Sinekkale
Coordinates: 36 ° 27 ′ 26 ″ N , 34 ° 0 ′ 7 ″ E
Sinekkale is the Turkish name of a late Roman - early Byzantine building in Rough Cilicia . It probably represents an estate with an additional accommodation function, including some surrounding remains of buildings and agricultural facilities such as oil presses.
location
The villa rustica is located in the Silifke district of the Turkish province of Mersin , about ten kilometers northeast of the city of Silifke and twelve kilometers west of Korykos , today's holiday resort of Kızkalesi , in the mountainous hinterland of the coast. From today's road, which leads north from the coastal town of Atakent via İmamlı and Keşlitürkmenli to Uzuncaburç , a footpath branches off one kilometer north of Işıkkale to the east, which reaches Sinekkale after about 900 meters. In ancient times, a partially preserved Roman road connected the places Olba and Diokaisareia (today Uzuncaburç) with the port in Korasion (today Atakent). It followed the west side of the Yenibahçe Gorge , which stretches from Korasion inland, and touched the ancient settlements of Sinekkale, Aşağı Dünya , Karakabaklı and Işıkkale .
Research history
The first description with a plan of Sinekkale was provided by the Turkish art historian Semavi Eyice in the early 1970s . About a decade later, Friedrich Hild and Hansgerd Hellenkemper visited the place as part of their trips to the Cilicia. In 1998, the French archaeologists Gilbert Dagron and Olivier Callot worked on the construction. In the 2000s, the Christian archaeologist Ina Eichner carried out a survey on the recording of early Byzantine houses in Turkey and in 2008 published the first more detailed work on Sinekkale: Sinekkale - hostel, monastery or manor?
description
The main building measures around 24 meters in an east-west direction and around 21 meters in a north-south direction at its widest point in the west. The floor plan is an irregular square with numerous corners and protrusions. The two-storey building has five rooms on the ground floor and six on the upper floor, which are divided by the belt arches that are common in the region . On the south facade there are three open barrel vaults that supported a balcony on the upper floor. A door in each of the two outer arches leads into the interior. The main entrance was on the west side. There is a walled courtyard, which the road probably passed in the north. However, their traces are lost in the vicinity of the building. The courtyard had an entrance from the north, from there the ground floor could be entered via an anteroom, which, like on the south side, was designed as a barrel vault open to the outside. A similar room on the upper floor could be reached via a staircase. Behind this entrance room there was an elongated trapezoidal room on the ground floor, which served as a distributor to the other rooms. It also contained scoop openings into the cistern below the building . A room in the south-east corner of the building was equipped with an apse facing east . It has its own entrance from the outside via the eastern arch of the southern front. A similar room is on the upper floor above. The two apses are encased in a rectangular manner on the outside and each had a central window. In the south-west corner of the first floor there is an almost square room, the smallest on the floor. Possibly it is the rest of a corner tower, as it is known from other Roman and Byzantine homesteads from North Africa, but also from Cilicia, for example from Gökburç . Since it has a door in the western arch from the south and only a small slit window, it can also have been used as a storage or storage room. The room above has the same basic shape, but a narrow passage as a latrine is separated from it across the width of the balcony. Another latrine niche is located at the eastern end of the balcony, both of which have a vertical drainage channel set into the wall. The eastern niche also has a pipe system that draws rainwater from the roof over the back wall and flushes the toilet with it. Another latrine was located in a bay window in the room on the east side, which adjoins the apsidal room to the north. Another balcony was accessible from the adjacent room in the northwest, which was supported by consoles that have been preserved on the north wall.
In the immediate vicinity of the main house there are remains of various buildings, probably both farm buildings and other residential buildings, and agricultural facilities such as oil presses. This also includes walls built using polygonal technology and in the north a door with Olbic symbols in relief on the lintel , two wreaths, a winged club and an unknown symbol. This indicates that the place was already settled in Hellenistic times and that the old buildings were probably still used.
Ina Eichner interprets the building as the main house of an estate due to the surrounding agricultural land. Because of the large number of three latrines, it takes on an additional function as an accommodation facility. She sees the two apse rooms as possible house chapels, the lower one, accessible from the outside, probably for guests and residents, the upper one for the landlord and his family. Their living quarters were located on the upper floor, corresponding to similar buildings in the Rough Cilicia, while the ground floor was mainly reserved for utility rooms. A possible interpretation of the building as a monastery, as suggested by Dagron, she considers less likely due to the parallels to the well-known regional residential architecture.
West side with main entrance
East side with apse casing and latrine bay window
North side with balcony consoles
Western ground floor rooms
View into the apse rooms
literature
- 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 , p. 412.
- Ina Eichner: Sinekkale - hostel, monastery or manor? In: Serra Durugönül , Murat Durukan (eds.): IVth International Symposium on Cilician Archeology, June 04-06, 2007, Olba 16, 2008 pp. 337-360
- Ina Eichner: Early Byzantine houses in Cilicia. Architectural history study of the types of housing in the region around Seleukeia on the Kalykadnos (= Istanbul Research Vol. 52). Wasmuth, Tübingen 2011, pp. 287-313 ISBN 978-3-8030-1773-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Semavi Eyice: Some Byzantine small towns in the Rauhen Kilikien In: 150 years German Archaeological Institute . Philipp von Zabern 1981 207 Plate 83.3, 84.1 ISBN 9783805304771