Word: lydian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...greatest cultural strains that influenced Western civilization flowed through Lydia in Asia Minor, for many centuries an industrial and financial center. Many historians believe that the Etruscans of Italy, from whom the early Romans got much of their culture, were Lydian colonists. The last King of Lydia, Croesus, was legendary for his vast wealth, and his capital, Sardis, was a splendid city that served after his death as the western capital of the Persian Empire...
...Effort. Archaeologists were sure that the ruins of Sardis would prove extremely interesting, but they could not excavate them because they did not know exactly where the Lydian Sardis stood. The whole Sardis region, 45 miles inland from Turkey's modern Izmir, is cluttered with Greek, Roman and Christian ruins. When diggers explored this relatively common stuff they did not find Lydian Sardis under it. This summer, a joint Harvard-Cornell expedition led by Professor George Hanfmann of Harvard, made another effort. Last week came the announcement that the site of Lydian Sardis has finally been found...
...discovery was made by detective work added to heavy digging. After spending part of the summer excavating the conspicuous ruins of a temple of Artemis, the diggers got down to the river bed without finding anything Lydian. In other promising spots they found only worthless Roman or Christian remains, and a few Lydian potsherds. But when they attacked the foundations of a large Roman-Byzantine structure called "Building B," they found a promising clue: a great marble block with an inscription telling that the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus (A.D. 130-169) had passed that way and given...
Professor George M. A. Hanfmann's current ancient mystery is the fabulous Lydian civilization, whose capital city in Sardis, Turkey, will be excavated during the next three summers. He returned on April 14th from a preliminary survey of the area and will leave again late in May to begin digging. "Sardis is an extremely rich place," says Professor Hanfmann, his "r's" revealing a slight German accent. "There are several big ruins above ground from the Hellenistic and the Roman period, but the palace of Croesus and the Temple of Zeus are buried. We will probably take on some...
...Hanfmann and Detweiler are financing the work with funds from Harvard and Cornell, matching a contribution from the Bolingen Foundation. Excavation could go on indefinitely, however. "As long as you dig you can always use more money," Professor Hanfmann says. At Sardis, he hopes to find clues to the Lydian language, which still baffles philologists. "We have a few samples now, but most of them read: 'This is the tomb of so and so, whosoever violates it will have to pay a fine'--Well, you can't get very far that way." He also plans to find archeological evidence that...