the aqueduct that led from Lamos via Elaiussa Sebaste to Korykos . It is possible that the Akkale complex was also supplied by a branch line from this aqueduct, but no traces have been found. The owner is perhaps the Eastern Roman general Illus († 488), a rival of the emperor Zenon . Semavi Eyice , on the other hand, thinks it is possible that Akkale was the royal seat of the Roman clientele Archelaus of Cappadocia . He had resided in nearby Elaiussa Sebaste around the birth of Christ. Eyice explains the numerous crosses and other Byzantine features by continuing to use and expanding the buildings in Christian times.
description
The Akkale site covers approximately three hectares plus the port facilities.
main building
The main building or palace is a multi-storey building with a floor area of around 55 × 65 meters. It consists of two wings located to the east and west, between which several formerly vaulted halls are located on the ground floor over a width of about 26 meters. The side wings also have various barrel-vaulted rooms and on the south side facing the sea a high open arch as a facade. The north end of the east wing is equipped as a staircase with a round spiral staircase. The west wing is more damaged. Little has been preserved of the south facade between the side wings, the north facade is still almost complete. Inside there are nine arched niches, four of which have a window. Outside, in the upper area of the north wall, a row of consoles has been preserved, which supported a gallery or balcony running around on three sides. The living rooms must have been on the upper floor, of which almost nothing has otherwise been preserved, the ground floor was probably used as a horreum (storage room). The double-skinned walls of the building are typical of the late Roman-early Byzantine period, built in large and small square construction.
Cross-dome construction
About ten meters northeast of the main building is an externally almost square structure with a surface area of 9.4 × 10.0 meters. The interior has a plan in the form of a Greek cross . In the corners of the cross there are four small windowless rooms with barrel vaults , each of which has access from the cross arms. The cross is vaulted by a cross dome with pendentives . The central part of the dome protrudes high into the upper floor and rests on corner pillars with Corinthian capitals , the cross arms are also barrel vaulted. Cross medallions can be seen on the four keystones of these vaults at the transition to the central dome. There is a window in each of the western and eastern arms; the entrance was probably in the dilapidated southern front. Remains of a further eight rooms can be seen above the arms of the cross and the corner rooms. The only remaining one of these rooms can be seen to have been connected to the others by doors. Traces of a staircase or a staircase to the upper floor cannot be made out. One can only speculate about the function of the building, Hellenkemper and Hill point to similarities with various grave structures from Roman-Byzantine times.
cistern
To the east of the palace and the cross-dome building, a little down the slope, lies the large Akkale cistern, facing southwest to northeast. Its external dimensions are 33 × 20 meters, the interior is 30 meters long, 15 meters wide and 10 meters high. The structure is partly carved into the rock and for the most part made of carefully worked stones. The north-west wall is considerably thicker than the other walls, the south-east wall facing the sea is reinforced on the outside with buttresses. The narrow sides are reinforced up to the barrel, creating a corridor on the outside. A staircase leads up to this on the southwest wall and from there another staircase leads into the interior. The interior is divided into three barrel-vaulted naves, which are separated from each other by two rows of six columns each. The lower part of the columns is carved out of the rock, the upper part is brick. The inner walls are provided with a waterproof plaster. Two windows are built into the access side, as well as on the opposite narrow side. There is an outflow hole near the stairs, from there a path and a 15 centimeter wide canal lead towards the bank, through which another, smaller cistern was supplied.
Bathing facility
At the south-western corner of the cistern there is a ruined complex of ruins, which is generally identified as a bathing complex. In the east it has a door with an inscription that is difficult to read on the lintel. According to the reading by Gilbert Dagron and Denis Feissel, it contains the founder name Illos. Behind this door was a room with an apse , and behind it two smaller rooms with exedra on the narrow sides and in the corners. Regularly distributed dowel holes in the walls are signs of past marble cladding.
More buildings
Various other building remains can only be identified with certainty because of the severely ruined condition. Eyice interprets a walled square in the west of the main building with several troughs as a press for oil or grapes. Between the cross building and the cistern are underground, barrel-vaulted rooms from west to east, probably a substructure for a building that has no longer been preserved. Further remains of the wall can be seen in the east and north of the complex, as well as on the sea side. All of them are badly destroyed and overgrown with plantings and bushes. There was also a small bay that offered space for a maximum of two galleys and can therefore be interpreted as a private port belonging to the domain.
Research history
The Arab Ibn Chordadhbeh describes in his Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-Mamālik (about: Book of Ways and Lands) in the 9th century a place called Iskandarīya four miles east of Sebaste, which was already in ruins. It cannot be clarified whether this is to be equated with Akkale. Evliya Çelebi describes numerous ruins in the vicinity of Korykos in his travelogues in the 17th century, but does not explicitly mention Akkale. The first western foreigner was the British captain Francis Beaufort , who explored the Cilician coast on behalf of the Admiralty in the years 1811-12. It describes the port, cisterns and buildings. In 1818 Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles traveled to Cilicia and provided a description of the ruins. Léon de Laborde visited Akkale in 1826, which he thought was a monastery. In 1859, the German geographer Carl Ritter called the Akkale complex a “strange complex”. Pyotr Alexandrowitsch Tschichatschow and Victor Langlois only briefly mention the ruins, as does the epigraphist Adolf Wilhelm , who thought they were a mansion. In 1906 Gertrude Bell visited the site and examined above all the cross-shaped building, of which she also provided photographs. The British archaeologist John Bryan Ward-Perkins gave the assessment of the cruciform structure as a chapel and the main building as a fortress or fortified palace from 1958. In 1965 Otto Feld provided a more detailed description of the facility as well as a plan sketch. Semavi Eyice published an essay on Akkale in 1986, and in 1987 Gilbert Dagron and Denis Feissel gave a reading of the inscription above the door of the bathing complex. Friedrich Hild and Hansgerd Hellenkemper finally traveled to Cilicia and Isauria from 1968 to 1989 and also described the Akkale complex. Archaeological digs have not yet been carried out.
literature
- Semavi Eyice: Akkale near Elaiussa-Sebaste (Ayaş). In: Otto Feld, Urs Peschlow (Hrsg.): Studies on Late Antique and Byzantine Art Volume 1, Habelt, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-7749-2265-9 , pp. 63–76.
- RW Edwards: The domed mausoleum at Akkale in Cilicia. The Byzantine revival of a pagan plan. In: Byzantinoslavica 50, 1989, pp. 46-56.
- Friedrich Hild, Hansgerd Hellenkemper: Kilikien and Isaurien. (= Tabula Imperii Byzantini Volume 5). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-7001-1811-2 , pp. 165–166.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gilbert Dagron, Denis Feissel: Inscriptions de Cilicie. Boccard, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-7018-0036-6 , pp. 53–54 No. 22: † (1 line illegible) / † Ἴλλο̣ [υ ἀ] λεξικ [άκου. . . .] / OMOḲ.ṆỌ [. . λο] ε̣τ̣ρὸν καλὸν / ἀλεξίκ̣α̣κον {κ̣} ὡς καθαροῦ / καθαρόν †; SEG 37, 1325; Stephan Busch: Versus balnearum. The ancient poetry about baths and bathing in the Roman Empire . de Gruyter, Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-519-07256-4 , pp. 121 ( limited preview in Google Book search).