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Hellenistic Karia

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Carbon Jan-Mathieu van Bremen Riet

Introduction

Riet van Bremen

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  • 1 A conference celebrating the 60th anniversity of Swedish excavations at Labraunda was held in Stoc (...)

1It is no exaggeration to speak of ancient Karia as one of the growth areas within ancient historical studies. As I write this introduction (September 2009), the collected papers of an earlier international colloquium, organized by F. Rumscheid and held in Berlin in October 2005, are about to see the light. Die Karer und die Anderen (Berlin 2009) tackled for the first time in an interdisciplinary way the relations between the Karians and those with whom they were in contact: Persians, Greeks, Lykians, Lydians, Egyptians. The conference on which the present volume is based took place in Oxford in the summer of 2006. It brought together, during an unusually hot and sunny week, linguists, archaeologists, epigraphists, numismatists and historians and allowed them to exchange ideas about a period of major transition in Karian history: the fourth century and the two centuries after Alexander. In November 2009, the next Karia conference will have as its topics the relations between Karia and Lykia, thus taking up some of the underlying themes of its two predecessors in a more explicitly comparative way1.

2It is appropriate for this volume to open with a presentation of the Karian section of the coin-collection of the greatest historian of Karia, Louis Robert. F. de Callataÿ and F. Delrieux introduce this important collection, now kept in the Fonds Louis Robert in Paris.

3Despite the title of the conference, it will be seen from the papers here presented that it is the fourth century on which much recent work has concentrated. This was a period not only of great satrapal visibility and presence, but also of intense civic engagement and increased political awareness among Karian communities, generating an unusually large number of inscribed documents (in Greek and in Karian: see the papers by Konuk, Maddoli, Descat and Fabiani) and an exceptional surge in building projects of all kinds (Pedersen, Henry, Rumscheid, Maddoli). It is also in the course of the fourth century that we see the rapid spread of the Greek language in inscriptions, while the use of Karian declined during the final decades of the fourth century (Piras, Adiego, Schürr, Melchert).

  • 2 HTC, no 90, 91; SEG 51, 1553, 1554.
  • 3 At least in part belonging to the fourth century; cf. Adiego et al. 2005 and in this vol. especial (...)
  • 4 Maddoli 2007.
  • 5 Marek 2006, K1, with all refs. See also Adiego 2007, C. Ka 5.

4Some of the more important recent epigraphic finds fit into this context: the two long Sekköy inscriptions, frequently referred to in this volume (Piras, Schürr, Wiemer, Reger) listing delegates from many Karian communities2; the bilingual Hyllarima inscription about the sale of priesthoods3, whose Karian sections survive intact and can – unusually – be read without problems, making this an exceptionally important text for the study of the Karian language (see Adiego). Many of the new Iasian inscriptions published by G. Maddoli4 are of the late fourth century, too (see Maddoli), as is the Kaunos Greek-Karian bilingual honouring two Athenians5.

  • 6 Though see now his own corrective paper in the forthcoming proceedings of the Labraunda colloquium (...)
  • 7 Hornblower 1982, 294 on the possibility of heroic/founder cult, and on the similarities between Ma (...)
  • 8 Isager & Karlsson 2008.
  • 9 The prescriptions for sacrifice to Olympichos (ll. 14-16) may reflect already existing ones for Ma (...)

5Central to the fourth century and taking up an entire section in this book are the Hekatomnid satraps, whose activities and general presence in the region is increasingly welldocumented. New finds confirm many of the interpretations and conclusions of S. Hornblower’s pioneering and wide-ranging 1982 monograph Mausolus6, most impressively perhaps in the light they throw on the cultic aspects of the dynasty’s funerary and commemorative architecture. F. Rumscheid, in an extraordinary tour de force, reconstructs, virtually from scratch, a ‘proto-Maussolleion’ at the very centre of Mylasa, the ‘old’ capital – the structure itself was never completed but its huge ceremonial platform survives in parts – possibly intended as the locus of a ruler/founder cult7. The recently published honorific inscription from Labraunda for Olympichos8, which mentions an existing altar of Maussollos in the sanctuary of Zeus (l. 9-10: βωμὸν λευκοῦ λίθου [ὅμοιον τῶι τοῦ Μαυ]σòσώλου τῶι ἐν τῶι ἱερῶι τοῦ Δι[ὸς Λαβραύνδου κτλ.]) suggests that the cult of Mausollos himself went beyond heroic tomb-cult and so prefigured that of Alexander and the Hellenistic kings9.

  • 10 Maddoli 2007, nos. 11-13, with discussion on pp. 248-52.
  • 11 See now also Henry 2009, 137-41.
  • 12 Marek 2006, 46-8.
  • 13 W. Blümel in I. Iasos II, p. 145-6.
  • 14 Fabiani, Konuk, Maddoli, Reger and Bresson.

6G. Maddoli’s paper adds to this Mylasan Maussolleion the recently identified Maussolleion in Iasos10, while O. Henry argues that the monumental and highly visible tomb at Berber İni, 3 km south-west of Mylasa, was that of Hekatomnos, founder of the dynasty, and suggests that cult was associated with this monument, too11. A Hekatomnid family monument at Kaunos, with statues of Hekatomnos son of Hysallomos (sic), Pixodaros and Maussollos, is discussed in Chr. Marek’s recent edition of the inscriptions of Kaunos12. P. Pedersen’s monumental study of the city walls of Halikarnassos emphasizes the role played in constructing this and other Karian defensive structures of the Hekatomnid dynasty. G. Reger suggestively links the Sekköy inscriptions in which the Mylaseis, possibly on the instigation of, or with help from, Maussollos, buy land from the Kindyeis, to an attempt at connecting Mylasa, via Beçin, to the ‘Little Sea’ and thus establish the crucial sea-connection between city and coast (see Map p. 47, and, on the ‘Little Sea’ and the effect of its acquisition on Iasos see also Konuk, this vol.). This situation (if correctly interpreted) was reversed soon after in favour of Iasos, through the influence of two Iasian brothers, philoi of Alexander the Great (and “Waffenlieferant(en) in großem Stil”, as one commentator has interpreted Gorgos’title of ὁπλοφύλαξ to Alexander)13, who single-mindedly achieved the transfer of this important bit of sea to Iasos. Personal influence and decisive action counted for much in both cases: in this respect the positions of Persian satrap and philos to the new Macedonian king may be compared. But equally typical of this complex region is the contrast between the indigenous Karian dynast Maussollos and the two Iasian urbanites Gorgos and Minnion – incidentally the stars of this volume alongside Maussollos himself: they appear in no fewer than five papers14.

7The symbiotic relationship between the islands of the Dodekanese, in particular Rhodes and Kos, and the coastal regions of Karia, forms the subject of section 5. W. Held’s paper on the cults of Loryma shows the mixed Karian-Rhodian cultic identity of this formerly independent coastal region of Karia which became an integral part of the Rhodian state. In an imaginative paper, A. Carstens illustrates the way in which the sepulchral landscape of the Halikarnassian peninisula and Rhodian dramatic stage-setting responded in similar ways to the local landscape.

8It hardly needs saying that the sea, and access to the sea for strategic and economic reasons, was of major importance. But for the islands, access to the coast was a necessity too. David Blackman’s discussion of the location of Rhodian shipsheds shows the extent of Rhodian control of Karian coasts (and far into their hinterlands, cf. his discussion of the Pisye list of Karian contributors to the building of neoria on the coast at Pladasa) in the post-Maussollan era. The impact of Rhodes, from the early third century onwards, was of course felt well into the interior and at many levels, because of the island’s growing dominance over the Karian ‘Subject’ Peraia. For a while, this control extended over regions further inland, given to the island state after the battle of Magnesia. In both regions the imposition of Rhodian administrative structures can be traced: we now know that Rhodian hegemones were appointed ἐπὶ τῶν κατὰ Καρίαν τόπων as far east as Aphrodisias (see Chaniotis’contribution). U. Wiemer investigates the impact which resident Rhodian citizens, Rhodioi, had on the life of Karian communities of the Subject Peraia, an analysis made possible by the recent publication of Les hautes terres de Carie (2001). But Rhodes and Kos were also models on which many of the political and administrative structures of the Karian (and neigbouring Lykian) communities were based, as is shown in particular in the paper by Chr. Schuler on sympoliteiai, whose Lykian/Karian focus prefigures the main theme of the next conference in Bordeaux (2009).

  • 15 Kolb 2004 gives a good overview of the Lykian projects.
  • 16 For Loryma see entries under ‘Held’ in the general bibliography; Peschlow-Bindokat 2005 for the La (...)
  • 17 See for instance the recent account by M. Ç. Şahin of the devastation of the territory of Stratoni (...)

9Schuler’s study of Lykian and Karian forms of sympoliteia is also a study of the relations between political centres and settlements in the countryside or chora, and so brings up an interesting and fundamental point of comparison between the two regions and the way in which they can be profitably studied together. Karia is fast catching up on Lykia in the field of survey archaeology. Lykian surveys such as that of F. Kolb at Kyaneai, or Th. Marksteiner at Limyra, have shown the importance of this kind of mapping of the countryside and the exploration of its patterns of settlement15; in Karia they find their counterpart in the work of A. Peschlow-Bindokat in the Latmos, W. Held in the Loryma peninsula, K. Konuk in the region north of the Keramic gulf16, and Chr. Ratté in the territory of Aphrodisias (see Ratté’s contribution this vol.). But it must also be mentioned here that large parts of western Karia have now been forever mutilated and made unfit for survey activity by the surface mining activities of the Turkish State Mining Company17. Lykia has been luckier in this respect.

  • 18 Collins et. al. 2007.

10A number of papers, finally, pick up on a major recent trend in the study of Anatolian culture, namely the investigation of cross-cultural Greek-Anatolian interactions in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age and their echoes in later periods. The title of a recent book, Anatolian Interfaces, Hittites, Greeks and their Neighbours well embodies the spirit of this very fertile and important area of discussion between linguists, archaeologists and historians from many different backgrounds18. Karia and Lykia, successors to the Hittite-Luwian culture, are directly affected by the results of this interdisciplinary work. Linguists have of course been long aware of the continuities between second-millenium Anatolia and later periods, but cultural and religious historians, too, are now beginning to reap the profits of an awareness of what went before. P. Debord’s study on Chrysaor, Bellerophon and Pegasos is a good example, as is D. Piras’more general study of Karian identity. E. Varinlioğlu’s provocative piece on Kodapa/Kodopa brings up important questions about cultural, religious and linguistic links between Karia and Kilikia. These are exciting times for all of us who work on this fascinating region.

11Most of the papers presented at the conference were submitted for publication in this volume. Mention should, however, be made of the papers that, for various reasons, could not be included but will, hopefully, appear elsewhere: A. Kızıl, ‘A Hellenistic Chamber tomb near Mylasa’, A. Tırpan, ‘New Finds from the Sanctuary of Hekate at Lagina’, R. Pierobon, ‘Ville et défense du territoire à l’ époque hellénistique: le cas de Iasos’, S. Isager, ‘Hellenistic Halikarnassos according to the local Inscriptions’ and J.-M. Carbon, ‘What (if anything) makes a ritual Karian?’.

12A word on spelling, style and standardization is in order in a multi-lingual volume. Reasonable effort has been made to observe and retain the different conventions of punctuation and referencing. No absolute uniformity has been imposed on spelling, ancient or modern. Although most authors chose to write ‘Karia’ not ‘Caria’, the linguists’convention (unless they write in German) is to use the Latin spelling for ‘Carian’, ‘Lycian’ etc., which explains Part III: ‘Carian Inflections’.

Notes

1 A conference celebrating the 60th anniversity of Swedish excavations at Labraunda was held in Stockholm in November 2008. Its papers are being prepared for publication by L. Karlsson.

2 HTC, no 90, 91; SEG 51, 1553, 1554.

3 At least in part belonging to the fourth century; cf. Adiego et al. 2005 and in this vol. especially the papers by Piras, Adiego, Schürr and Wiemer. One part of the stele was found in 1933, the other in 2004.

4 Maddoli 2007.

5 Marek 2006, K1, with all refs. See also Adiego 2007, C. Ka 5.

6 Though see now his own corrective paper in the forthcoming proceedings of the Labraunda colloquium: “How unusual were Mausolus and the Hekatomnids?”.

7 Hornblower 1982, 294 on the possibility of heroic/founder cult, and on the similarities between Maussollos and Evagoras, the ruler of Cypriote Salamis, including the heroic cult referred to in the first paragraph of Isokrates’Evagoras; cf. also Hornblower, forthcoming (prev. n).

8 Isager & Karlsson 2008.

9 The prescriptions for sacrifice to Olympichos (ll. 14-16) may reflect already existing ones for Mausollos.

10 Maddoli 2007, nos. 11-13, with discussion on pp. 248-52.

11 See now also Henry 2009, 137-41.

12 Marek 2006, 46-8.

13 W. Blümel in I. Iasos II, p. 145-6.

14 Fabiani, Konuk, Maddoli, Reger and Bresson.

15 Kolb 2004 gives a good overview of the Lykian projects.

16 For Loryma see entries under ‘Held’ in the general bibliography; Peschlow-Bindokat 2005 for the Latmos; the publication of Konuk’s survey work is promised for the near future.

17 See for instance the recent account by M. Ç. Şahin of the devastation of the territory of Stratonikeia in EA 41 (2008) 53-4. The sanctuary site at Panamara is now surrounded by a virtual desert and damage has been done to the sanctuary-hill itself by pylons inserted into the hillside. Google Earth for this part of Karia shows the appalling scars in the landscape created by the mining. The planned re-landscaping of the mined areas is no less disastrous because of the way it will change the contours of the existing landscape.

18 Collins et. al. 2007.

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