MILETOS in IONIA 525 BC Archiac Ancient SILVER Greek coin

MILETOS in IONIA 525 BC Archiac Ancient SILVER  Greek coin i56265

Authentic Ancient  Coin of:

Greek city of Miletos in Ionia

Silver Twelfth Stater 9mm (1.16 grams) Struck circa 525 B.C.

Reference: Sear 3533 var. | Pedigree: Ex-Mendon Collection

Head of lion right.

Star ornament within incuse square.

You are buying the exact item pictured,  provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of  Authenticity.

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.  In the 6th Century BC, Miletus was the site of origin of the Greek philosophical  (and scientific) tradition, when Thales,  followed by Anaximander and Anaximines (known collectively, to modern scholars, as the Milesian School) began to speculate about the material constitution of the  world, and to propose speculative naturalistic (as opposed to traditional,  supernatural) explanations for various natural phenomena.

Geography

The ruins lies about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) north of Akkoy.

The city also once possessed a harbor, before  it was clogged by alluvium  brought by the Meander River. There is a Great Harbour Monument where it is believed that  Paul stopped by and sat on its steps, on the way back to Jerusalem by boat. He  may have met the Ephesian Elders and then headed out to the beach to bid them  farewell, recorded in the book of Acts.

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 130 meters  (430 ft) 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 1.75 meters (5 ft 9 in) 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.[1]

History

Neolithic

The earliest available archaeological evidence indicates that the islands on  which Miletus was originally placed were inhabited by a Neolithic  population in the 2nd half of the 4th millennium BCE (3500–3000 BCE).[2]  Pollen in core samples from Lake Bafa in the Latmus  region inland of Miletus suggests 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 portrays 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.[2]  For some centuries the location received a strong impulse from that  civilization, an archaeological fact that tends to support but not necessarily  confirm the founding legend—that is, a population influx, from Crete. According  to Strabo:[3]

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.[4]

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

Map of Miletus and Other Cities within the Lydian Empire

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 BCE, 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 eponymous founder of the bawdy Miletian school of literature Aristides of Miletus taught here.

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 in 57 CE met with the elders of the church of Ephesus near the close of his Third Missionary Journey, as recorded in Acts of the Apostles (Acts 20:15–38). It is believed that Paul stopped by  Great Harbour Monument and sat on its steps. He may have met the Ephesian elders  there and then bid them farewell on the nearby beach. Miletus is also the city  where Paul left Trophimus,  one of his travelling companions, to recover from an illness (2  Timothy 4:20). Because this cannot be the same visit as Acts 20 (in which  Trophimus accompanied Paul all the way to Jerusalem, according to Acts 21:29),  Paul must have made at least one additional visit to Miletus, perhaps as late as  65 or 66 CE. Paul's previous successful three-year ministry in nearby Ephesus  resulted in the evangelization of the entire province of Asia (see Acts 19:10,  20; 1 Corinthians 16:9). It is safe to assume that at least by the time of the  apostle's second visit to Miletus, a fledgling Christian community was  established in Miletus. (The rendering of the King James Version of Malta as "Melita"  in Acts 28:1 has created confusion between Malta and Miletus among some readers  of the Bible.)

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 conquered the city in the 14th 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. Excavations, however, 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  reassembled. It is currently exhibited at the Pergamon museum in Berlin. The  main collection of artifacts resides in the Miletus Museum in Didim, Aydın, serving  since 1973.

Colonies  of Miletus

Pliny the Elder mentions 90 colonies founded by Miletus in his Natural History (5.112).

Apolonia

Odessos

Tomis

Histria

Tyras

Olbia

Panticapaeum

Theodosia

Tanais

Phanagoria

Pityus

Dioscurias

Phasis

Trapezunt

Amisos

Sinope

Notable  people

Thales  (c. 624 BC–c. 546 BC) Pre-Socratic philosopher

Anaximander (c. 610 BC–c. 546 BC) Pre-Socratic philosopher

Anaximenes (c. 585 BC–c. 525 BC) Pre-Socratic philosopher

Hippodamus of Miletus (c. 498—408 BC) urban planner

Aspasia  (c. 470–400 BC) courtesan , and mistress of Pericles,  was born here

Aristides of Miletus, writer

Hecataeus of Miletus, historian

Hesychius (6th century) Greek chronicler and biographer

Isidore (4th–5th century) Greek architect

Aristagoras (5th–6th century) Tyrant of Miletus

Leucippus (first half of 5th century BC) Philosopher and originator of  Atomism (his association with Miletus is traditional, but disputed)

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