Myndos Excavations to Recommence, Maybe.

A piece in Friday’s Haberler reporting on a meeting of representatives from across Muğla with the Deputy Minister for Culture & Tourism, appears to suggest that the recommencement of the Myndos excavations along with a number of other archaeological projects in the province, including the Bodrum Hippodrome, are under review.

http://www.haberler.com/tarihi-alanlarin-turizme-kazandirilmasi-8361030-haberi/

I wouldn’t expect to see any activity this year; by coincidence I received an email, on Friday, from one of the archaeologists who has worked on the Myndos project and as far as they were aware the excavations were still suspended.

Myndians in History

A new page has been added that lists some of the people of Myndos whose names have been recorded in history,

Myndians in History

There are no great surprises as all the references were found online, but the reason we started the blog was to try and bring together all of these snippets.

There are a few which I hadn’t come across before, Theopompos who sailed with Lysander in the 5th century BC, an unnamed Myndian also from the 5th century whose covert activities are described on a piece of papyrus found at Oxyrhyncia, two Myndians mentioned on fragments of marble stelae held in the British Museum and the involvement of a bishop of Myndos in the one of the early rifts in church doctrine.

Die Haefen von Myndos und ihre Handelseziehungen im Speiegal der Amphorenfunde. Ein Vorbericht

For those who read German, Professor Mustafa Şahin has posted a copy of a paper presented at workshop in Hamburg Feb 2014 titled Die Haefen von Myndos und ihre Handelseziehungen im Speiegal der Amphorenfunde. Ein Vorbericht on Academia.edu

There is an abstract in English which reads:

Between the Asar island and Kocadağ-Aethusa the archaeological excavations succeeded finding the port structure of ancient Myndos. The entrance was protected by these natural structures. As a member of the Dealian League, Myndos had a fleet of 200 ships. In the 5^th century BC the harbour was mostly used for military service. Strabo remarks only one port of Myndos. Later surveys during the 2005/6 campaign showed several new buildings. These structures seemed to belong to a second harbour. Remaining breakwater-structures were also discovered, lying beneath two newly discovered shipwrecks with Egyptian amphora. The expansion of the port-structure until late antiquity prove the importance of the harbour. Myndos seemed to be one of the important trading partners Mediterranean Sea.

I’m assuming the comment regarding a Myndian “fleet of 200 ships” is a typo, or error in translation. In the body of the text there is a reference to Herodotus 5.33, which, in the translations I’ve seen, only mentions a single ship from Myndos being a part of Megabates fleet.

Die Haefen von Myndos und ihre Handelseziehungen im Speiegal der Amphorenfunde. Ein Vorbericht on Academia.edu

Herodotus The Histories 5.33.2 - 5.35.1 on Perseus.uchicago.edu

The "Myndos" 1996 Hoard

One for the numismatists.

In 1996 a hoard reported to consist of coins from Myndos & Halicarnassus appeared on the German market, at around the same time two packages of coins, again from Myndos and Halicarnassus, appeared in commerce in London.

A copy of the report by A R Meadows and B Zabel The “Myndos” 1996 Hoard (CH 9.552) which formed part of Coin Hoard 9 (2002) Numismatic Society Special Publications 35 is available on Academia.edu. You may have to be a numismatist to appreciate the finer detail of the report but it does include a list of the c. 2nd century BC magistrates who issued the coins.     

The Myndos 1996 Hoard on Academia.Edu

Report on the Ancient Dock at Koyunbaba Quarry

An article by Asst Prof Oktay Dumankaya on an ancient dock associated with the Koyunbaba Quarry was published in the International Journal of Environment and Geoinformatics 2(3) 38-46 (2015).

Stone from the Koyunbaba quarry was used extensively at Myndos and was also used in the foundations of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

The article is now available to read or download from Academia.edu

Koyunbaba Ancient Stone Quarry Dock

Theopompos of Myndos

While running a series of web searches in preparation for a new page for the blog I came across a reference to Theopompos of Myndos who fought with Lysander at Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC.

Several of the books and websites associated with the area mention Alexander of Myndos, Apollonius of Myndos, Botryas of Myndos, and Eusebius of Myndos but this is the first time I had come across Theopompos.

A statue of Theopompos is listed as being a part of Lysander’s monument at Delphi dedicated to the victory of the Spartans over the Athenians in the last battle of the Peloponnesian war (Stuart Jones, H, Pg 136)1

The dedication is mentioned by Pausanias, a Greek traveller and geographer from the 2nd century AD. (Pausanias 10.9.7)

What I find interesting is that Theopompos is the second recorded seafaring Myndian who predates Mausolus’ synoecism of the Lelegian towns and the rebuilding of Myndos at what is now Gümüşlük. With the absence of any obvious evidence of a harbour associated with the original Lelegian hill top settlement of Myndos on Bozdağ, Prof Mustafa Şahin (Uludağ University), who has excavated finds predating the synoecism at Gümüşlük, has proposed that the harbour and surrounding area may have been inhabited prior to the construction of Mausolus’ Myndos.

1 Stuart Jones, H. 1895. Select Passages from Ancient Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture. London: Macmillan and Co

TINA Maritime Archaeological Periodical No 4 available to read online

Not Gümüşlük or Myndos related but worth a read for anyone interested in Turkish underwater archaeology

TINA Maritime Archaeological Periodical No 4 (In both Turkish and English) 

You can also see what Professor Şahin and Asst Prof Dumankaya, who would normally have been working in Gümüşlük, were doing during the 2015 excavation season