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68-692: The ancient Greek name of the river was Hermos (Ἕρμος), Latinized as Hermus. The name of the river Gediz may be related to the Lydian proper name Cadys; Gediz is also the name of a town near the river's sources. The name "Gediz" may also be encountered as a male given name in Turkey. The Gediz is one of the two candidates for the Hittite placename Seha River , the other being the Bakırçay . The Hermos separated Aeolia from Ionia , except for Ionic Phocaea , which

136-400: A , 𐤤 e , 𐤦 i , 𐤬 o , 𐤰 u , 𐤵 ã , and 𐤶 ẽ , the last two being nasal vowels, typically before a ( synchronic or diachronic ) nasal consonant (like n , ñ or m ). The vowels e , o , ã , and ẽ occur only when accented. A vowel or glide 𐤧 y appears rarely, only in the oldest inscriptions, and probably indicates an allophone of i or e that

204-410: A parry fracture indicating a failed attempt to counter the head injuries that killed him. A partly healed rib fracture suggests he was still recovering from an earlier injury during the battle. In a destroyed house, archaeologists found the partial skeleton of an arthritic man in his forties. The skeleton was so badly burned that archaeologists cannot determine whether it was deliberately mutilated or if

272-608: A prytaneion , gymnasion , theater , hippodrome , as well as the massive Temple of Artemis still visible to modern visitors. Jews were settled at Sardis by the Hellenistic king Antiochos III , where they built the Sardis Synagogue and formed a community which continued for much of late antiquity . In 129 BC, Sardis passed to the Romans , under whom it continued its prosperity and political importance as part of

340-615: A collection of 51 inscriptions then known. The 109 inscriptions known by 1986 have been treated comprehensively by Roberto Gusmani ; new texts keep being found from time to time. All but a few of the extant Lydian texts have been found in or near Sardis , the Lydian capital, but fewer than 30 of the inscriptions consist of more than a few words or are reasonably complete. Most of the inscriptions are on marble or stone and are sepulchral in content, but several are decrees of one sort or another, and some half-dozen texts seem to be in verse, with

408-561: A lower town extended to the area of the Pactolus stream. Today, the site is located by the present day village of Sart , near Salihli in the Manisa province of Turkey, close to the Ankara - İzmir highway (approximately 72 kilometres (45 mi) from İzmir ). The site is open to visitors year-round, where notable remains include the bath-gymnasium complex, synagogue and Byzantine shops

476-403: A modest altar which may have been dedicated to Cybele , given a pottery fragment found there with her name on it. A possible sanctuary to Artemis was found elsewhere in the site, whose remains include marble statues of lions. Vernacular worship is evidenced in extramural areas by dinner services buried as offerings. Textual evidence regarding Lydian-era Sardis include Pliny 's account of

544-564: A mudbrick building that had allegedly been the palace of Croesus and was still there in his own time. The material culture of Sardis is largely a distinctive twist on Anatolian and Aegean styles. The city's artisans seemed to specialize in glyptic art including seals and jewelry. Their pottery blended Aegean and Anatolian pottery styles, in addition to distinctive twists which included the lydion shape and decorative techniques known as streaky-glaze and marbled-glaze. Narrative scenes on Sardian pottery are rare. Imported Greek pottery attests to

612-445: A similar paradigm: Examples of substantives: Examples of adjectives: Examples of pronomina: Just as in other Anatolian languages verbs in Lydian were conjugated in the present-future and preterite tenses with three persons singular and plural. Imperative or gerundive forms have not been found yet. Singular forms are often hard to distinguish from plural forms in the third person present active (both ending in -t/-d ):

680-572: A stress-based meter and vowel assonance at the end of the line. Tomb inscriptions include many epitaphs , which typically begin with the words 𐤤𐤮 𐤥𐤠𐤫𐤠𐤮 es wãnas ("this grave"). The short texts are mostly graffiti, coin legends, seals, potter's marks, and the like. The language of the Ionian Greek poet Hipponax (sixth century BCE, born at Ephesus ) is interspersed with Lydian words, many of them from popular slang . Lydian can be officially studied at Marburg University, Germany, within

748-459: A substantial assembly hall in the northwestern part of the city, now known as the Sardis Synagogue . This site, adorned with inscriptions, menorahs , and various artifacts, establishes its function as a synagogue from the 4th to the 6th century. Excavations in adjacent residential and commercial areas have also uncovered additional evidence of Jewish life. From 1976 until 2007, excavation continued under Crawford H. Greenewalt, Jr. , professor in

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816-574: A wealthy city of international importance and a collection of modest hamlets. Sardis was settled before 1500 BC. However, the size and nature of early settlement is not known since only small extramural portions of these layers have been excavated. Evidence of occupation consists largely of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age pottery which shows affinities with Mycenaean Greece and the Hittites . No early monumental architecture had been found as of 2011. The site may have been occupied as early as

884-497: Is subject-object-verb , but constituents may be extraposed to the right of the verb. Like other Anatolian languages, Lydian features clause-initial particles with enclitic pronouns attached in a chain. It also has a number of preverbs and at least one postposition. Modifiers of a noun normally precede it. In May 1912 American excavators at the Sardis necropolis discovered a bilingual inscription in Lydian and Aramaic . Being among

952-454: Is clearly of Indo-European stock. Gusmani provides lists of words that have been linked to Hittite , various other Indo-European languages, and Etruscan . Labrys (Greek: λάβρυς, lábrys) is the term for a symmetrical double-bitted axe originally from Crete in Greece, one of the oldest symbols of Greek civilization. The priests at Delphi in classical Greece were called Labryades (the men of

1020-529: Is evidence of both cultural continuity and disruption in the region. Neither the term "Sardis" nor its alleged earlier name of "Hyde" (in Ancient Greek, which may have reflected a Hittite name "Uda") appears in any extant Hittite text. In the seventh century BC, Sardis became the capital city of Lydia . From there, kings such as Croesus ruled an empire that reached as far as the Halys River in

1088-558: Is now kept at the British Museum . The first large-scale archaeological expedition in Sardis was directed by a Princeton University team led by Howard Crosby Butler between years 1910–1914, unearthing a temple to Artemis , and more than a thousand Lydian tombs. The excavation campaign was halted by World War I , followed by the Turkish War of Independence , though it briefly resumed in 1922. Some surviving artifacts from

1156-510: Is often difficult to determine. Examples of verbal conjugation: To emphasize where an important next part of a sentence begins, Lydian uses a series of enclitic particles that can be affixed to a pivotal word. Examples of such "emphatic" enclitics are -in-, -it-/-iτ-, -t-/-τ-, -at-, and -m-/-um-. When stacked and combined with other suffixes (such as pronomina, or the suffix -k = 'and') veritable clusters are formed. The word ak = 'so..., so if...' provides many examples: The basic word order

1224-699: Is open to visitors year-round. By the 19th century, Sardis was in ruins, with mainly visible remains mostly from the Roman period. Early excavators included the British explorer George Dennis , who uncovered an enormous marble head of Faustina the Elder . Found in the precinct of the Temple of Artemis , it probably formed part of a pair of colossal statues devoted to the Imperial couple. The 1.76 metre high head

1292-546: Is perhaps unstressed. Lydian is notable for its extensive consonant clusters, which resulted from the loss of word-final short vowels, together with massive syncope ; there may have been an unwritten [ə] in such sequences. (Note: until recently the Buckler (1924) transliteration scheme was often used, which may lead to confusion. This older system wrote v , ν , s , and ś , instead of today's w (𐤥), ñ (𐤸), š (𐤳), and s (𐤮). The modern system renders

1360-467: Is possibly derived from the native town of King Gyges of Lydia , founder of the Mermnad dynasty , which was Tyrrha in classical antiquity and is now Tire, Turkey . Yet another is the element molybdenum , borrowed from Ancient Greek mólybdos , "lead", from Mycenaean Greek mo-ri-wo-do , which in Lydian was mariwda- "dark". All of those loanwords confirm a strong cultural interaction between

1428-489: Is similar to the Luwic languages : a suffix -li is added to the root of a substantive, and thus an adjective is formed that is declined in turn. However, recently it has been defended that a form ending in -l, formerly thought to be an "endingless" variant of the possessive, was indeed a genitive singular. Of an ablative case there are only a few uncertain examples. Nouns, adjectives, and pronomina are all declined according to

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1496-590: Is thought to have been located at nearby Kaymakçı . Hittite texts record that Seha was originally part of Arzawa , a macrokingdom which the Hittite king Mursili II defeated and partitioned. After that time, Seha became a vassal state of the Hittites and served as an important intermediary with the Mycenaean Greeks . The relationship between the people of Seha and the later Lydians is unclear, since there

1564-650: Is within the area of Manisa Province and a smaller downstream section within İzmir Province. The Gediz Delta is important as a nature reserve and is home to rare bird species. However, the reserve suffers from water shortages due to heavy demands from irrigation projects, connected to the Demirköprü Dam . High level of urbanization and industrialization along its basin have caused the Gediz River to suffer severe pollution, particularly by sand and gravel quarries and leather industry. These factors contributed to

1632-465: The Aramaic script alongside the Lydian alphabet and the "Achaemenid bowl" pottery shape. Jewelry of the period shows Persian-Anatolian cultural hybridization. In particular, jewelers turned to semi-precious stones and colored frit due to a Persian prohibition on gold jewelry among the priestly class. Similarly, knobbed pins and fibulae disappear from the archaeological record, reflecting changes in

1700-655: The Lydian colonists, who had founded the city. In 1916 the Sardis bilingual inscription , a bilingual inscription in Aramaic and Lydian allowed Enno Littmann to decipher the Lydian language. From an analysis of the two parallel texts, he identified the alphabetic signs, most of them correctly, established a basic vocabulary, attempted translation of a dozen unilingual texts, gave an outline of Lydian grammar, and even recognized peculiar poetical characteristics in several texts. Eight years later William Hepburn Buckler presented

1768-585: The Neolithic , as evidenced by scattered finds of early ceramic fragments. However, these were found out of context, so no clear conclusions can be drawn. Early Bronze Age cemeteries were found 7 miles away along Lake Marmara , near elite graves of the later Lydian and Persian periods. In the Late Bronze Age, the site would have been in the territory of the Seha River Land , whose capital

1836-602: The Turco-Mongol warlord Timur in 1402. By the 1700s, only two small hamlets existed at the site. In the 20th century, a new town was built. Herodotus recounts a legend that the city was founded by the sons of Heracles , the Heracleidae . According to Herodotus, the Heraclides ruled for five hundred and five years beginning with Agron , 1220 BC, and ending with Candaules , 716 BC. They were followed by

1904-665: The province of Asia . The city received three neocorate honors and was granted ten million sesterces as well as a temporary tax exemption to help it recover after a devastating earthquake in 17 AD. Sardis had an early Christian community and is referred to in the New Testament as one of the seven churches of Asia . In the Book of Revelation , Jesus refers to the Sardians as not finishing what they started, being about image rather than substance. Later, trade and

1972-593: The 10th century. However, over the next four centuries it was in the shadow of the provinces of Magnesia-upon-Sipylum and Philadelphia , which retained their importance in the region. Sardis began to decline in the 600s AD. It remained part of the Byzantine Empire until 1078 AD, by the Seljuk Turks . It was reconquered in 1097 by the Byzantine general John Doukas and came under the rule of

2040-518: The 5th century and the 4th century BCE, during the period of Persian domination. Thus, Lydian texts are effectively contemporaneous with those in Lycian . Strabo mentions that around his time (1st century BCE), the Lydian language was no longer spoken in Lydia proper but was still being spoken among the multicultural population of Kibyra (now Gölhisar ) in southwestern Anatolia, by the descendants of

2108-788: The Butler excavation were added to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York . A new expedition known as the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis was founded in 1958 by G.M.A. Hanfmann , professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard University , and by Henry Detweiler, dean of the Architecture School at Cornell University . Hanfmann excavated widely in the city and

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2176-599: The Byzantine Empire of Nicaea when Constantinople was taken by the Venetians and crusaders in 1204. However, once the Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261, Sardis and surrounding areas fell under the control of Ghazw emirs. The Cayster valleys and a fort on the citadel of Sardis were handed over to them by treaty in 1306. The city continued its decline until its capture and probable destruction by

2244-564: The Hittitology minor program. Within the Anatolian group, Lydian occupies a unique and problematic position. One reason is the still very limited evidence and understanding of the language. Another reason is a number of features that are not shared with any other Anatolian language. It is still not known whether those differences represent developments peculiar to pre-Lydian or the retention in Lydian of archaic features that were lost in

2312-467: The Lydian metres seem to be compatible with reconstructed common Proto-Indo-European metres. The Lydians probably borrowed these metres from the Greeks; however, the assonance was a unique innovation of their own. Only one text shows mixed character: a poetical middle part is sandwiched in between a prose introduction and a prose conclusion. Analogous to the bilingual text the introduction tells who built

2380-602: The Lydians and the Greeks since the Creto- Mycenaean era (2nd millennium BCE). In his seminal decipherment of Lydian texts Littmann noted that at least five of them show two poetical aspects: Also, partly in order to achieve assonance and metre (" metri causa "), in poetic texts word order is more free than in prose. Martin West , after comparing historical metres in various Indo-European languages, concluded that

2448-575: The Lydians' "Hellenophile attitude" commented on by contemporary Greek writers. While those Greek authors were in turn impressed by Lydians' music and textiles, these aspects of Lydian culture are not visible in the archaeological record. Sardis was conquered by Cyrus the Great around 547 BC. Having defeated the Lydian king Croesus at the Battle of Pteria and Battle of Thymbra , the Persians followed

2516-523: The Mermnades, which began with Gyges , 716 BC, and ended with Croesus , 546 BC. The name "Sardis" appears first in the work of the Archaic era poet Sappho . Strabo claims that the city's original name was "Hyde". Sardis was situated in the middle of Hermus River Valley , about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) south of the river. Its citadel was built on Mount Tmolus , a steep and lofty spur, while

2584-701: The Persian kings Darius I and Xerxes . Relatively little of Persian Sardis is visible in the archaeological record. The city may even have been rebuilt outside the limits of the Lydian-era walls, as evidenced by authors such as Herodotus who place the Persian era central district along the Pactolus stream. The material culture of the city was largely continuous with the Lydian era, to the point that it can be hard to precisely date artifacts based on style. Notable developments of this period include adoption of

2652-490: The acropolis, regarded as the strongest fortified place in the world. The city sometimes served as a royal residence, but was itself governed by an assembly. In this era, the city took on a strong Greek character. The Greek language replaces the Lydian language in most inscriptions, and major buildings were constructed in Greek architectural styles to meet the needs of Greek cultural institutions. These new buildings included

2720-763: The basis of (1) the verbal root ending ( a -stems, consonant stems, - ši -stems, etc.), and (2) the endings of the third person singular being either unlenited ( -t; -tλ, -taλ ) or lenited ( -d; -dλ, -daλ ). For example, šarpta- (to inscribe, to carve) is an unlenited a -stem ( šarptat , he inscribes), qaλmλa- (to be king) is a lenited a -stem ( qaλmλad , he rules). Differences between the various conjugations are minor. Many Lydian verbs are composite, using prefixes such as ẽn- (= 'in-'?), ẽt- (= 'into-' ), fa-/f- ('then, subsequently, again'? ), šaw-, and kat-/kaτ- (= 'down-'?), and suffixes like -ãn-/-ẽn- ( durative ? ), -no-/-ño- ( causative ? ), -ši- ( iterative ? ), and -ki- or -ti- ( denominative ? ); their meaning

2788-502: The city. The city's fortifications burned in a massive fire that spread to parts of the adjoining residential areas. Wooden structures and objects inside buildings were reduced to charcoal. Mudbrick from the fortifications were toppled over on adjacent structures, preventing looting and salvage and thus preserving their remains. Skeletons were found buried haphazardly among the debris, including those of Lydian soldiers who died violently. One soldier's forearm bones had been snapped, likely

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2856-495: The double axe). The term labrys "double-axe" is not found in any surviving Lydian inscription, but on the subject, Plutarch states that "the Lydians call the axe labrys " (Λυδοὶ γὰρ ‘λάβρυν’ τὸν πέλεκυν ὀνομάζουσι). Another possibly Lydian loanword may be tyrant "absolute ruler", which was first used in Ancient Greek sources, without negative connotations, for the late 8th century or early 7th century BCE. It

2924-408: The ears of ancient Greeks, and transcription of Lydian names into Greek would therefore present some difficulties. Recently a case has been made that the Lydian word Qλdãns, pronounced /kʷɾʲ'ðãns/, both meaning 'king' and the name of a god, could correspond to the Greek Κροῖσος, or Croesus , the last Lydian king, whose kingdom was conquered by the Persians. If the identification is correct it would have

2992-456: The east. The city itself covered 108 hectares including extramural areas and was protected by walls twenty meters thick. The acropolis was terraced with white ashlar masonry to tame the naturally irregular mountainside. Visitors could spot the site from a distance by the three enormous burial tumuli at Bin Tepe . The city's layout and organization is only partly known at present. To

3060-464: The first texts found, it provided a limited equivalent of the Rosetta Stone and permitted a first understanding of the Lydian language. The first line of the Lydian text has been destroyed, but can be reconstructed from its Aramaic counterpart. Examples of words in the bilingual: Other words with Indo-European roots and with modern cognates: Only a small fraction of the Lydian vocabulary

3128-501: The garments with which they would have been used. Buildings from this era include a possible predecessor of the later temple to Artemis as well as a possible sanctuary of Zeus . Textual evidence suggests that the city was known for its paradisoi as well as orchards and hunting parks built by Tissaphernes and Cyrus the Younger Burials of this period include enormous tumuli with extensive grave goods. In 499 BC, Sardis

3196-458: The interesting historical consequence that king Croesus was not saved from being burnt at the stake, as Herodotus tells us, but chose suicide and was subsequently deified. Heiner Eichner developed rules to determine which syllable in a word has the stress accent. In short, the rules are: A useful application of those rules is the investigation of metres in Lydian poetry. Nouns and adjectives distinguish singular and plural forms. Words in

3264-562: The invasion of Asia Minor by the Persian Shahin . Though the Byzantines eventually won the war, the damage to Sardis was never fully repaired. Sardis retained its titular supremacy and continued to be the seat of the metropolitan bishop of the province of Lydia, formed in 295 AD. It was enumerated as third, after Ephesus and Smyrna , in the list of cities of the Thracesion thema given by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in

3332-407: The missing bones were carried away by animals. Arrowheads and other weaponry turn up in debris all around the city, suggesting a major battle in the streets. The varying styles suggest the mixed background of both armies involved. Household implements such as iron spits and small sickles were found mixed in with ordinary weapons of war, suggesting that civilians attempted to defend themselves during

3400-464: The monument (a certain Karos), and for whom (both his son and his ancestors), while the final sentence of the original inscription may be the usual curse for those who would dare to damage it. The poetic middle part seems to claim that the monument was built after consulting a divine oracle, cited between Lydian "quotation marks" ▷...▷, and continues with an appeal to pay as much respect to the builder as to

3468-763: The north/northwest, the city had a large extramural zone with residential, commercial, and industrial areas. Settlement extended to the Pactolus Stream, near which archaeologists have found the remains of work installations where alluvial metals were processed. Multiroom houses around the site match Herodotus's description of fieldstone and mudbrick construction. Most houses had roofs of clay and straw while wealthy residents had roof tiles, similar to public buildings. Houses often have identifiable courtyards and food preparation areas but no complete house has been excavated so few generalizations can be drawn about Sardian houses' internal layout. Religious remains include

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3536-431: The older texts is either from left to right or right to left. Later texts show exclusively the latter. Use of word-dividers is variable. The texts were found chiefly at the ancient capital of Sardis and include decrees and epitaphs, some of which were composed in verse; most were written during the 5th century and the 4th century BCE, but a few may have been created as early as the 7th century. Lydian has seven vowels: 𐤠

3604-454: The organization of commerce continued to be sources of great wealth. After Constantinople became the capital of the East, a new road system grew up connecting the provinces with the capital. Sardis then lay rather apart from the great lines of communication and lost some of its importance. During the cataclysmic 7th-century Byzantine–Sasanian War , Sardis was in 615 one of the cities sacked in

3672-402: The other Anatolian languages. Until more satisfactory knowledge becomes available, the status of Lydian within Anatolian remains a "special" one. The Lydian script , which is strictly alphabetic, consists of 26 signs: The script is related to or derived from that of Greek as well as its western Anatolian neighbours, the exact relationship still remaining unclear. The direction of writing in

3740-446: The plural form seems to be in principle nasalized, but this could not always be expressed in the writing. Lydian distinguished a mediopassive voice with the third-person singular ending -t(a)λ or -daλ (derived from Proto-Anatolian *-tori; -t(a)λ after consonant stems and part of the stems ending in a vowel, -daλ when lenited after other stems ending in a vowel or glide). About a dozen conjugations can be distinguished, on

3808-467: The region, excavating and restoring the major Roman bath-gymnasium complex, the synagogue, late Roman houses and shops, a Lydian industrial area for processing electrum into pure gold and silver, Lydian occupation areas, and tumulus tombs at Bintepe. During the 1960s, the acknowledgment of the local significance of the Jewish community in Sardis received notable confirmation through the identification of

3876-452: The retreating army back to Sardis and sacked it after a brief siege. Details of this event are largely known from Herodotus's semi-mythicized account, but the destruction is highly visible in the archaeological record. In the words of excavator Nicholas Cahill: It is rare that an important and well-known historical event is so vividly preserved in the archaeological record, but the destruction of Cyrus left clear and dramatic remains throughout

3944-515: The river's formerly rich fish reserves to become a thing of the past in recent years. Lydian language Lydian is an extinct Indo-European Anatolian language spoken in the region of Lydia , in western Anatolia (now in Turkey ). The language is attested in graffiti and in coin legends from the late 8th century or the early 7th century to the 3rd century BCE, but well-preserved inscriptions of significant length are so far limited to

4012-571: The sack. After the destruction, Sardis was rebuilt and continued to be an important and prosperous city. Though it was never again the capital of an independent state, it did serve as the capital for the satrapy of Sparda and formed the end station of the Persian Royal Road which began in Persepolis . It acted as a gateway to the Greek world, and was visited by notable Greek leaders such as Lysander and Alcibiades , as well as

4080-515: The sea in the northern section of the Gulf of İzmir , close to the gulf's mouth, near the village of Yenibağarası in Foça district, south of the center of the district. The Gediz Basin lies between northern latitudes of 38°04’–39°13’ and southern longitudes of 26°42’–29°45’. It covers 2.2% of the total area of Turkey. Larger part of the alluvial plain called under the same name as the river ( Gediz Plain )

4148-508: The sibilants more naturally and prevents confusion between v (= w 𐤥) and the Greek nu symbol ν (= ñ 𐤸).) Voicing was likely not distinctive in Lydian. However /p t k/ are voiced before nasals and apparently before /r/. The palatal affricate ( τ ) and sibilant ( š ) may have been palato-alveolar . It has now been argued that the laterals l and λ are actually flaps. The sign 𐤣 has traditionally been transliterated d and interpreted as an interdental /ð/ resulting from

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4216-518: The sound change *i̯ > ð or the lenition of Proto-Anatolian *t. However, it has recently been argued that in all contexts d in fact represents the palatal glide /j/, previously considered absent from Lydian. An interdental /ð/ would stand as the only interdental sound in Lydian phonology, whereas a palatal interpretation of d is complemented by a full series of other palatal consonants: λ , š , ñ , and τ . Lydian, with its many palatal and nasal sounds, must have sounded quite strange to

4284-403: The texts are predominantly singular. Plural forms are scarce, and a dual has not been found in Lydian. There are two genders : animate (or 'common') and inanimate (or 'neuter'). Only three cases are securely attested: nominative , accusative , and dative - locative . A genitive case seems to be present in the plural, but in the singular usually a so-called possessive is used instead, which

4352-611: The venerable forefathers. It is remarkable that clear examples of rhyme (like the stock expression aaraλ piraλ-k , 'house and yard', cf. German 'Haus und Hof') and alliteration ( k λidaλ k ofuλ-k q iraλ q elλ-k , 'land and water, property and estate') are absent in the poetical texts, but do occur in the prose bilingual. Sardis Sardis ( / ˈ s ɑːr d ɪ s / SAR -diss ) or Sardes ( / ˈ s ɑːr d iː s / SAR -deess ; Lydian : 𐤳𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣 , romanized: Šfard ; Ancient Greek : Σάρδεις , romanized :  Sárdeis ; Old Persian : Sparda )

4420-679: Was an ancient city best known as the capital of the Lydian Empire . After the fall of the Lydian Empire, it became the capital of the Persian satrapy of Lydia and later a major center of Hellenistic and Byzantine culture. Now an active archaeological site, it is located in modern day Turkey , in Manisa Province , near the town of Sart . Sardis was occupied for at least 3500 years. In that time, it fluctuated between

4488-515: Was attacked and burned by the Ionians as part of the Ionian Revolt against Persian rule. The subsequent destruction of mainland Greek cities was said to be retribution for this attack. When Themistocles later visited Sardis, he came across a votive statue he had personally dedicated at Athens , and requested its return. In 334 BC, Sardis was conquered by Alexander the Great . The city

4556-628: Was north of the Hermos. The valley of the Hermos was the heartland of the ancient Lydian Empire and overlooking the valley was the Lydian capital Sardis . In Turkey 's Aegean Region , Gediz River's length is second only to Büyük Menderes River whose flow is roughly parallel at a distance of slightly more than a hundred kilometers to the south. Gediz River rises from Murat Mountain and Şaphane Mountain in Kütahya Province and flows through Uşak , Manisa and İzmir Provinces . It joins

4624-566: Was surrendered without a fight, the local satrap having been killed during the Persian defeat at Granikos . After taking power, Alexander restored earlier Lydian customs and laws. For the next two centuries, the city passed between Hellenistic rulers including Antigonus Monophthalmos , Lysimachus , the Seleucids , and the Attalids . It was besieged by Seleucus I in 281 BC and by Antiochus III in 215-213 BC, but neither succeeded at breaching

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