Sardis ( ) or Sardes ( ; ; ; ) 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 also mentioned as the campsite of Brutus and Cassius in William Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar (1599).

In 2025, Sardis was listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site.

History

Sardis was occupied for at least 3500 years. In that time, it fluctuated between a wealthy city of international importance and a collection of modest hamlets.

Foundation stories

thumb|upright=1.2|Map showing Sardis and other cities within the Lydian Empire. Shading shows Lydia in the middle of the 6th century BC at the time of King Croesus; red line shows its earlier extent in the 7th century BC.

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 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".

The site may have been occupied as early as 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.

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.

thumb|right|Relief from a Persian-era burial at Bintepe

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

After the Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261, Sardis and surrounding areas slowly 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 the Turco-Mongol warlord Timur in 1402. Its metropolis had severely declined by that point, and its titles had already been assumed by the metropolis of Philadelphia in 1369.

By the 1700s, only two small hamlets existed at the site. In the 20th century, a new town was built.

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 the Butler excavation were added to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

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 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 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 the Department of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2008, the excavation has been under the directorship of Nicholas Cahill, professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

See also

  • Cities of the ancient Near East
  • List of synagogues in Turkey

References

Further reading

  • The Archaeological Exploration of Sardis
  • The Search for Sardis, history of the archaeological excavations in Sardis, in the Harvard Magazine
  • Sardis, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  • Sardis Turkey, a comprehensive photographic tour of the site
  • The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites - Sardis
  • Livius.org: Sardes - pictures