Harvard Professor Directs Excavations To Unearth Important Relics at Sardis

For the past two summers, the lazy countryside around the minuscule village of Sart in Turkey has been the scene of frenetic excavations. Under the field directorship of George M. A. Hanfmann, professor of Fine Arts and Curator of Classival Antiquities at the Fogg Museum, archaeological experts from Harvard and Cornell have led Turkish workmen in an attempt to unearth the remains of the famed ancient metropolis of Sardis.

This uncommonly rich site had already yielded great finds to the probes of American scholars in a previous expedition. During the four years that preceded World War I, a group of Princeton archaeologists unearthed the Hellenistic temple of Artmis, a architectural masterpiece, and numerous examples of Lydian minor arts.

Further, the Princeton group wished to explore the archaeological resources of this area especially to uncover traces of the original Lydian city, but the World War, and later, the Turko-Greek conflicts continually discouraged their efforts. One of the members of the Princeton group was George Chase, who later became a professor of Archaeology here and a Dean of the GSAS. Chase's administrative duties prevented him from tracking down the Lydian earthware that the expedition had discovered but had left at the site. Instead, in 1938, he suggested to his then-assistant, Professor Hanfmann, that a return trip to Sardis would have immense scholarly importance, not only because of the earthenware but because of large ruins nearby.

Professor Hanfmann was intrigued by Chase's idea. Hanfmann's major field of study has been Lydian pottery and he is especially concerned with the Lydian influence on the Etruscan culture that arose in Italy during the sixth century B.C.

A visit to Sardis while Hanfmann was in Turkey on another campaign convinced him that although Chase's pottery finds had been destroyed by vandals, Sardis itself, "this great and famous city must be resurrected, that American scholarship had a moral obligation to resume the work that the first Sardis expedition had begun."

Hanfmann was not going to prepare a "treasure hunt," however. "Due to rising nationlism, almost all the young Near Eastern countries rich in as yet unexplored cultural objects do not allow foreign excavators to export their resources. The days of booty grabbing are over. We have returned to Sardis to find new areas for the building of history. It has been undertaken in the interests of scholarship alone."

Sardis was a vital area in the ancient world. The fame and grandeur of the city in ancient times was enormous. During the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., the Lydian empire grew, and, under King Croesus, reached its peak around 550. The source of the legendary wealth of Lydia was the enormous gold deposits (the present expedition hopes to discover their exact location). In 540, the Persians conquered the city and Croesus, the "millionaire-king" whose memory is still honored in the phrase "rich as Croesus", died.

The glorious fame of Sardis continued into Christian times. Sardis was one of the few towns in Asia Minor to have a bishopric and was later the site of a metropolitan see that was mentioned until late in the Middle Ages.

It is, therefore, an area strategic to the understanding of the arts and history of Lydia, Hellenistic Persia, and Roman and Byzatian Asia Minor.

Professor Hanfmann's great enthusiasm for a renewed search for the treasures of Sardis was echoed by A. Henry Detweiler, Cornell professor of Architecture, who promised to furnish a contingent from Ithaca, and by the Bollingen Foundation of New York. The financial burden (the first two expeditions cost $60,000, the forthcoming campaign ought to come closer to $50,000) was shared by Harvard and Cornell with the Foundation giving $20,000 each year for three years if the two colleges raised equal or greater sums.

Pleased though Harvard is with the scholarly promise and achievements of the expedition, it believes that all Faculty research projects should be financed without the University's direct monetary aid. What Harvard does offer, however, is tax exempt status for those specified funds that are given to Harvard for the special expedition.

The first two years of what Hanfmann plans ideally to be a ten-year operation have yielded great finds. First the exact location of the Lydian capital has been definitely established. Though the Princeton expedition had found traces of Lydian art-work near the Temple of Artemis, it had not discovered any building dating back to the seventh century.

In archaeology, major discoveries don't usually occur in any meaningful chain of events. The Lydian room was uncovered after extensive exploration of the precinct of the House of Bronzes (called by the excavators "H.B."), just a few days before the campaign of 1958 was to end.

The House of Bronzes is itself a fascinating area. In the second week of August, three bronze vases were found under a melon patch not far from the highway. Hanfmann bought the land and excavations soon disclosed a luxurious room, full of bronzes of early Christian and Roman origins. The floor of a neighboring room glistened with elegant marble work. A fine statue of Bacchus stood in the corner of one room along with objects of a Christian nature and on the floor incised with Christian symbols. The mystery of the coexistence of the statute of the pagan god and the Christian implements, among them a unique liturgical embers shovel decorated with a cross and two dolphins, has not yet been solved by the scholars.

Further discoveries of a chapel-like area nearby and more Christian inscriptions led Detweiler, Associate Field Director of the Expedition to suggest that this house was originally a residence of the bishops of Sardis. Corroborating the general theory of its housing firm Christian believers is the fact that it was destroyed by a conflagration, most probably during Anti-Christian campaigns in the Fifth century A.D.

Near the elegant main room of the "H.B.", a small room full of vases was uncovered. Though almost ready to close the expedition for the year, the two young archaeologists who found the area rushed to Professor Hanfmann who could verify the type of pottery. He excitedly identified the cases and sherds as Lydian, ranging from the Early Iron Age to archaic (Sixth Century B.C.). The room, apparently a potter's shop, was a remnant of the fabled city of Sardis, the fied the vases and sherds as Lydian, from uncovered some of the town walls of Sardis dating from Lydian days. A bit of Croesus' metropolis was once more brought to light.

Though the members of the expedition were thrilled by this event, there were other buildings dating from later periods--the periods of Roman and Byzantine influence--that had enormous significance.

Building "B" is perhaps the most impressive of those. In the past two years, extensive trenching around a 300-foot by 80-foot Roman gymnasium revealed a row of thirteen Byzantine shops at one end. Here, coins of the sixth and seventh A.D. were found, thus providing new information about ill-documented field in Byzantine history. Hanfmann has discovered on the basis of the numerous coins and rich articles Sardis was very active in Byzantine trade, that indeed, it experienced a hitherto unrecognized economic revival from about 400 to 600 A.D.

The enormous building "B" is itself a fine example of Roman colonial architecture of the second century A.D. To the east of it, the recently-excavated spectacular ruins of a triple gate (or perhaps quadruple gate--further digging this coming summer will deside definitely) dedicated to a Roman Empress "Julia," have been revealed. This area has yielded superb capitals and marble column bases in a bewilderingly early style of Roman architecture. "In this area," says Hanfmann, "We have plenty of digging yet to be done. Frankly, we barely know where we are at in 'East. B'."

Another mystifying new excavation area, the so-called "City Gates" or "CG", had already caught the interest of the Princeton group back in 1914. In 1958, the sharpness of the descent of the wall's structure required the aid of a bulldozer and crane and it was not until this past summer that the archaeologists were able to uncover much of the construction. It now appears that "CG" was made into an elaborate bath by the Romans with furnace for heating and an intricate piping system to bring the water of the torrent, the Patoclus, to the baths. Another major Roman innovation was the addition of five retaining walls and a cylindrical enclosed area almost as tall as the rest of the building. The building has been built in three separate stages: the as-yet undated early stage, the late Roman stage and the Byzantine stage, part of which had always been visible. The infuriating quality of "CG" is that it gets taller and taller. Partial excavation reveals two levels supported by a third. Flooding prevents a definitive look at this third level to ascertain if indeed the foundation doesn't lie further below. At the present moment, "CG" stands at about 43 feet tall.

A completely new site, started after a landslide in the late winter of 1958 had uncovered some fine Hellenistic sculptures near the Patoclus river, brought to light what Hanfmann considers the most promising of Lydian buildings.

When the peasants working for the expedition began bringing the fine sculpture work from the Patoclus, Hanfman sent some of the associates to study the site. Immediately found was an impressive stele (a sculptured tombstone) which Professor Hanfman cited as one of the rare examples of a stele in the Hellenistic style.

On further inquiry, however, among the debris of the landslide were found a Hellenistic chamber tomb, a Roman wall-painted chamber, two Lydian town walls, and a room of the seventh century B.C. These three Lydian finds represent three distinctly different phases of Lydian civilization and so will be immensely useful in tracking the urban growth of this area, one of the main objects of the expedition. An interesting sidelight of these discoveries along the Patoclus is that the Roman graves are placed near where the Lydian city had been. The Romans always buried outside the city walls; the sixth century Lydian metropolis of Saddis therefore was larger than its Roman counterpart. Urbanization in Lydia in the sixth century was of far greater proportions than scholars had ever expected.

These four major areas--the House of Bronzes and its Lydian potter's shop; the enormous gymnasium "B," its long row of Byzantine shops and its superb eastern court with the elaborate marble capitals; the enigmatic, technologically intricate baths area "CG," and potentially the most significant area of Yydian remains by the Patoclus--have provided Hanfmann and the scholars he has consulted with a number of new theories, most unproved as yet, about Sardis, its art, its economy, and its history.

First, Lydia must have had earlier, more intensive relations with the Greek mainland than previously thought. The early, proto-geometric style of pottery design was so abundant in the Lydian potter's shop that chronology of native Lydian pottery may have to be begun at an earlier date. Further, the Lydian potters seem to have been more strongly influenced by Southwest Asian and Cyprian artisans than was previously thought.

The enormous size of the urban aggregation of Lydian Sardis suggests a rapid state of organization in the metropolis. After a decline during Roman occupation, the large city revived, as determined from the Byzantine shops of the fifth century A.D., and remained prosperous until foreign invasions in the seventh century. In these shops, the Sardis exploration has created a new and important area for economic historians.

But these theories, just the first and more intriguing hunches of Professor Hanfmann and the scholars who joined him, are simply introductory inquiries into a number of fields to which this expedition hopes eventually to contribute.

Professor Hanfmann listed the more important areas where he feels certain Sardis excavations will eventually prove of extreme interest. "As an art historian, I am especially eager to learn more about the native school of sculpture in Sardis and feel quite hopeful that our expedition can find new examples of this style. Theologians are eager to learn more about the religious, social, and political organization of early Christian communities; Sardis is a most notable one."1