Ancient Antalya: Origins of a Mediterranean Megacity (20 min)

Presenters

Noah Kaye, Michigan State University

Abstract

Perched above a pirate’s cove on the travertine edge of the Pamphylian Plain, Antalya (Attaleia) owes more than just its name to outside investment. The much older Graeco-Anatolian cities of Perge, Aspendos, and Side controlled the region’s best soils—and nearby Magydos, the only natural harbor around. An unlikely place, so it seems, for an imperial port. What then was its founder, Attalos II, thinking? And how did Attaleia grow to the point that Pompey, after Pharsalus, entered no other city on his way to Egypt (Plut. Pomp. 76)? The purpose of this paper is to recover the Attalid imprint and delineate the strategic and economic logic of the act of city foundation, the goal of Hansgerd Hellenkemper in his article, “Attalos und Attaleia,” but reapproached with much more evidence and a birds-eye view. For the first time, the case study of Attaleia are contextualized within the Pergamene political economy and settlement network. Sharper distinctions for three archaeological phases are presented: a pre-Attalid phase, an Attalid phase, and a Roman phase. For the earliest, we are no longer at the mercy of a corrupt passage of Strabo (14.4.1), relying instead on salvage excavations in the district of the Doğu Garajı and study of city walls—including those of the harbor—by the late Ferhan Büyükyörük. The Roman city’s layout is also coming into focus in excavations around Kaleiçi. Yet a profile of the Attalid city only emerges when we examine religious change in the cult of Poseidon pictured on civic coinage, the maritime setting in the form of a new analysis of fortifications, and mobility in the city’s territory, as evidenced by a reexamination of the sites of Döşeme Boğazı and Ören Tepe.