Yanıkhan
Coordinates: 36 ° 34 ′ 44 " N , 34 ° 10 ′ 43" E
Yanıkhan is the Turkish name for the ruins of a Roman - Early Byzantine settlement in Rough Cilicia .
location
Yanıkhan is located at an altitude of about 430 meters, about six kilometers west of Limonlu and twelve kilometers west of Erdemli in the Erdemli district of the Turkish province of Mersin . The settlement is located north of today's road that leads from Limonlu, the ancient Lamos, past Batısandal and Öküzlü via Sömek and Cambazlı on the south side of the Lamostal valley to Uzuncaburç , the ancient Olba . In ancient times the place belonged to the area of the Polis of Elaiussa Sebaste , which is ten kilometers south on the Mediterranean coast .
description
A paved path, partly carved into the rock, into the settlement can still be seen in parts coming from the direction of the modern road. It consists of about 40 houses, two columned basilicas as well as several cisterns and oil presses. Most of the houses are made of small ashlars, some older ones in mortarless polygonal construction . Apart from the remains of the walls, only a few lintels have been preserved in situ from the houses . The area was already terraced for agricultural purposes in ancient times .
South church
In the center of the village is the larger, but poorly preserved south church (basilica A). The three-aisled pillar basilica measures around 38 × 19 meters and its apse faces northeast. It is built in double-walled masonry from small blocks. In the south-west of the building there was an atrium with an underlying cistern consisting of two barrel-vaulted chambers , followed by the 3.66 meter deep narthex . From here three doors opened to the naos . Two further doors in the outer walls also led into the main room of the church, which has internal dimensions of 16.90 × 14.10 meters. Nothing has survived from the columns that divided it into the three naves. A single column shaft to the west of the church can either belong to it or to a possible tribelon of the narthex (a three-part entrance separated by columns). The space behind the six-meter-wide apse ran across the entire width of the church and had two further side apses in the line of the aisles. It could be entered through two doors that were in the walls on the side of the apse. Stephen Hill, who visited the place in 1973 and 1979, was able to observe an almost square room behind the main apse, no longer recognizable today, in the wall of which he saw a niche with a sarcophagus lid. He interpreted the room as a martyr's chamber with an arcosol tomb . A second floor is occupied by beam holes and remains of arches in the apse walls. Presumably, analogous to the north church and other Cilician basilicas, there were also galleries above the side aisles, but cannot be proven because the side walls have not been preserved up to the corresponding height.
The lintel of the middle door from the narthex to the interior is broken in two in the anteroom. The parts have a length of 1.36 and 1.25 meters. They bear a Greek inscription, which Michael Gough was able to fully document in 1959. Thereafter the church is a martyrdom for Georgios, Konon and Christophoros . The founder is given as Kom s Matronianus, whom Hill identifies with the Isaurian governor of the same name (comes), who is mentioned in a wall inscription in Anemurion, which would date the church building to the 4th century. For epigraphic reasons, but also because the place with Elaiussa Sebaste belonged to the province of Cilicia and not to Isauria, this interpretation is rejected by Hill and Hellenkemper. In the Kom s you read the common first name Komitas, which is documented in Korykos, and from an architectural point of view date to the late 5th or early 6th century.
South Church from the southwest
apse
North face
Donor inscription on the right half
Donor inscription left half
North Church
Less than 100 meters away, on the northern edge of the settlement, are the better preserved remains of the north church (basilica B). The 24 × 13 meter basilica is also oriented to the northeast. The 3.43 meter deep narthex to the west has an entrance opening of 3.83 meters, which is too narrow for a tribelon, so it was probably a single arch. From there into the naos, three passages open again. A colymbion is set into the wall on the right next to the middle door . The main room was divided into three naves by arcades, the columns have been lost, only a few very simple capitals with wide throats, bulges and cover plates are in the interior. The north wall has no windows, the south wall has a door with a relief arch and two arched windows on both sides of the entrance. Bar holes in the longitudinal walls prove the existence of a gallery. The apse is almost completely preserved with a width of 5.01 meters. It is broken in the middle by a double window with a separating column. From the walls to the right and left of the chancel , doors also lead to a continuous room surrounding the apse. In the extension of the aisles, it is closed by two side apses. Since the beginnings of door panels can be seen above the entrances, this room must also have an upper floor. This church is also dated to the transition period from the 5th to the 6th century.
North church from the east
Naos wall from the narthex
Colymbion
inner space
Research history
As early as 1885, the British archaeologist John Robert Sitlington Sterrett describes a place on his journey from Lamas (Limonlu) to Örenköy along the Lamos River, which is probably Yanıkhan. The ruins were first mentioned under this name in 1965 by his compatriot Michael Gough in an essay on Christian archeology in Turkey. After that, the British archaeologist Stephen Hill visited the site several times in the 1970s and published a number of papers about it. Hansgerd Hellenkemper and Friedrich Hild explored the place several times on their trips to the Cilicia in the 1980s and also published descriptions of it.
literature
- Semavi Eyice : Some Byzantine small towns in the Rough Cilicia In: 150 years of the German Archaeological Institute 1829–1979. Ceremonies and international colloquium 17. – 22. April 1979 . Zabern Mainz 1981, ISBN 3-8053-0477-3 , p. 207.
- Stephen Hill: Matronianus, "Comes Isauriae": An Inscription from an Early Byzantine Basilica at Yanıkhan, Rough Cilicia In: Anatolian Studies 35, 1985 pp. 93-97.
- Friedrich Hild , Hansgerd Hellenkemper : Kilikien and Isaurien. Tabula Imperii Byzantini Volume 5. Publisher of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-7001-1811-2 , pp. 458–459.
- Hansgerd Hellenkemper , Friedrich Hild : New research in Kilikien. Publications of the commission for the Tabula Imperii Byzantini Volume 4. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-7001-0771-4 , pp. 80-85.
- Stephen Hill: The early Byzantine churches of Cilicia and Isauria . Aldershot 1996, pp. 256-262.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ JRSSterrett: The Wolfe Expedition to Asia Minor. Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 3 (1884-1885). Boston 1888. pp. 3-4.
- ^ Michael Gough: Christian Archeology in Turkey In: Atti del VI Congresso Internazionale di Archeol "ogia Cristiana (Ravenna 1962). Studi di Antichitä Cristiana 26. Rome 1965 p. 409