Seleukia Pieria
Coordinates: 36 ° 7 ' N , 35 ° 55' E
Seleukia Pieria was the most important port city of Antioch on the Orontes in antiquity and is about 32 km from this place by the sea, near the modern village of Çevlik. The current name is Samandağ . The city is a little north of the mouth of the Orontes .
history
Seleukia Pieria was founded around 300 BC. Founded by Seleukos I Nicator , but shortly afterwards the residence was moved to Antioch by his successor Antiochus I. At least in the first decades, the city was not organized like a Greek polis , but based on the model of Macedonian cities: Besides the city council ( peliganes ) there was only one official ( epistates ) who came from the urban upper class and in the name of the king ruled; there was no popular assembly. 246 BC The city fell to the Ptolemies in the Third Syrian War ; not until 219 BC BC Antiochus III. take back the city. It is possible that the Ptolemies had previously allowed Seleucia to organize like a Greek polis.
Since 64 BC The port was Roman . Because of the regular devastating floods, Emperor Vespasian had a tunnel built to divert the water away from the city. The Titus Tunnel ( Turkish Titus ve Vespasian-yus Tüneli ), which Vespasian's son Titus completed, is a 1300 m long, 7 m high and 6 m wide incision in the hard rock; a remarkable architectural achievement. Part of it collapsed today, but most of it is still accessible.
The apostle Paul set out on his first missionary journey from Seleucia ( Acts 13 : 4). Seleukia Pieria has been a bishopric since the 4th century. To stop the port from silting up, the river was diverted in the 2nd century. For this purpose, an almost 900 m long canal system with two tunnels was created and a 15 m high dam was built. However, the system failed in the long term; in the 5th century the port silted up more and more, and with that the slow decline of the city began. In 526 and 528 the city was badly damaged in earthquakes. After the 540 was taken without a fight by the Persians under Chosrau I , who bathed in the Mediterranean near Seleukia, the city was largely abandoned. With the Arab conquest around 640, the last inhabitants left the city.
In the Middle Ages, St. Simeon was the port of Antioch, named after the nearby monastery of Symeon Stylites the Younger .
Excavations
Excavations mainly took place between 1932 and 1939, when a Princeton University expedition carried out excavations in Antioch and also examined Seleukia. Above all, some houses richly decorated with mosaics (e.g. the house of the drinking competition ) were excavated. The finds are exhibited in the Archaeological Museum in Antakya .
literature
- Glanville Downey: A History of Antioch in Syria . Princeton 1961.
- Günter Garbrecht: Dam and tunnel at the port of Seleukeia. In: G. Garbrecht (Ed.), Historische Talsperren , Stuttgart 1991, pp. 83-89.
- Armin Jähne: The "Syrian Question". Seleukeia in Pierien and the Ptolemies . In: Klio 56 (1974), pp. 501-519.
- Hatice Pamir: A city introduces itself. Seleukia Pieria and its ruins. In: Antike Welt 35 (2004), Issue 2, pp. 17-21.
- Jean-Paul Rey-Coquais: Seleucia Pieria 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 .
- Mathias Döring: The ancient hydraulic structures of Antioch, Turkey . In: Wasserwirtschaft 1–2, 2012, pp. 10–16.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Yasemin Kuşlu, Sahin Üstun, Water Structures in Anatolia from Past to Present. Journal of Applied Sciences Research 5/12, 2009, 2110