Group Finds Synagogue In Expedition at Sardis

A Harvard-Cornell expedition has uncovered an ancient synagogue at Sardis in Western Turkey, the site famed as the capital of king Croesus. The synagogue was built in the third century A.D. and illustrates the kind of Jewish communities known to St. John and visited by St. Paul during his travels in Asia Minor.

The discovery came as a surprise David G. Mitten, teaching fellow in Fine Arts, had driven a trench from the main avenue of Sardis to find the colonnade of a Roman gymnasium. Instead, he found a building nearly 60 feet wide and more than 120 feet long, paved with mosaics, revetted with marble, and featuring a triple gate between an eastern and a western hall.

Unearthing a marble slab showing the menorah, the seven-armed candle-holder, a tree, and the shofar (the ram's horn used to announce the New Year), the American archaeologists became convinced that the large structure was the meeting place of the Jewish community of Sardis.

Hidden in Collonade

An amethyst bead, a gem, and a beautiful gold coin of the Byzantine emperor Theodosius II (408-450 A.D.)--found hidden under a stone weight in the collonade on the opposite side of the street --hint that the "Jewellers' Row" of Sardis was nearby.

Curiously, the synagogue seems to have been included in the master plan for the large Roman gymnasium complex, and lies just off the main marble-paved avenue of Roman Sardis. The Jewish historian Josephus has preserved the decrees of Roman emperors Julius Caesar and Augustus which guarantee the right of the Jewish community of Sardis to assemble according to the custom of their fathers.

During the third century A.D., Jewish communities of Asia Minor prospered under the Roman rule and their members played an important part in civic affairs. The synagogue of Sardis, of which only half has been excavated this summer, promises to become the best illustration for this phase of Jewish history.

The first prehistoric burial discovered at Sardis came to light a short distance south of the synagogue. On the very last day of the excavation, an archaeologist found a jar lying on its side at the bottom of a 35-foot pit. Fragments of bone showed traces left by fire.

Hittite Burials

The jar is of a kind used for burials by Hittites, whose mighty empire flourished in the interior of Asia Minor, several hundred miles east of Sardis. George M.A. Hanfmann, professor of Fine Arts, believes that this burial takes the history of Sardis back to the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C.

Traces of reed buts and a hearth were found above the burial. Other important discoveries were made among the shops of the bazaar which flourished at the time of Croesus, the Lydian king during the sixth century before Christ.

Lecturns for Bible Readers

Projecting between the gates of the synagogue into the western parts are two elegant marble platforms, which may have served as lecterns for readers of the Bible, Fragments of inscriptions graven on marble plaques--a few in Hebrew, the great majority in Greek--lay scattered along the walls.

The inscriptions of donors, including some inlaid in the colorful mosaic floors, provide a working key to the social status and organization of Jewish Sardis. Some of the donors held the office of city councillors; two were jewelers.

Among the titles of various ranks in the organization of the synagogue, the expedition discovered, were "elders" (preebyterol) and "pious men" (theosebels). The longest inscription commemorates a donor whose name is lost, his wife Regina, and their children, who "from the bounties of Almighty God" gave the marble revetments and wall paintings for the synagogue.

Among the marble decorations are capitals with stalking lions, bulls, and reliefs showing birds drinking from the fountain of life, as well as fishes and doves.

A strong wall separated the synagogue from a long row of shops, at least two of which belonged to Jewish merchants named Jacob, Sabbatios, and Theoktistos, whose names were incised on jars found on the floor of the shops. Jacob was also a presbyter of the synagogue. Glass, vessels, bronze jugs, weights, scales, and small bronze coins were scattered in profusion throughout the shops, which were pillaged when the Persian king Chosroes II destroyed the city in 615 A.D.

On the bank of the gold-bearing river Pactolus, an unusual Byzantine church with many small domes, Roman houses and porticoes with mosaics of animal hunts, and immense system of Roman water-mains, and Persian and Lydian houses span two thousand years of history.

Mysterious tunnels, cutting into the cliffs of the citadel, were explored by an expedition members. Winding for some 300 feet down the north face of the towering Acropolis, the tunnels continue downward in a spiralling staircase. The expedition hopes to discover next year whether they led to a water source or to some important building of the city.

Explore Tunnels

The mound of King Alyattes (c. 600 B.C.), father of Croesus, was the scene of other underground explorations by members of the expedition. Measuring two thirds of a mile in circumference, this huge pile was compared by the Greek historian Herodotus to the pyramids of Egypt.

Crawling through tunnels less than two feet high, three architects of the expedition made the first modern survey of the underground passages and the marble chamber, concealed deeply within the 200-foot high mound.

V. Wickwar of Harvard took the first pictures of the royal burial chamber. The underground structures were discovered in 1853 by Spiegelthal, the German consul at Smyrna. Since then the tunnels leading to them have become clogged with earth and a dangerous fall of rubble has completely covered one chamber and spilled into the other. The one still accessible is built with astonishing precision out of marble blocks fitted together in razor-blade joins. Its huge ceiling blocks weigh several tons