Chapter 2
In modern times the earliest published account to describe and identify the site of Pisidian Antioch near Yalvaç was written by an English traveller, Francis Vyvyan Jago Arundell, for twelve years between 1822 and 1834 British chaplain at Smyrna.1 Like other European residents of the city and other members of the Levant Company to which he belonged, he had shown a natural interest in Classical and above all Christian antiquities. In 1828 he published an account of a journey made in 1826 to the seven churches of Asia.2 In company with a contemporary English resident, H.P. Borrell, who published many valuable studies of the mints of Asia Minor, he bought coins from the antique dealers of Smyrna, and many of their acquisitions found their way into the collection of the British Museum.3 It was entirely in character, therefore, that despite problems with his health, which had prevented him from making a second excursion to the cities of the seven churches in 1832, he planned and completed a six-week expedition to the interior of Asia Minor in the autumn of 1833, whose chief objects were ‘to search for ruins in several directions, of which the author had received information; and first and chiefest, to determine the site of Antioch of Pisidia, that place so important to the Christian geographer, as ennobled by the discourses and persecution of St Paul, and the discovery of which, says Colonel Leake,4 would greatly assist the comparative geography of all the adjacent country.’5 The results of that journey were published in two volumes, entitled Discoveries in Asia Minor: including a description of the ruins of several ancient cities and especially Antioch of Pisidia (London, 1834).
Arundell and his companions, M. Dethier, a Belgian later to be consul in Smyrna, two Armenians and a Greek, Kyriakos, approached their goal from the west, by way of the ancient cities of Eumenia, Apamea and Apollonia, all of whose sites Arundell correctly identified for the first time, respectively at Isikşh, Dinar and Uluborlu. On Wednesday 7 November 1833 he left the village of Gondanee (Kumdamli), noting remains of rock-cut tombs (which may still be seen; PLATES 8 and 9). Soon traces of an ancient road running parallel to their own appeared beside the party, and at the far side of the plain they glimpsed the remains of an aqueduct, still the most striking ruin of Antioch.
Arundell’s first impressions of Yalvaç and of the site could be echoed by avisitor today. In the modern town he observed that ‘the quantity of immense squared blocks of stone and sculptured fragments, which we saw all the way to the khan, would have convinced us that we were on the site of a great city’ (p. 267).
8. Rock-cut tombs near Kumdamli.
9. Phrygian tomb façade at Kumdamli.
He approached the site, which was ‘on an elevated Plateau’, from the south-west and commented first on the ‘superb members of a temple, which from the thyrsus on many of them, evidently belonged to Bacchus’ (p. 268). The position of these ruins and the mention of the thyrsus make it clear that this was the city gate (see p. 96; PLATES 7). Next came ‘a long and immense building, constructed with prodigious stones, and standing east west...a church at Antioch! ...the ground plan, with circular end for the bema all remaining’ (p. 269). Arundell completed a rough measured plan of this building, the basilica (see p. 210). Following the western edge of the city he reached ‘two large magnificent arches, a souterrain running far beneath the hill, and supporting the platform of a superb temple. A high wall of immense stones, without cement, next occurred, probably part of the gate of the city, and over it the ground plan of another building.’ Arundell then followed the city wall along towards the aqueduct, crowning the brow of the hill, and wrote that ‘the remains of the aqueduct, of which twenty-one arches are perfect, are the most splendid I ever beheld.’ From here he admired the view of the site and its surrounds, thus concluding the first day’s exploration without entering the heart of the city.
On the following day, while M. Dethier sketched the ‘Temple of Bacchus’, Arundell measured the basilica, before they explored the other ruins. ‘The remains of a theatre lie on the east of the church, on a little ascent... Beyond the theatre, ascending still to the east, a little on the left, are vestiges of another church of small size...above this are the remains of walls on either side, as if in continuation of a street, terminated at a distance of about three hundred feet by the solid rock being cut in a semicircular form and perpendicularly, with square holes all round, as if for beams, about eight feet from the ground’ (p. 273). From this account we can see that the party had made its way up from the basilica, past the theatre to the city church, and then along the remains of the Tiberia platea to the distinctive rock cutting of the main temple. ‘About three hundred feet to the north of this portico, was an elevated spot with foundations, perhaps the acropolis’ (p. 275). This was the summit of the site, where there is now a ruin of the Byzantine period (see pp. 95–6).
Despite the erroneous identification of many buildings, Arundell’s description is as complete as one would expect of an intelligent and careful observer, and it closely corresponds with what survives today (Fig. 3). Evidently no substantial buildings were visible then that have disappeared entirely, although stone robbing, which Arundell himself witnessed (p. 275), and general delapidation have certainly denuded the site to a considerable degree.
Fig. 3. Arundell’s plan of Antioch.
The next account of Antioch to appear was written by W.J. Hamilton, whose journeys of 1835 were recorded in the two volumes of Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia (London, 1842), one of the great peaks of Anatolian travel literature. He came to Antioch from the north, having crossed Sultan Daǧ from Afyon Karahisar, and again the aqueduct was the first ruin to be seen (I, 470 ff.). Hamilton deliberately kept his description of the remains brief, so as not to duplicate the work of his precursor. Like Arundell he worked his way round the west of the site, missing the city gate but observing the basilica, which he took to have been ‘a temple or a church, perhaps each in succession’ (I, 473), the bath house with its two arched vaults, underground chambers, a flat terrace above and the foundations of massive walls beyond, and the aqueduct. On the city side of the valley which the aqueduct crosses to enter the site, he saw the remains of ahigh tower.probably belonging to a reservoir from whence the water was distributed over the town’. This was presumably the nymphaeum rather than areservoir as the term is normally understood (see pp. 195–8). From the point where the aqueduct entered the city he observed a low narrow pavement extending from it, south-east by south, into the interior of the town (I, 473–4), a description of the cardo maximus as it still survives (pp. 100–1). Beyond this lay the top of the hill, the acropolis, and the steep descent to the river on the east side. He described the rock-cut semicircular portico and the associated remains as lying near the summit, and, like Arundell, he identified them as being parts of a temple (I, 474).
For half a century Antioch attracted little further notice. The great Russian geographical explorer of Asia Minor, Tchihatcheff, visited Yalvaç and twice mentioned it in his massive survey, but made no comment on the antiquities.6 C. Ritter in 1859 could do no more than summarise the results of Arundell’s and Hamilton’s explorations.7
However, two years after Ritter’s general survey of discoveries in Asia Minor the Frenchman Léon de Laborde finally published a report on the Voyage de l’Asie Mineure by messieurs Alexandre de Laborde (his father), Becker, Hall and himself, which had taken place in 1826 and 1827.8 The history of this publication and its composition are confused. The title page bears the name of the Paris publishing house Firmin Didot and the date 1838. However, in his preface Léon de Laborde writes that in the book ‘je donnerai au public en 1861 ce que je n’ai pas cru assez digne de lui en 1828.’ As a further complication it may be noted that the two views of Antioch which he himself painted, and which illustrate the 1861 publication, first appeared in the Voyage en Orient, printed in 1837, which contained ‘pres de 400 vues de l’Asie Mineure et de la Syrie.’ We may reconcile this information by supposing that the report had been drafted in 1828 and perhaps set in type ten years later. At about this time a separate album of illustrations, including the views of Antioch, was made public. However, the integral text of the travels in Asia Minor was held back by a dissatisfied author until it finally came out in 1861. The long delay, of course, had robbed the Labordes of the credit for rediscovering the site of Antioch, and this was a cause of palpable bitterness. Arundell is described by Laborde as a man who had published two volumes ‘qui n’ont de trop que la prétention d’avoir découvert les villes antiques que nous avions visités et dont j’avais dessiné et mésuré tous les monuments.’ He quite unjustly alleged that Arundell’s descriptions ‘mettent à la place d’une critique sérieuse un enthousiasme réligieux assez puéril. Il se livre aux attributions les plus étranges, aux conjectures les moins fondées.’ These acerbic comments in the preface give rise to the hope that the French account of the site might be markedly superior, but this is far from the case. The party had approached Antioch from the west and from the direction of the village of Hüyüklü on 19 November 1826, and they commented on the rich black soil of the plain, with its fine crops and gardens, which made them forget the Orient and called to mind the countryside of Normandy or the Auvergne. They explored the site on the following day, noting the aqueduct, constructed ‘en grand appareil’, the rock-cut portico and the foundations of the temple, which they identified as a tomb. Elsewhere on the site they claim to have seen two temples, alarge church (presumably the basilica), and a large vaulted building (evidently the bath house). They reported failing to find any remains of a theatre or a stadium. In general this description falls short of those of Arundell and Hamilton in precision and observational detail. The failings, however, are to some extent compensated by two romanticised illustrations, one showing the aqueduct, the other the temple of Augustus much as it appears today,9 and by a fuller account of the fortifications than had hitherto been available. ‘Les murailles de l’ancienne ville sont conservées, surtout à l’ouest; on suit facilement la ligne de l’enceinte marquant ici et là des reprises de toutes époques, marqués par le système de construction de différent temps. Ici les pierres sont rigoureusement appareillées, plus loin elles sont sculptées en bossage, époque romaine; c’est enfin comme la réunion de spécimens de chaque mode de construction usité aux différentes époques de décadence, jusqu’à cette mosaique formée par l’emploi de matériaux tirés d’autres édifices et assemblés avec autant de précipitation que peu de talent’ (pp. 113–14). No other traveller has offered so detailed an account of the fortifications, and the description presupposes that more of the wall could be seen in 1826 than at any later date.
Curiously, the somewhat acrimonious dispute concerning the credit for discovering Antioch is almost rendered irrelevant by an account of a visit to Yalvaç by a traveller in 1816, the youthful offspring of a cultured Prussian noble family, Otto Friedrich von Richter. At the age of twenty-four, Richter, in the course of a journey in the Levant which had begun in Egypt at Alexandria, crossed Asia Minor by a route which led from Alanya through the Taurus mountains to lake Beyşehir, north to Yalvaç, east to Isparta, and then again northwards through Phrygia to Kütahya, to Söǧüt and finally to Constantinople. At Yalvaç he noted many ancient fragments and copied one of the early Latin gravestones for veterans of legio V Gallica, and was shown what he took to be a small abandoned Turkish burial ground, ‘voll Stücke runder und cannelierter Säule, Gesimse usw., unter andern ein schön gearbeiteter Fries von grauem Marmor mit Blumenverzierungen’. Like many of the early travellers in the Levant, he died en route before the end of the year in Smyrna, leaving his journal to be scrupulously published in 1822 by Johann Ewers, a family friend and professor at the university of Dorpat. There is no doubt that the ruins he describes were in fact those of the imperial sanctuary on the site of Antioch, although he did not succeed in identifying the site. Eight years later another friend, J.V. Francke, completed what was clearly a labour of love by providing detailed editions and commentaries of the Greek and Latin inscriptions found by Richter, among them the epitaph from Yalvaç. In commenting on the veteran of the fifth legion, he drew attention to a coin of Antioch issued under Gordian III, which carried the Latin figure V between two legionary standards and showed the typical colonial symbol of a colonist behind a plough. As Richter’s account did not alert him to the presence of an ancient city at Yalvaç, he did not quite press the argument to its conclusion and identify the site of the colony.10
Interest in Antioch was reawakened in the 1880s. This was the period when W.M. Ramsay, whose name was to dominate the story of the exploration of the site for nearly fifty years, made his first journeys to Asia Minor. In view of his own interest in the history of the early church, it is surprising that although he visited the site and the surrounding districts in these early journeys, there is little reference to Antioch, its remains, or even its inscriptions in his published work of the 1880s and 1890s. In fact, the largest accretions to knowledge of the place came from the American J.R.S. Sterrett, who made journeys to Asia Minor in 1884 and 1885, visiting Antioch on both occasions. The results of the first journey were published in 1888, but although Sterrett copied over sixty new inscriptions, he remarked that ‘the ruins of Antiochia Pisidiae have been sufficiently described by former travellers, so that further description by me is superfluous’.11 In the following year he came to Antioch from the Cillanian plain around şarkikaraaǧaç,12 copying inscriptions in several villages south of Yalvaç as well as in the town itself, and thereafter in the villages to the north and west as far as the foothills of Sultan Daǧ and Hoyran Göl.13 During this second journey he went from the village of Gemen to Karakuyu, described as a kale, two hours south-east of Antioch, which he realised had served as a quarry for the ancient city.14 He thus missed discovering the temple of Mên Askaênos, which crowns the hill where the quarries lie, by the barest of margins.
Among the inscriptions copied by Sterrett at Sagir and Kumdamli, north-west of Antioch, were several relating to the religious association known as the xenoi tekmoreioi,15 one of which had already been noted by Ramsay in 1882.16 Ramsay was to return to these villages in 1886 and in 1905, and duly published a series of lengthy studies of this association.17
After the early reports of Arundell, Hamilton and Laborde, the next archaeological observations of any consequence were made by G. Weber, who published a description of the aqueduct with a few notes on other parts of the site, based on autopsy.18 By Weber’s day the number of aqueduct arches still standing had been reduced from twenty-one to nineteen. Above the point where the aqueduct joined the supposed line of the city wall Weber recognised the remains of arectangular building, measuring 32 x 13 metres, as being Hamilton’s ‘high tower or reservoir’. His sketch plan leaves no doubt that this was the nymphaeum (Fig. 4). He also produced a rough sketch, with approximate measurements, of the semicircular portico and the temple at the centre of the site, the first plan of it to be published.
Fig. 4. Weber’s plan of Antioch.
As already noted, Ramsay returned to the region in 1905, when he copied or recopied several of the xenoi tekmoreioi texts. At the same time he visited the site of Antioch itself, and the chapter on Pisidian Antioch in his book, The Cities of St Paul. Their Influence on his Life and Thought (London, 1907) 246–314, contains observations and photographs made during that visit. His opening sentence betrays a considerable lack of enthusiasm. ‘The situation of Antioch is very fine, but the locality is now deserted, forlorn, and devoid of ruins that possess any interest or beauty’ (p. 247–8). He describes the site as being on ‘a long oblong Plateau varying from 50 to 200 feet above the plain, lowest on the west and highest on the east side, where it rose steeply out of the bed of the river Anthius.’ He surmised that the rim of this plateau would have been defended by a high wall, and in fact his plate, a view from the north-east, shows this line quite clearly, although it is not identified as such. Apart from this it is extraordinary how few buildings Ramsay observed or cared to describe. There is no mention at all of the city gate, the basilica, the bath house, nymphaeum, theatre, city church, or street system, although all these had been noted and described by his predecessors. Of the aqueduct he was content to refer to Weber and simply say that the water came ‘from several miles away in Sultan Daǧh, partly by an underground conduit [the detail is accurate], but for the last mile borne on arches over the ground’ (p. 249). He did, however, publish a good photograph (Plate VIII) and grant that the construction was ‘work of the best period’ (p. 250). His Plate VI, taken from the top of the semicircular portico, was designed to show the featureless character of the site, while Plate VII, showing several massive foundation blocks, depicts ‘the only hellenic building of any consequence that we saw on the Plateau’. This lay at the north-west corner of the site and is clearly to be identified with the foundation walls noted by Arundell and Hamilton above the bath house, and belonging to a palaestra (see p. 199). Ramsay’s photograph can be matched against one taken by the 1924 Michigan expedition, which shows the same building in a more delapidated state.19 Plate IX shows ‘the mighty ruin, which Hamilton thought might be the principal temple of Antioch, the shrine of the god Mên’ (p. 250). This, of course, was the semicircular portico. Ramsay’s own view at the time was that it was no more than an odeum or small theatre, with a portico in front of it, and he claimed that the remains of columns, cornices and other fragments seen by Hamilton had been carried away for building purposes.
Archaeological knowledge of the site was transformed in the years immediately preceding the First World War. In 1911 a party consisting of Sir W.M. and Lady Ramsay, W.M. Calder, and M.M. Hardie, camped at Antioch and was brought news of ruined buildings and inscriptions on a nearby mountain peak.20 Calder and Miss Hardie, following up the clue, were rewarded with the discovery of the shrine of Mên Askaênos on Karakuyu, which Sterrett had so narrowly missed (PLATES 10). Over the next three days the party made a preliminary investigation of the ruins and copied many inscriptions. The first published account of the discovery, by Ramsay himself, appeared in the late summer of the same year,21 and he reported that ‘there was no temple, but only a great altar about 66 ft by 41 ft within an oblong space about 241 ft by 156 ft, surrounded by a wall 5 ft thick’. He also remarked on the sacred way leading up to the site, the theatre (in fact a stadium), and the church, which he dated to the fourth century AD, as well as reporting that seventy votive inscriptions had been copied in the wall of the sanctuary. A fuller account of the same discoveries was provided in the following year by Margaret Hardie, who published the inscriptions for the first time.22 She reported traces of the sacred way leading up from Antioch, dedications (or rather uninscribed votive reliefs) carved in the rock beside the path, the church with a spring beside it, the remains of a small theatre or possibly a small single-ended stadium, ‘statue bases’, the sanctuary itself entered from the south end, and the ruins of a small building inside, identified as a west-facing altar. On the north, south and west slopes of the hill there were houses, and on the summit of the hill east of the theatre was a ‘small, strongly-built square structure’, opening to the west, which was taken to be a tomb, but which in fact was certainly our andron (see pp. 81–2).
10. General view of the Mên Askaênos sanctuary from the peak above the small temple.
Both Ramsay and Miss Hardie pleaded the necessity of excavating the sanctuary, and in the year following the discovery an expedition consisting of Ramsay, Calder and J.G.C. Anderson,23 aided by E.R. Stoever of Princeton University, ‘the surveyor of the current Princeton excavations at Sardis’, who was able to produce a much improved ground plan,24 employed 160 workmen to conduct ahaphazard dig inside the sanctuary. The earliest and still the fullest reports appeared in The Athenaeum during 1912 and 191325 and the detailed findings are evaluated in chapter 3. Closer investigation of the building inside the temenos led Ramsay to revise his earlier opinion and to believe that it was more probably a temple than an altar. In a pair of longer studies he made further observations and proposed identifications for several other buildings on the site, few of which can be sustained.26
After the initial enthusiasm Ramsay’s hopes for the sanctuary site seem to have evaporated,27 but he returned in 1913 with Calder and T. Callander. In a letter of September 1926 to Professor Kelsey at Michigan, Callander wrote that the party first completed the excavation on Karakuyu and then started work on the semicircular portico of Antioch itself, exposing what Callander refers to as a distoon, a two-storey stoa, which faced the rock-cutting, the small temple, ‘which was completely excavated’, and the outline of the so-called platea Augusti. Callander himself was deputed to supervise the excavations, while the others copied inscriptions. He took charge of a work force of ‘well over 200 men’ both here and ‘at an exploratory trench along the proscenium of the theatre and at the corner of the theatral area, where sculptured fragments and the remains of alarge archway were found. Ground was also cleared at the north gate of the city, and a little at the west side.’
In 1914 the main provider of the expedition’s funds, Lord Strathcona, died, and the Ramsays went to Antioch on their own. At Lady Ramsay’s suggestion they began to excavate at the west end of the platea Augusti, finding the propylon, the steps leading up to it, and many fragments of the Antioch copy of the Res Gestae. They also dug in the central church of the city, which Ramsay dated to the fourth century. For the benefit of the later Michigan excavation, Callander wrote a short (two and a half typed pages) report on the work which he had supervised, and this is now in the archive of the Kelsey Museum. The only published accounts of these excavations are very brief indeed. Ramsay gave a description of the platea Augusti and the staircase in an article mainly concerned with the history of Antioch under Augustus and the publication of newly discovered inscriptions, including the editio princeps of the Monumentum Antiochenum.28 He did, however, propose for the first time that the temple had been dedicated to the imperial cult, not to Mên Askaênos or Luna, the deities previously suggested by himself or other scholars.
After the interruption of the Great War, Ramsay’s return to Antioch resulted from a collaboration with Professor F.W. Kelsey, who was setting up ambitious schemes of archaeological field work on behalf of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor both in Turkey and in other parts of the Near East. In 1923 applications to the Turkish government to excavate at Antioch and at the site of Sizma near Laodicea Catacecaumene were made in the names of Ramsay and Kelsey respectively, and after some delay permission was granted for work to begin in 1924. The Michigan expedition to Antioch was led by Professor D.M. Robinson of Johns Hopkins University, accompanied for the first time in the exploration of Antioch by a competent team of archaeologists: Professor E.E. Peterson (Luther College, Iowa) in charge of records, George R. Swain (Michigan) photographer, Frederick J. Woodbridge (Michigan, formerly of Amherst College and Columbia University) architect, Horace Colby (Cornell University) assistant architect, Hussein Shefik Feizy (a Turkish graduate of Michigan) surveying, and Easton T. Kelsey (Professor Kelsey’s son) in charge of transport. Professor Kelsey himself was present for part of the season.
Ramsay, the permit holder, was also with the group for the first half of the 1924 season. Hinc illae lacrimae. From the first Ramsay became involved in an increasingly bitter dispute with the rest of the team, particularly with Robinson, another domineering personality. The conflict unsettled the season’s work and led to an unbridgeable rift in the years afterwards. The twists and turns of the quarrel can be reconstructed from the correspondence between Kelsey, Robinson, Ramsay and others, housed in the Bentley Historical Library at Ann Arbor, and also from published letters and notes in the scholarly journals of the middle and later 1920s.29 It is enough to note here that it brought to an end the brief but productive Michigan excavation. As Kelsey wrote in a letter to Robinson dated 20 August 1925, ‘I believe it is best to postpone further operations on the site of Antioch until Sir William reaches a condition in which he will not be able to write letters. It seems to me that he is getting worse, and he may reach that condition within a year.’ Unfortunately for Kelsey’s hopes and for the excavation at Antioch, this was not to be. Indeed Ramsay returned to Yalvaç himself each year between 1925 and 1927. Kelsey himself died in May 1927, thus removing the driving force from the Michigan enterprise and ending an initiative which had promised much.30
The excavation of 1924 ran from May to August and vastly improved on and extended the earlier efforts of Ramsay and his associates. A preliminary report was published at the end of the year, which outlines the scope of the undertaking.31 Work began on the steps and the propylon, where the Ramsays had left off in 1914, and extended west over the Tiberia platea and east to the temple and the semicircular portico. Excavation was also carried out at the basilica close to the city wall and, towards the end of the season, at the arched city gate (11), the ruin first identified by Arundell as a temple of Bacchus. Further preliminary reports of a more popular nature were written by Kelsey himself for the magazine of the Michigan alumni, and these include many of Swain’s excellent photographs and Woodbridge’s plans, which have not otherwise been published.32 A full account of the sculpture fragments and architectural pieces from the site was published by Robinson two years later, which also contains Woodbridge’s city plan and his reconstructed elevations of the temple, the propylon and the city gate.33 However, many of the expedition’s discoveries remained unpublished, at least in a full form. Fortunately some of the records, including a journal of the excavation kept by Robinson, have been preserved in the Kelsey archive, and Woodbridge’s drawings together with notes on architectural pieces by Peterson have been preserved by the former’s widow. We have been able to draw on these sources freely in our discussion of the various parts of the site.34
11. The excavation of the city gate by the Michigan expedition (Kelsey archive 7. 1654).
Ramsay defied Kelsey’s prognosis and returned to Antioch between 1925 and 1927.35 He evidently hoped to resume excavations on his own account, but was apparently prevented from doing so by the authorities. He therefore confined himself to study of the material, above all to collating the fragments of the Monumentum Antiochenum. If Ramsay’s own word is to be trusted, he may, with or without permission, have done some digging in 1927, for in a note published in the following year he records the discovery of a Byzantine seal, made ‘while we were engaged in tracing some of the deep buried streets of the city in 1927’. The same note contains a number of detailed, but unverified observations on the design of the church in the centre of the city, possibly made while Ramsay was engaged in his own excavations.36
From the late 1920s to the 1950s the site was again neglected, at least by the scholarly world. During this period the great quantity of good building stone which had been exposed by Robinson’s excavations inevitably became a quarry for the inhabitants of Yalvaç, who removed to the modern town almost all the rectangular slabs of the propylon staircase and the Tiberio, platea, which had made such an impressive sight in the Michigan photographs (PLATES 12 and 13).37 Mercifully the other monuments were less systematically pillaged. Four foundation blocks from the palaestra in the north-west corner of the site, which had been photographed in situ in 1924, had been removed by the 1960s. Some blocks from the city gate, including three pilaster capitals and an archivolt, found their way into the modern town, but most of the limestone blocks can be seen today where they were excavated, perhaps surprisingly considering that this is the most accessible part of the site. Likewise, most of the architectural ornament from the temple stayed in place, apart from a selection of the best pieces which were collected in the museum at Yalvaç in the 1960s. Two pieces from the acanthus frieze built into the wall of the Kas Cami had obviously reached Yalvaç long before the American excavations (PLATES 14 and 15). Only one of the Cami (Yalvaç).sculptured blocks, two pieces of the cornice and one section of the inscribed architrave from the propylon could be seen on site in 1982. Some choice pieces were taken at an early date to Afyon, while others are displayed in Yalvaç Museum. Since our work other fragments have also been revealed on the site.
12. The steps and the propylon in 1924 (Kelsey archive 7. 1117).
13. The Tiberia platea and the area of the propylon in 1982.
14. Acanthus frieze fragment from the imperial temple built into the wall of the Kasç Cami (Yalvaç).
15. Another fragment of the same frieze
Interest in the site was revived in the 1950s, principally due to the efforts of Barbara Levick, who copied many inscriptions, which were subsequently published in a series of articles.38 A historical study of Pisidian Antioch forms the core of her book, originally an Oxford D.Phil. thesis, Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor (1967). Both the articles and the monograph contain incidental observations about the site, but no systematic archaeological or architectural discussion.
In 1961 E.N. Lane paid a visit to the sanctuary site in the course of his research on the cult of Mên, and he published four photographs, one showing two stones in the so-called ‘Hall of Initiation’ to the west of the temenos, a good wide-angle shot of the temenos from the south, a view of the krepis on the south-west side, and a detailed shot of the top two steps of the foundation of the krepis, carved from a single block (see p. 54).39 However, he made no new observations on the architectural remains of the site, being content to refer back to Margaret Hardie’s descriptions, both in the preliminary article which reported on his findings and in the relevant sections of his Corpus Monumentorum Religionis Dei Menis.40 Also in the early 1960s J. and L. Robert visited the sanctuary and took their own photographs, some of which have been published along with a few observations on the site and its geographical position.41
In 1962 M.H. Ballance and A. Frazer spent three weeks at Antioch making a plane-table plan of the city and drawings of the individual buildings.42 The results have never been published, but Michael Ballance has provided a copy of his plan, which we could compare with our own. In 1976 K. Tuchelt spent some time at Antioch making detailed observations on the architecture of the semicircular portico and the podium temple. These served as the basis for a new study and interpretation of the ruins of the central civic area, which appeared in 1983.43 Tuchelt reverted, against the view put forward by Ramsay and supported by most recent scholars, that the temple was dedicated to the imperial cult or to Iuppiter Optimus Maximus,44 to the old belief of Arundell, Hamilton and others that it was a temple of an Anatolian divinity, of Mên and, perhaps, of Cybele. We offer arguments in favour of the traditional view in chapter 5.
Since the conclusion of our own field work much has been undertaken at Antioch under the auspices of Mehmet Taşhalan. In 1989 Ismail Karamut, then of Konya Museum, conducted a brief survey of the sanctuary of Mên on Karakuyu, publishing a partial plan of the temple, although this omits the peristasis.45 He also began work on a study of the free-standing sculpture from the city, much of which had been taken to Konya Museum after W.M. Ramsay’s 1912–14 excavations. In 1992 at the seminar which received reports on Turkish museum rescue excavations during 1991, Mehmet Taşhalan gave an account of four and half months of excavation during that year. Seven rooms belonging to the bath house had been excavated during this period; the imperial sanctuary and the area of the Julio-Claudian propylon had been cleared; Robinson’s old excavations in the shops on the north side of the Tiberia platea reopened; and there had been work on the east section of the decumanus maximus and in the large Christian basilica, now identified as the Church of St Paul.46 In 1992 work on the imperial sanctuary, which had in fact begun as early as the autumn of 1983, was completed, and the well illustrated report includes new plans and reconstructions of the temple, the propylon and the surrounding porticos. These are elaborated at length in Taşhalan’s 1993 Ph.D. thesis for the Selçuk University of Konya. The study contests Tuchelt’s proposals about the nature and identity of the cult and argues firmly for the view that the temple was dedicated to Augustus. Taşhalan argued that construction in the whole area probably began around 25 BC and was completed around the end of the century.47 In 1993 attention was focussed on the cardo maximus, notably the section which ran in a tunnel beneath the north side of the theatre, the side streets on either side of the theatre, and the section of the decumanus maximus which intersects with the cardo maximus to the east of the Tiberia platea. Thanks to the collaboration of T. Drew-Bear, it has been possible to date the inscription on the arch to the period of joint rule by Maximinus Daia, Licinnius and Constantine in AD 311–13.48 Taşhalan’s reports, which contain useful plans and many photographs, advance knowledge of the site substantially beyond what was visible to us in 1983. In the guide book to Antioch which Taşhalan published in English and Turkish versions in 1991, he also draws attention to an important feature of the site which had been overlooked by all previous visitors and archaeologists, namely an extra-mural stadium, 190 m long and 30 m wide, in a valley immediately to the west of the city.49 No plan of this has yet been produced. The two most recent of Taşhalan’s reports to appear discuss the excavation of the large basilica and the area adjoining it in 1995 and of the theatre in 1996.50
Notes
1 Presumably he was appointed chaplain to the Levant Company at Smyrna, and remained in post to serve the Anglican community after the disestablishment of the company in 1825. See A.C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company (1935) 222–4. There is a short entry for Arundell in the Dictionary of National Biography II (1885) 143–4.
2 A Visit to the seven Churches of Asia with an excursion into Pisidia, containing remarks on the geography and antiquities of these countries, a map of the author’s routes and numerous inscriptions (London, 1828).
3 Cf. Discoveries in Asia Minor I, 13; for Borrell, a considerable numismatist, see L. Robert, ‘Trois ateliers d’Ionie et de Carie à l’époque impériale’, Actes du 9e congrès international de numismatique, Berne 1979 (1982) 309–19 at 310; BCH 106 (1982) 374.
4 Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor, with comparative remarks on the ancient and modern geography of that country (London, 1824) 163–4.
5 Discoveries in Asia Minor I, xiii.
6 P. de Tchihatcheff, Asie Mineure. Description physique, statistique et archéologique I (Paris, 1853) 460 (describing the long slope of Sultan Daǧ leading down to Yalovitz (sic) 312 and 315 (brief mentions of Yalwadj with its deposits of grey soil and red conglomerate).
7 C. Ritter, Vergleichendes Erdkunde des Halbinsellandes Kleinasien II (1859) 468–73.
8 On this expedition see J. and L. Robert, La Carie II (1954) 56–7 and the index; L. Robert, Journal des Savants 1973, 171 n. 36, 205.
9 This is reproduced by K. Tuchelt, Festschrift für K. Bittel (1983) Tafel 100.
10 Otto Friedrich von Richter (ed. J.P.G. Ewers), Wallfahrten im Morgenlande (Berlin, 1822) 358; the inscription is reproduced on p. 569 no. XXIX. For the commentary, see J. V. Francke, Griechische und lateinische Inschriften aus den Kopien des O. F. von Richters (Berlin 1830), (whence Mommsen in CIL III 289).
11 An Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor, Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens II (1883/4 publ. 1888) 164.
12 On which see W.M. Calder, AJA 36 (1932) 453; L. Robert, Études épigraphiques et philologiques (1938) 260 ff.; Hellenica XIII (1965) 93.
13 The Wolfe Expedition to Asia Minor, Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens III (1884/5 publ. 1888; in fact a few months before Epigraphical Journey), nos. 346–51 (villages south of Yalvaç), 352–7 (Yalvaç), 358–97 (villages west of Yalvaç).
14 Wolfe Expedition, 218.
15 Wolfe Expedition nos. 366–88.
16 Ramsay, JHS 3 (1883) 23 ff.; cf. Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Roman Provinces (Aberdeen, 1906) 314–15.
17 ‘The Tekmoreian Guest Friends: an anti-Christian Society and the Imperial Estates at Pisidian Antioch’, Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Roman Provinces (1906) 305– 77; ‘The Tekmoreian Guest Friends’, JHS 32 (1912) 151 ff. In the first of these articles (p. 316) Ramsay alludes to a visit to Kumdamli made by Professor T. Callander, later to assist in the excavation of Antioch itself. Ramsay’s interpretation of these inscriptions is frequently highly arbitrary, and the best guide to them is the article by W. Ruge, RE XVII (1939) 1098–1105.
18 Jahrbuch des Instituts 19 (1904) 96–101. The article is dated November 1903 and was apparently written soon after Weber’s return from the site.
19 Taken by George Swain, Kelsey archive 7. 1444.
20 See JRS 2 (1912) 79.
21 The Athenaeum, 12 August 1911, 192–3.
22 ‘The shrine of Mên Askaênos at Pisidian Antioch’, JHS 32 (1912) 111–50; cf W.M. Ramsay, JRS 8 (1918) 108.
23 See JrS 8 (1918) 110.
24 JRS 8 (1918) Fig. 1.
25 31 August 1912, 226; 7 September 1912; 8 March 1913, 290.
26 ‘Sketches in the Religious Antiquities of Asia Minor’, ABSA 18 (1911/12) 37–79. This concentrates especially on the so-called ‘Hall of Initiation’ and contains a rough plan of it (Fig. 1). ‘Studies in the Roman Province of Galatia II. Dedications from the Sanctuary at Colonia Caesarea’, JRS 8 (1918) 107–45.
27 See JRS 8 (1918) 111: ‘None of the other buildings seemed to deserve more of our attention than we gave them... Every scrap of marble, except the small fragments of dedications, has been removed either in Byzantine or Turkish times.’
28 JRS 6 (1916) 83–134 at 107–8.
29 W.M. Ramsay, JRS 14 (1924) 203–5 with an additional note tipped in; D.M. Robinson, AJPhil. 47 (1926) 1–54; Ramsay and A. von Premerstein, Das Monumentum Antiochenum. Klio Beiheft 19 (1927) 7–8; D.M. Robinson, Philologische Wochenschrift 1927 no. 2, 43 ff.; no. 20, 603 ff.; Ramsay and von Premerstein, Klio 21 (1927) 343–6; Ramsay and Robinson, Klio 22 (1929) 169–73.
30 For Kelsey, see the entry in the Dictionary of American Biography (1961) 313–4.
31 ‘A Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Pisidian Antioch and at Sizma’, AJA 28 (1924) 435–44.
32 The Michigan Alumnus vol. XXXI no. 18 (19 February 1925) 403–5; no. 21 (12 March 1925) 459–63; no. 32 (6 June 1925) 699–702; vol. XXXII no. 7 (21 November 1925) 141–4.
33 The Art Bulletin 9. 1 (1926) 5–69 with abundant and excellent photographs.
34 The documents are listed in appendix 2.
35 See Ramsay and von Premerstein, Monumentum Antiochenum, 4: ‘In den zwei nächsten Jahren, in Mai und Juni 1925, und in April und Mai 1926, benutzte Ramsay jedesmal einen mehrwöchentlichen Aufenthalt in Yalowadj zum Studium des Mon. Ant.’ Compare a letter of Kelsey to Robinson of 7 July 1925 reporting that Ramsay went to Antioch in that year but was not allowed by officials on the spot to work on the site.
36 ‘Anatolica quaedam’, JHS 48 (1928) 51–3. However, as his excavation journal shows, Robinson also worked in the city church, and Ramsay, whose later publications are notoriously confused, could well be referring to discoveries made during that excavation.
37 See D.M. Robinson, Klio 22 (1929) 170, on the eagerness of the people of Yalvaç to remove cut stone: ‘In point of fact the Yalovatchians actually constructed more than aquarter of a mile of good road with stone taken from the excavations, and constant vigilance and insistence were necessary to prevent the destruction of blocks architecturally important.’
38 ‘An honorific inscription from Pisidian Antioch’, AS 8 (1958) 219–22; ‘Two Pisidian colonial families’, JRS 48 (1958) 74–8; ‘Two inscriptions from Pisidian Antioch’, AS 15 (1965) 53–62; ‘Unpublished inscriptions from Pisidian Antioch’, AS 17 (1967) 101–21; ‘Dedications to Mên Askaênos’, AS 20 (1970) 37–50; ‘The table of Mên’, JHS 91 (1971) 80–4.
39 E.N. Lane, Berytus 15 (1964) 5–58 with p. 41 Fig. 1 and pl. VII, 1–3.
40 Especially CMRDM III (1975) 55–66 on the cult at Antioch. There is nothing new on the archaeology or the architecture of the site in CMRDM IV (1978), in which he publishes a great many dedications found there by Ramsay between 1912 and 1914.
41 A travers l’Asie Mineure (1980) 312–13 n. 16; BCH 107 (1983) 513 Fig. 2, 514 Fig. 3; cf Opera Minora Selecta IV, 199. Photos of the temple of Mên Askaênos, the temple of Augustus and the aqueduct have also been published by M. Özsait, Anadolu Uygurliklari Ansiklopedisi 2 (1982) 328–9.
42 Reported in AS 13 (1963) 4.
43 K. Tuchelt, ‘Bemerkungen zum Tempelbezirk von Antiochia ad Pisidiam’, Beiträge zur Altertumskunde Kleinasiens. Festschrift für Kurt Bittel (1983) 501–22 with Plates 100–106.
44 See Levick, RE Suppl. XI (1968) 52.
45 Pisidia Antiocheia’si yakininda bulunan Men kutsal alani, TAD 28 (1989) 171–87.
46 Taşhalan 1993, 263–90.
47 Taşhalan 1994, 245–83.
48 Taşhalan 1995, 287–309; T. Drew-Bear, XII Aras., 13–17.
49 Yalvaç. Pisidia Antiocheia, 33 (with colour photograph).
50 Taşhalan 1997, 221–51; 1998, 323–56.