Metropolis

Doliche

Milet

Aspendos

Tyana

Assos

Bergoule

Perinthus - Heraclea Perinthus

Sarmizegethusa

Doğu Romanya'nın Geç Demir Çağı kasabası, MÖ 1. yüzyılda Burebista tarafından kurulan Daçya devletinin merkezi. Bir tepenin üstündeki kale, birkaç tapınak ve tapınağın bulunduğu bir kutsal alanın yanındadır.

archaeologsTurkishAncient Cities, Place Names

Zhob

A valley in northern Baluchistan, Pakistan, with a number of sites of the 4th and 3rd millennia bc, of which the best known are Periano Ghundai and Moghul Ghundai. The so-called ‘Zhob cult’ phase of the 3rd millennium bc is characterized by goggle-eyed hooded female figurines of a type labelled ‘...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Wujin Yancheng

[Wu-chin Yen-ch’eng]. Site in southern Jiangsu province, China, of a walled city traditionally identified with the capital of the Eastern Zhou state of Yan (a different state from the Yan state in the neighbourhood of Beijing, written with a different character). Bronze ritual vessels found at Ya...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Wujin Yancheng

Wasit

Located half way between Basra and Kufa, Wasit was founded as a new town by Hajjaj b. Yusuf al-Thaqafi, governor of Iraq, in 703-4. Its remains occupy some three square kilometres. The only standing building is a shrine with a monumental portal flanked by minarets, datable to the 13th century. Ex...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Venosa

An open Lower Palaeolithic site north of Potenza in Basilicata in southern Italy. A hand axe or Acheulian level overlies one with abundant ‘side scrapers’ (evolved Clac-tonian, Tayacian or Charentian). The date of these is not well fixed.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Uruk

[modern Warka; biblical Erech]. Situated c250 km south of Baghdad, on an ancient branch of the Euphrates River in Iraq, Uruk was one of the major city-states of Sumer. Excavations by German archaeologists from 1912 onwards have revealed a series of very important structures and deposits of the 4t...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Ugarit

2nd-millennium bc Canaanite city at modern Ras Shamra near the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Although securely identified as ancient Ugarit only in the 2nd millennium, the site was occupied from much earlier and the city overlies a series of earlier Bronze Age, Chalcolithic and Neolithic settleme...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Abydos

Two hieroglyphic inscriptions containing the names of Egyptian kings that were found on the walls in a small temple at Abydos, Egypt. The first tablet has the names of the kings of the 12th and 18th dynasties and it is now in the British Museum. The second tablet begins with Menes, one of the fir...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Syracuse

A Greek colonial settlement and principal port on the east coast of Sicily, and later capital of Roman Sicily. Earliest occupation seems to be on the island of Ortygia which helps to enclose the Great Harbour, where some early Palaeolithic material occurs. It is likely that a native settlement pr...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Sounion

[Roman Sunium]. Byron’s ‘Sunium’s marbled steep’ is a classical sanctuary site on a rocky headland some 70 km southeast of Athens. It is famous for the standing columns of its mid-5th century bc marble temple to Poseidon, which make a dramatic sight and give the location its alternative title of ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Sohar

The principal town of the Batina coast of Oman in the Sassanian and early Islamic periods. The site had perennial water and enjoyed a plentiful supply of agricultural products, especially dates. The Wadi Jizzi provided a corridor for communications with Buraimi oasis in the interior. Although it ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Smyrna

[ancient Izmir]. One of the largest late classical and early Byzantine sea ports of western Asia Minor. The early remains are now mostly covered by the modern city and so very little archaeological investigation has been possible, but historical sources have illuminated many aspects of its Byzant...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Sippar

[modern Abu Habba]. One of the most northerly of the cities of Sumer, situated near the Euphrates River north of Babylon in Iraq. The city was occupied from the Early Dynastic period and appears to have been an important religious and trading centre. Among the most important finds are thousands o...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Shuruppak

[modern Fara]. Situated on the bank of the Euphrates River in southern Iraq, Shuruppak was one of the city states of Sumer. Excavations by a German expedition in the first decade of this century uncovered important remains of the Early Dynastic period. The temples produced a wealth of early docum...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Shechem

Modem Balata has been identified as the site of the biblical city of Schechem, near the central Palestinian town of Nablus. There was some occupation in the Pre-pottery Neolithic period, but the first town was built in the Middle Bronze Age, defended first by a free-standing wall, then an earth r...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Scoglio Del Tonno

An important prehistoric site which formerly occupied a promontory projecting into the harbour of Taranto, southeast Italy; it was destroyed, after excavation, when the port was extended in 1899. The site was first occupied during the Late Neolithic by people using Serra D’Alto ware. It was then ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Qatna

An impressive fortified city east of Homs in Syria. Excavation has found evidence of 3rd-millennium bc occupation, but the fortifications — consisting of a free-standing plaster-faced glacis (bank) — belong to the Middle Bronze Age in the early 2nd millennium bc and were probably constructed by t...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Qairawan

An important caravan city in Tunisia on the east-west route between Egypt and the Maghreb. It has four major 9th-century structures: the Great Mosque, the Mosque of Three Doors and two massive cisterns. The Great Mosque bears the name of Uqba b. Nafi, the conqueror of North Africa, who built the ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Oxyrhynchus

An ancient Egyptian town some 11 km west of the Nile on the left bank of the Bahr Yusuf, best known for its papyri texts. Oxyrhynchus was a regional capital, and derives its name from the fish (Greek oxyrhynchus: ‘sharp-nosed’) with which the locally worshipped deity of Seth was associated. Littl...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Orchomenos

A major Bronze Age site in Boeotia, central Greece. The rocky spur of Orchomenos was occupied throughout the Bronze Age, but, although extensive remains of the Early and Middle Helladic periods survive, the Mycenaean levels are badly eroded. However it seems that there was a palace or other large...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Olynthus

A classical Greek settlement at Toronaios Bay, Chalkidiki, familar from the speeches of Demosthenes (the so-called Olynthiacs), and of central importance as an example of Greek town-planning and the Hellenic house in the period 430-348 bc. Some late Neolithic settlement is followed after a gap by...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Nineveh

One of the most important of the ancient Mesopotamian cities, situated c400 km north of Baghdad on the Tigris River opposite Mosul in Iraq. The site today consists of several mounds, the main one being Kuyunjik. It was occupied from the 6th millennium be (a test pit beneath the Temple of Ishtar, ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Neapolis

See Naples.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Neapolis

Nea Nikomedeia

Tell site in Macedonia, northern Greece, occupied in the Early Neolithic period. Of a range of radiocarbon dates from c6200 to 5300 be, most authorities feel that those between 5800 and 5600 reflect the most likely date of the occupation. Several square and rectangular single-roomed houses were e...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Nasik

Rock-cut Buddhist temple in the western Deccan, India, dating to the early centuries ad.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Naples

Greek neapolis, ‘new city’ (a name common in antiquity). The principal Greek city of Campania, southern Italy, but probably only of modest size and importance during the Roman period. Tradition gives the settlement as a daughter colony founded by Greeks from Cumae, and a 7th-century bc date looks...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Mycenae

A major citadel of the Greek Bronze Age situated in the Argolid, in the northeast Peloponnese. It was occupied in the Early Bronze Age, but became powerful in the Middle and Late Bronze Age after, it is believed, an invasion by Greek-speaking peoples. Among the most important monuments of Mycenae...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Mohenjo-Daro

One of the two major cities of the Harappan civilization of the 3rd millennium bc. Mohenjo-Daro, in the upper Sind district of Pakistan, is the largest of all the Indus Valley sites, covering cl 00 hectares, of which nearly one third has been excavated. Its population has been estimated as around...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Miletus

This ancient settlement on a bay at the mouth of the Meander River in southwest Turkey was inhabited from the 2nd millennium bc. By the beginning of the 1st millennium bc it was an Ionian Greek city, colonizing Black Sea and Egyptian Delta areas in the 7th and 6th centuries bc. Miletus produced p...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Mildenhall

Thistley Green, West Row, 5 km from Mildenhall in Suffolk, eastern England is the find-site of a hoard of 4th-century Roman silver plate, richly decorated with figured reliefs. The 34 pieces include a large dish (roughly 60 cm in diameter) depicting the head of Oceanus, ringed by friezes of sea a...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Mes-Kalam-Dug

A little-known king of the Sumerian city of Ur, whose richly furnished grave in the Royal Cemetery was excavated by Woolley. His name does not appear in the Sumerian king list and it is therefore suggested that he might have been a local ruler who reigned before the First Dynasty of Ur, perhaps c...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Mes-Kalam-Dug

Megiddo

Large tell above the Plain of Esdraelon in Israel, excavated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. The ambitious aim of the project was to excavate the entire mound, layer by layer. This proved beyond the resources of the Institute, even at that period of cheap labour, but ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Marzabotto

Rare example of an Etruscan occupation site, 25 km from Bologna, northern Italy. Situated in the Reno valley, it was presumably deliberately set on an important Etruscan trade-route. Two distinct phases may perhaps be separated: a 6th-century bc phase, characterized by plain and rather primitive ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Liulige

[Liu-li-ko]. A town in Hui Xian, Henan province, China, where many burials of the Shang and Eastern Zhou periods have been excavated. The Shang burials, some containing bronze ritual vessels, belong to the Erligang phase. Eastern Zhou finds at Liulige range in date from the 7th to the 2nd century...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Leptis Magna

[also Lepcis (from Punic Lpdy or Lpqy)\. Principal city of Roman North Africa in Libya, particularly well-preserved after its 7th-century decline by the intrusion of the desert sand. It was known to imperial Rome as the birthplace of the Emperor Septimus Severus (193-211) whose Latin was apparent...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Larsa

A tell site north of Ur in southern Iraq, which was one of the city-states of Sumer. It has never been properly excavated, but is well-known from documentary sources. It emerged as a city state during the Early Dynastic period, but gained in importance after the collapse of the Third Dynasty of U...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Jerusalem

City sited on the Judaean hills, occupied for more than 4000 years and now the capital of Israel. Many excavations have taken place since the 1860s, but because of the long history of destruction and rebuilding on the site, it has been difficult to reconstruct the development of the city. Sporadi...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Jericho

Known today as Tell es-Sultan, Jericho lies in an oasis in the Jordan Valley north of the Dead Sea, on a main east-west route. Its long stratigraphy documents almost continuous occupation from before 9000 be to cl580 bc. At the base of the tell was a Natuf-ian deposit, associated with a rectangul...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Iblis

Located c80 km southwest of Kerman in southern Iran, Tal-i Iblis is a tell settlement occupied in the 5th, 4th and 3rd millennia be. The earliest occupation, dating to the early 5th millennium be (Tal-i Iblis 0), is characterized by coarse-tempered red burnished ware made into a variety of simple...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities