A Roman tomb, graffiti clad, filled with water, quenches thirst, lost in Çakırköy, Turkey.
This little snippet (below) fascinated me. How this 2,000 year old Roman tomb was unearthed and somehow wound up as a fountain in this small town in the heart of what once was Roman Anatolia and is now Turkey – somewhere between Istanbul and Ankara – no one knows. But there it is in the picture below, alive, used. Perhaps that is best. One wonders what the thirsty passerby thinks when they lean in to take sip…
“A 2,000-year-old tomb from the late Roman era serves as a fountain in the village of Çakırköy in the western province Afyonkarahisar.
Nike, the god of victory, is depicted on four sides of the Roman tomb, which was discovered in 1986 by the Turkish Grain Board. On one of the long sides of the tomb, the reliefs depict a man and woman, who were most probably the owners of the tomb, and two Medusa heads on the other side. The writings on the tomb have been destroyed, as reported by Aktüel Archaeology magazine. The tomb is thought to have served as an important family grave in the ancient age.
Museum officials say the tomb is used as a fountain in order to keep treasure hunters away from the area.”
March/29/2016 – From Hurriyet Daily News
Once upon a time she was a Roman city, the first Roman city in Britannia.
Today Camulodunum goes by the name of Colchester, and it lies 66 miles northeast of London (Roman “Londinium”). It is known as the oldest town in England and was once the capital of Britannia, one of Rome’s prized possessions when it was part of the Roman Empire from 43CE to 410CE.
Camulodunum / Colchester was recently in the news when workers renovating a department store on High Street discovered the charred ruins of a Roman home beneath the shop’s basement.
The Dig in Colchester
Archaeologists are used to sifting through the charred remnants of Roman-era Colchester, because the first Camulodunum was sacked and burnt to the ground shortly after the city of London was founded. This destruction left a layer of burnt sediment upon which the Roman city was subsequently rebuilt. That sediment remains under Colchester and is frequently encountered.
Colchester was sacked during the revolt of Queen Boudica (see featured image of this post for representation), the Celtic warrior queen who led a brief but smashingly destructive uprising against Roman rule in 61CE, a revolt that left an estimated 70,000 Romans and Britons dead before the Romans reestablished control over the island. In the Battle for Camulodunum, the Roman IX Legion tried to relieve the residents of the city but arrived too late to provide succor. Gaius Suetonius Pauline’s, the Roman Governor of Britannia eventually prevailed over Boudica at the Battle of Watling Street. Though they were grossly outnumbered, Roman discipline and strategy prevailed over Boudica’s Celts and Roman rule was reestablished on the island for 400 years.
Roman Walls of Colchester
Found under the Department Store
Back to modern Colchester and the dig under the grand department store on High Street. Archaeologists were called to the site, and in those charred remains, they stumbled across one of the most notable hoards of Roman jewelry ever discovered in Britain (or a
Roman Jewelry found in Colchester
nywhere for that matter! Precious metals datingfrom the Roman era are rarely found – when fungible precious metals were discovered they were melted down to use as currency, not adornment). The dig is still ongoing but the principle items discovered include: three gold armlets, a silver chain necklace, two silver bracelets, a substantial silver armlet, a small bag of coins, and a small jewellery box containing two sets of gold earrings and four gold finger-
rings.
Archaeologists speculate that these remarkable items belonged to a very wealthy woman who buried them in the basement of her house as Boudica and her army marched on the town, hoping to retrieve them when the danger passed – that they were
never retrieved implies that their owner met a dark end, as did most Roman residents of the city.
For more on the dig, see here: http://www.thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk/?p=14844
When you hear the word “Izmit”, what comes to mind?
How about capital of the Roman Empire?
Once known as the Roman city of Nicomedia, founded by refugees from the Greek city of Megara (whose compatriots also founded nearby Byzantium – Constantinople – Istanbul), Nicomedia, now Izmit, sits in modern Turkey on the Sea of Marmara.
In 286 CE, the Roman Emperor Diocletian (right) struggled to containwhat is known as the “Crisis of the Third Century”, when Rome came under ferocious attack along its northern and eastern frontiers. In response to these threats, Diocletian instituted a massive reform in Roman government. He split the power that resided in the office of Emperor into four, creating two senior Emperors, or Augustus (Diocletian and Maximian), and two junior Emperors, or Caesars (Galerius and Constantius, father of future Emperor Constantine the Great).
Diocletian assumed responsibility for the Roman East, establishing his capital at Nicomedia. It would remain the capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire under Diocletian and subsequently, under Constantine the Great until Constantine moved the capital across the Bosporus to Byzantium in 330CE (though Constantine would eventually die in Nicomedia seven years later in 337).
Nicomedia, a city lost in time, or at least lost to Western minds, remains a thriving metropolis, now known as Izmit.
And under the streets of Izmit, the Roman city still lies, proof of which surfaced during routine work to recover from a devastating earthquake in 1999. Builders who discovered the headless Hercules in 2001 (pictured below) treated the Roman remains as garbage for fear that their construction work would be stopped by local authorities. Fortunately, that is precisely what happened and the site is now under protection from the local museum and a proper dig to excavate the unearthed remains of Nicomedia begin this month. Archaeologists now believe that that the headless Hercules once sat in Diocletian’s palace which
still rests meters below street level, waiting to be uncovered.
Remarkable stuff, and as surprising as the discovery may be to us, to many local residents it is just as novel. As one of the lead archaeologists on the soon to begin dig stated: “[M]any people living here are unaware that they have been living on a huge palace for centuries,”
Amateur gardeners (myself included), eat your heart out…
On the fringes of Istanbul’s Theodosian walls, in the neighborhood of Yedikule, the residents of Byzantium / Constantinople / Istanbul have been cultivating gardens on the same plots of lands for nearly 2000 years, since before the city walls were built by the Roman Emperor Theodosius II (408-450CE) – a restored section of the Wall near in Yedikule is pictured below.
The first gardeners were likely the Greek Byzantines, then the Romans, then the Ottomans / Turks and most recently, migrants from Turkey’s Black Sea region and most recently, Syrian and Afghan refugees. Throughout the gardens’ 2000 years history many of the same crops have been grown as the gardeners themselves have changed including cabbage, beets, carrots, onions, turnips among other crops.
Sadly, these ancient gardens, or ‘bostan’ as they are known in Turkish are under threat from the swelling population of the city (now topping 16 million from the 9 million residents when I lived here in the late 90’s). Underutilized land across the city is being consumed by sprawl, and many of these ancient gardens / ‘bostan’ have already succumbed. Below is a picture of one patch of Yedikule’s bostan.
Yet a growing movement in Istanbul recognizes the cultural and environmental value of these remarkable gardens and are fighting to preserve them.
ROME ON THE CUSP 