Posted on 07/24/2018 9:05:15 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Military equipment has been unearthed in the ancient city of Sardis in the western province of Manisa's Salihli district. Officials believe they might have been used in an ancient war between the Lydians and the Persians.
The ancient city of Sardis, which was the capital of the Lydian Kingdom in the ancient ages and had been home to many civilizations from seventh B.C. to seventh A.D., is now undergoing excavation works. This year's works continue in an area called the "Palace" region...
The military equipment is believed to have been used in the war that caused the end of the Lydian Kingdom in 546 B.C...
Dunlop said that last year's excavations revealed extraordinary artifacts that did not belong to the mentioned period, such as a military shield, a piece of ivory from a furniture and stone seal...
The war materials in the ancient city are expected to shed light on the collapse of the Lydian civilization after the Persians seized Sardis at the end of the 14th day of the war and plundered it...
Situated in the area of Sart in the Salihli district, Sardis was home to many civilizations between seventh century B.C. and the early Byzantine era.
The city became rich thanks to agriculture, stockbreeding, trade and gold mining.
(Excerpt) Read more at hurriyetdailynews.com ...
from the wiki-wacky:
Croesus turned to the Delphic oracle and the oracle of Amphiaraus and the oracles answered, with typical ambiguity, that if Croesus attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire... The oracles also advised Croesus to find out which Greek state was most powerful and to ally himself with it. Croesus, now feeling secure, formed an alliance with Sparta in addition to those he had with Amasis II of Egypt and Nabonidus of Babylonia, and launched his campaign against the Persian Empire in 547 BC. (The scholar Evans in 1978 examines the conflicting dates implied in Herodotus.) ...Cyrus... attacked and defeated Croesus in Thymbria and later in Sardis, eventually capturing him. It became clear that the powerful empire destroyed by the war was Croesus's own.
one of *those* topics.
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Interesting,
I’ve never eaten there, but if I’m ever in midtown, I’ll probably try Sardi’s.
After Alexander's conquests they seem to have been heavily hellenized.
The other fascinating thing to me about that area is the Hurrian peoples - were they ancestors to the Kartveli people? Were they relatives to Sumerians, Elamites and Dravidians (all sharing an agglutinative language)
From Robertson's "Word Pictures:
In Sardis (en Sardesin). Some thirty miles south-east of Thyatira, old capital of Lydia,From Marvin Vincent's "Word Studies":
wealthy and the home of Croesus, conquered by Cyrus and then by Alexander the Great,
in B.C. 214 by Antiochus the Great, at the crossing of Roman roads, in a plain watered
by the river Pactolus, according to Pliny the place where the dyeing of wool was
discovered, seat of the licentious worship of Cybele and the ruins of the temple still there,
called by Ramsay (op. cit., p. 354) the city of Death, city of softness and luxury,
of apathy and immorality, a contrast of past splendour and present unresting decline (Charles).
Along with Laodicea it was blamed most of all the seven churches."
Sardis -- The capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia. It was situated in a plain watered========
by the river Pactolus. The city was of very ancient origin. Herodotus (i., 84) gives the account
of its siege and capture by Cyrus, and of its previous fortification by an old king, Meles.
It was ruled by a series of able princes, the last of whom was Croesus, celebrated for his wealth
and his misfortunes. In the earlier part of his reign he extended his dominion over the whole of Asia Minor,
with the exception of Lycia and Cilicia. The Lydian rule was terminated by the conquest of Cyrus.
From the Persians it passed into the hands of Alexander the Great, after which, for the next
three hundred years, its fortunes are obscure. In b.c. 214 it was taken and sacked by
Antiochus the Great after a siege of two years. The kings of Pergamus next succeeded
to the dominion, and from them it passed into the hands of the Romans.
In the time of Tiberius it was desolated by an earthquake, together with eleven or twelve other
important cities of Asia, and the calamity was increased by a pestilence.
Sardis was in very early times an important commercial city. Pliny says that the art of dyeing
wool was invented there, and it was the entrepôt of the dyed woolen manufactures, carpets, etc.,
the raw material for which was furnished by the flocks of Phrygia. It was also the place where the metal
electrum was procured. Gold was found in the bed of the Pactolus. Silver and gold coins
are said to have been first minted there, and it was at one time known as a slave-mart.
The impure worship of the goddess Cybele
was celebrated there, and the massive ruins of her temple are still to be seen.
The city is now a heap of ruins.
In 1850 no human being found a dwelling there.
They seem to have been happy with their pantheon.
Most of the various Anatolian languages were related, that seems to have carried over to the island culture known as Minoan. Herodotus probably spoke and/or understood Carian, since he grew up in a town with a Carian minority, and his closer temporal proximity gives his opinion weight. Etruscan (another related language) turned Apollo (himself a non-Greek deity that was adopted by the Greeks to the degree that he became the quintessential Greek deity) into something like Up-pu-lu. The Hurrians were the Carians.
The Ionian Greeks settled in the Anatolian underbelly as colonists, a late coat of paint as it were, and the Lydian kingdom, while it lasted, kept them out of Persian domination. Once Persia finished off Croesus, the Ionian cities were knocked off one by one over a fairly short period. The Anatolian languages vanished pretty rapidly after the Persian conquest. The Persians, oddly enough, adopted Aramaic as the standard language for the empire. That was a lucky break when it came time to crack written Persian.
There is no known relationship between Sumerian and any other language; same goes for Elamite; same goes for Dravidian, although it isn’t unlikely that they are relatives of the Harappans (the written version of that language remaining unread). Trying to link living agglutinative languages has been problematical (it used to be that Turkish and Korean were thought to be mutually closest living relatives).
Arzawa
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http://www.omniglot.com/writing/lydian.php
https://www.lib.umt.edu/lang/smalfamh.htm#Etrusc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4zRe_wvJw8
Lydia the Tattooed Lady
Lydia, oh! Lydia, say have you met Lydia
Oh! Lydia, the tattooed lady
She has eyes that folks adore so
And a torso even more so
Lydia, oh! Lydia, that “Encyclopedia”
Oh! Lydia, the Queen of tattoo
On her back is the Battle of Waterloo
Beside it the Wreck of the Hesperus too
And proudly above the waves
The Red, White and Blue
You can learn a lot from Lydia
She can give you a view of the world
In tattoo if you step up and tell her where
For a dime you can see Kankakee or Paree
Or Washington crossing the Delaware
Oh! Lydia, oh! Lydia, say have you met Lydia
Oh! Lydia, the tattooed lady
When her muscles start relaxin’
Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson
Lydia, oh! Lydia, that “Encyclopedia”
Oh! Lydia, the champ of them all
For two bits she will do a Mazurka in Jazz
With a view of Niag’ra that no artist has
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz
You can learn a lot from Lydia.
La la la La la la La la la La la la
Come along and see Buff’lo Bill with his lasso
Just a little classic by Mendel Picasso
Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon
And Godiva, but with her pajamas on
La la la La la la La la la La la la
Here is Grover Whalen unveilin’ the Trylon
Over on the west coast we have Treasure Islan’
Here’s Nijinsky a doin’ the Rhumba
Here’s her Social Security numba
La la la La la la La la la La la la
Lydia, oh! Lydia, say have you met Lydia
Oh! Lydia, the champ of them all
She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat
And now the old boy’s in command of the fleet
Songwriters: George Fenton
Lydia the Tattooed Lady lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
They would have found it earlier, but they were packed like Sardines.............
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