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Miletus [mahy-lee-tuhs]

Miletus

[mahy-lee-tuhs]

Miletus, ancient seaport of W Asia Minor, in Caria, on the mainland not far from Sámos. It was occupied by Greeks in the settlement of the E Aegean (c.1000 B.C.) and became one of the principal cities of Ionia. From the 8th cent. B.C. it led in colonization, especially on the Black Sea. The Milesians were strong enough to resist the Lydian kings and were not molested by the Persians. In 499 B.C., however, they stirred up the revolt of Ionian Greeks against Persia; the Persians sacked the city (494 B.C.). Although less flourishing, Miletus remained an important seaport until the harbor silted up early in the Christian era. Miletus produced some of the earliest Greek philosophers, including Thales and Anaximander. The site was excavated by German archaeologists.

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Thales of Miletus

(flourished 6th century BC) Greek philosopher. None of his writings survive, and no contemporary sources exist. The claim that Thales was the founder of Western philosophy rests primarily on Aristotle, who wrote that he was the first to suggest a single material substratum for the universe, namely water. Thales' significance lies in his attempt to explain nature by the simplification of phenomena and in his search for causes within nature itself rather than in the caprices of anthropomorphic gods.

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Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Miletus

Ancient Greek city of western Anatolia. Before 500 BC it was the greatest Greek city in the east. Distinguished as a commercial and colonial power, it was also known for its intellectual figures, including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Hecataeus. Ruled by Greek tyrants, it later passed successively under the control of Lydia and the Persian Achaemenian dynasty. About 499 BC Miletus led the Ionian revolt that sparked the Persian Wars, and it was destroyed by the Persians in 494 BC. After the Greeks defeated the Persians, it joined the Delian League. It fell to Alexander the Great in 334 BC but retained its commercial importance. By the 6th century AD its two harbours had silted up, and it was eventually abandoned. Now an archaeological site, it is located near the mouth of the Menderes River.

Learn more about Miletus with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

Miletus

Miletus (mī lē' təs) (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, literally transliterated Milētos, Latin Miletus) was an ancient city on the western coast of Anatolia (in what is now Aydin Province, Turkey), near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria. Evidence of first settlement at the site has been made inaccessible by the rise of sea level and deposition of sediments from the Maeander. The first available evidence is of the Neolithic.

In the early and middle Bronze age the settlement came under Minoan influence. Legend has it that an influx of Cretans occurred displacing the indigenous Leleges. The site was renamed Miletus after a place in Crete.

The Late Bronze Age, 13th century BCE, saw the arrival of Luwian language speakers from south central Anatolia calling themselves the Carians. Later in that century the first Greeks arrived, calling themselves Achaeans. The city at that time rebelled against the Hittite Empire. After the fall of that empire the city was destroyed in the 12th century BCE and starting about 1000 BCE was resettled extensively by the Ionian Greeks. Legend offers an Ionian foundation event sponsored by a founder named Neleus from the Peloponnesus.

The Greek Dark Ages were a time of Ionian settlement and consolidation in an alliance called the Ionian League. The Archaic Period of Greece began with a sudden and brilliant flash of art and philosophy on the coast of Anatolia. The first Greek science was devised by the Milesian School of philosophy.

Geography

Miletus is south of Söke. The ruin lies north of Akkoy and near to Balat village.

The city also once possessed a harbor, before it was clogged by alluvium brought by the Meander river.

Geology

During the Pleistocene epoch the Miletus region was submerged in the Aegean Sea. It subsequently emerged slowly, the sea reaching a low level of about below present level at about 18,000 BP. The site of Miletus was part of the mainland.

A gradual rise brought a level of about below present at about 5500 BP, creating several karst block islands of limestone, the location of the first settlements at Miletus. At about 1500 BCE the karst shifted due to small crustal movements and the islands consolidated into a peninsula. Since then the sea has risen 1.75 m but the peninsula has been surrounded by sediment from the Maeander river and is now land-locked. Sedimentation of the harbor began at about 1000 BCE and by 300 CE Lake Bafa had been created.

History

Neolithic

The earliest available archaeological evidence indicates that the islands on which Miletus was originally placed were tenanted by a Neolithic population in the 2nd half of the 4th millennium BCE (3500-3000 BCE). Pollen in core samples from Lake Bafa in the Latmus region inland of Miletus suggest that a lightly-grazed climax forest prevailed in the Maeander valley, otherwise untenanted. Sparse Neolithic settlements were made at springs, numerous and sometimes geothermal in this karst, rift valley topography. The islands offshore were settled perhaps for their strategic significance at the mouth of the Maeander, a route inland protected by escarpments. The grazers in the valley may have belonged to them, but the location looked to the sea.

Bronze Age

Recorded history at Miletus begins with the records of the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age. The prehistoric archaeology of the Early and Middle Bronze Age portray a city heavily influenced by society and events elsewhere in the Aegean, rather than inland.

Cretan period

Beginning at about 1900 BCE artifacts of the Minoan civilization acquired by trade arrived at Miletus. For some centuries the location received a strong impulse from that civilization, an archaeological fact that tends to support, but not substantiate, the legend of a founding; that is, a population influx, from Crete. According to Strabo:

Ephorus says: Miletus was first founded and fortified above the sea by Cretans, where the Miletus of olden times is now situated, being settled by Sarpedon, who brought colonists from the Cretan Miletus and named the city after that Miletus, the place formerly being in possession of the Leleges.

The legends recounted as history by the ancient historians and geographers are perhaps the strongest; the late mythographers have nothing historically significant to relate.

Luwian and Greek period

Miletus is first mentioned in the Hittite Annals of Mursili II as Millawanda. In ca. 1320 BC, Millawanda supported the rebellion of Uhha-Ziti of Arzawa. Mursili ordered his generals Mala-Ziti and Gulla to raid Millawanda, and they proceeded to burn parts of it (damage from LHIIIA:2 has been found on-site: Christopher Mee, Anatolia and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age, p. 142). In addition the town was fortified according to a Hittite plan (ibid, p. 139).

Millawanda is then mentioned in the "Tawagalawa letter", part of a series including the Manapa-Tarhunta letter and the Milawata letter, all of which are less securely dated. The Tawagalawa letter notes that Milawata had a governor, Atpa, who was under the jurisdiction of "Ahhiyawa" (a growing state probably in LHIIIB Mycenaean Greece); and that the town of Atriya was under Milesian jurisdiction. The Manapa-Tarhunta letter also mentions Atpa. Together the two letters tell that the adventurer Piyama-Radu had humiliated Manapa-Tarhunta before Atpa (in addition to other misadventures); a Hittite king then chased Piyama-Radu into Millawanda and, in the Tawagalawa letter, requested Piyama-Radu's extradition to Hatti.

The Milawata letter mentions a joint expedition by the Hittite king and a Luwiyan vassal (probably Kupanta-Kurunta of Mira) against Milawata (apparently its new name), and notes that Milawata (and Atriya) were now under Hittite control.

Homer records that during the time of the Trojan War, it was a Carian city (Iliad, book II).

In the last stage of LHIIIB, the citadel of Pylos counted among its female slaves "Mil[w]atiai", women from Miletus.

During the collapse of Bronze Age civilisation, Miletus was burnt again - presumably by the Sea Peoples.

Dark Age

Mythographers told that Neleus son of Codrus of Athens had come to Miletus after the return of the Heraclids (so, during the Greek Dark Age). The Ionians killed the men of Miletus and married their widows.

Archaic period

The city of Miletus became one of the twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor.

Miletus was one of the cities involved in the Lelantine War of the 8th century BCE.

Miletus was an important center of philosophy and science, producing such men as Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes.

By the 6th century BC, Miletus had earned a maritime empire but brushed up against powerful Lydia at home.

When Cyrus of Persia defeated Croesus of Lydia, Miletus fell under Persian rule. In 502 BC, the Ionian Revolt began in Naxos; and when Miletus's tyrant Aristagoras failed to recapture the island, Aristagoras joined the revolt as its leader. Persia quashed this rebellion and punished Miletus in such a fashion that the whole of Greece mourned it. A year afterward, Phrynicus produced the tragedy The Capture of Miletus in Athens. The Athenians fined him for reminding them of their loss.

Classical period

Its gridlike layout, planned by Hippodamos, became the basic layout for Roman cities. In 479 BC, the Greeks decisively defeated the Persians at the Greek mainland, and Miletus was freed of Persian rule. During this time several other cities were formed by Milesian settlers, spanning across what is now Turkey and even as far as Crimea.

The courtesan Aspasia, mistress of Pericles, was also born in Miletus as was the eponymous founder of the bawdy Miletian school of literature Aristides of Miletus.

Alexandrian period

In 334 BC, the city was liberated from Persian rule by Alexander the Great.

Roman period

The New Testament mentions Miletus as the site where the apostle Paul met with the elders of the church of Ephesus before his capture and travel to Rome for trial, as well as the city where Trophimus, one of Paul's travelling companions, recovered while sick.

It is believed that Paul stopped by Great Harbour Monument and sat on its steps, on his way back to Jerusalem by boat. He may have met the Ephesian Elders there and then bid them farewell on the nearby beach, which was recorded in the book of Acts.

Byzantine period

During the Byzantine age Miletus became a residence for archbishops. The small Byzantine castle called Castro Palation located on the hill beside the city, was built at this time.

Turkish rule

Seljuk Turks settled into the city in the 12th century A.D. and used Miletus as a port to trade with Venice.

Finally, Ottomans utilized the city as a harbour during their rule in Anatolia. As the harbour became silted up, the city was abandoned. Today the ruins of city lie some 10 kilometres from the sea.

Archaeological excavations

The first excavations in Miletus were conducted by the French archaeologist Olivier Rayet in 1873, followed by the German archaeologist Theodor Wiegand. But these were interrupted several times by wars and various other events. Today, excavations are organized by the Ruhr University of Bochum, Germany.

One remarkable artifact recovered from the city during the first excavations of the 19th century, the Market Gate of Miletus, was transported piece by piece to Germany and currently exhibited at the Pergamon museum in Berlin. The main collection of artifacts resides in the Miletus Museum in Didim, Aydın, serving since 1973.