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Figure 10.12 Tomb of Alyattes (Photo: courtesy Christopher Roosevelt)

THE ACHAEMENID CONQUEST AND ITS ANTECEDENTS

On the testimony of Herodotus, the Iranian conquest of Anatolia may be conceived as having two phases: First, the expansion of the Medes into the area east of the Kızılırmak in the first half of the 6th century, and the victory of Cyrus over Croesus, which brought the Persians to the Aegean coast a generation later. Archaeology has little to contribute to this picture, for these political changes were not immediately accompanied by any dramatic transformation in material culture. The Medes, in fact, are so invisible that a case can be made that their empire was a creation of Herodotus, who assumed it must have resembled the Achaemenid Empire of his own day. The Persians were real enough, but Cyrus the Great created their vast dominions by absorbing existing empires in large blocks. His stature as a great liberator is no doubt somewhat overdrawn in Persian propaganda, but at least initially Achaemenid policy was to rule with a light hand. In Mesopotamia in 539 BC, for example, scribes simply stopped dating their tablets to the regnal year of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, and started dating them to Cyrus,

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continuing their business routines without missing a beat. It was only afterwards that new administrative structures were imposed, languages changed, and the great tradition of Mesopotamian civilization from its gods to its cylinder seals and cuneiform writing system began to wither and die. Something similar seems to have happened in Anatolia, although here the native civilizations encountered by the Iranians were less venerable and more diverse to begin with.

The political changes of the 6th century BC undoubtedly affected the site of Kerkenes Dag˘ , the largest pre-Hellenic site in Anatolia and in some ways the most mysterious (Figure 10.13). It lies astride a mountainous ridge 47 km southeast of Bog˘ azköy, protected by a fortification wall whose 7-km perimeter encloses an area of 2.5 km2 (Figure 10.14). The site has been known for roughly a century but until recently very little work was done there. It appeared to belong to a single period, and preliminary work by the University of Chicago in the 1920s established that it was post-Hittite and pre-Hellenistic. Then the site was left to itself for more than seventy years. Perhaps its very size was daunting, and there was a suspicion that its construction might never have been finished—that it might be, in essence, a hollow shell. In any case, it kept its secrets until quite recently.

For the last decade, however, Geoffrey and Françoise Summers have been conducting a technologically sophisticated project at Kerkenes Dag˘ which has shown this earlier neglect was

Figure 10.13 Kerkenes Dag˘ (Photo: courtesy Geoffrey and Françoise Summers)

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quite unjustified. Their team took on the whole site with a battery of remote sensing techniques, mapping its visible remains from the air and detecting its subsurface architecture. Far from being empty, the area within the walls was crowded with architectural compounds, some of them quite well appointed. Soundings revealed that it had been burned, and at least one of the major gateways in its city wall deliberately destroyed. Soon after the first trenches were opened, an ivory and gold plaque was discovered to suggest that luxury was not unknown here (Figure 10.15).

It is tempting to identify Kerkenes Dag˘ with ancient Pteria, a major historical site that has yet to be put on the map. Herodotus relates that Croesus, on his way to do battle with Cyrus in central Anatolia, crossed the Halys River (Kızılırmak) and entered the land of Pteria. By the treaty the Medes and Lydians had drawn up in the previous generation, this would have been Median territory. Croesus enslaved the inhabitants of Pteria’s city and drove them from their homes, “though they had done him no harm.”42 If Kerkenes were Pteria it might also be something that archaeologists of eastern Anatolia and Iran have long been looking for: A full fledged Median city.

While the equation of Kerkenes and Pteria is by no means ruled out, recent excavations have shown that this cannot simply be classified as Median. No sooner had Geoffrey Summers published a paper arguing for its Iranian character43 than he discovered the first epigraphic evidence from the site: Phrygian alphabetic inscriptions on objects of art. In a more recent publication he has argued that most of the public architecture is more reflective of western Anatolian than Median traditions.44

Kerkenes Dag˘ is a reminder of how much we still have to learn about the archaeology of ancient Turkey. Here we have an enormous creation of organized human endeavor which may well have played a significant role in key events shaping the subsequent course of civilization. We understand enough of what it contains to be able to date it, and say something about its urban layout. Discoveries at Kerkenes Dag˘ have followed a pattern of the archaeology of Anatolia in the Iron Age as a whole: with Herodotus as a guide, one tries to establish an historical fact, only to find complexity, contradictions, and more questions. We have learned much since Schliemann first went looking for Priam’s Troy. Most of all, we have come to recognize that Turkey’s archaeological riches have vastly more to tell us.

Figure 10.15 Gold and ivory attachment from Kerkenes Dag˘ (Photo Behiç Günel, courtesy Geoffrey and Françoise Summers)

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NOTES

1Bryce 2006: 117–122.

2Blegen 1963: 144.

3Bryce 2006: 127–130.

4Belgen 1963: 169–171.

5Greaves 2002: 77, 90.

6Bean 1966: 22.

7Herodotus I.143

8Cook 1958–1959: 14–15.

9Histories 7.73.

10Tsetskhladze 2007: 304.

11Brixhe 2008: 72.

12The earliest Phrygian inscription, on a single sherd, appears to date to around 800 BC. The “GrecoPhrygian” forms of the letters “d” (delta) and “k” (kapa) suggest that letter shapes were borrowed from the Phoenician alphabet by the second half of the 9th century (DeVries 2007: 96–97).

13Witke 2004.

14Yassıhöyük Stratigraphic Sequence.

15Table dates from Voigt 2005: 27.

16Voigt and Henrickson 2000: 42.

17Burke 2005.

18There are dissenters, but one must now dismiss a great many very solid radiocarbon dates in order to hold to the traditional dating, and most of the scholars directly involved with the Gordion excavations have adopted the new chronology and re-interpreted other forms of evidence, such as ceramic chronology, to accord with it.

19Voigt 2007: 315–324.

20Young 1981: 9.

21Young 1981: 79.

22Young 1981: 273–277.

23Young 1981: 101.

24So named for the rounded raised projection at the center of its interior, which helped one to hold it in one’s hand. This was a style of metal vessel popular in the Near East from the time of the Assyrian Empire into the Achaemenid period.

25Young 1981: 102.

26For the dating, see Manning et al. 2001; for press coverage, see John Noble Wilford, “So Who is Buried in Midas’ Tomb?” New York Times, Dec. 21, 2001.

27Berndt 2002: 9.

28Berndt 2002: 11–14.

29Melchert 2008: 56–57.

30Histories 1.94.

31Histories 1.7.

32Luckenbill 1927: vol. 2, pp. 351–352.

33Pedley 1968: 45.

34Pedley 1968: 55.

35Mellink 1987: 19.

36Mellink 1987: 19.

37Hanfmann 1983: 28.

38Rammage 2000: 17–19.

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39Hanfmann 1983: 35; Rammage and Craddock 2000: 72–98.

40Hanfmann 1983: 57.

41Mellink 1987: 18.

42Histories 1.76.

43Summers 2000.

44Summers 2007.

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