V. LYDIANS

As the dominance of the Phrygian kingdom waned in the 7C BC, it was succeeded in western Anatolia by the Lydian state under its Mermnad dynasty with their expansionist policy and avowed intent to establish Lydia's place in the balance of power in the Near East and the Mediterranean world. From its original base in western Anatolia, squeezed between the city-states of Aeolia, lonia and Caria on the coast and Phrygia to the east, the kingdom was to extend at its peak, under the legendary king Croesus, from the shores of the Greek city-states to the bend of the Kizilirmak (Halys) in central Anatolia—the old Phrygian border—and from the Propontis Sea (Marmara Denizi) in the north to the Lycian coast in the south. In other words nearly half of Anatolia was to come under Lydian hegemony. Moreover, the physical geography of the Lydian home land fitted her for regional dominance—with rich natural resources of water, forests, agricultural and pasture land and ample mineral deposits including, most importantly, the abundant gold from the rich alluvial plain of the Paktolos (Pactolus) River (Sartcay). Such natural fertility and prosperity was enhanced by Lydia s strategic and commercial position.

Yet the origins of the Lydians, as of so many other peoples in Anatolia, are not easy to disentangle, although it is known that an indigenous population had been settled in this area since the Chalcolithic Age. The most convincing theory argues, partly on the basis of the close connection between the Lydian and Hittite lan guages and cuneiforms, that the Lydians entered Anatolia from the east or north in the later part of the third millennium BC. As for more recent Lydian history, Herodotus provides a detailed (if not entire reliable!) account of their three dynasties, the Atyads, the Heraclids—Tylonids in Lydian terminology—and the Mermnads, who between them ruled from about 2000 BC to 547/6 BC. Archaeological evidence, including a cuneiform inscription of the Hittite king, Tudhaliyas IV (1250-1220 BC), confirms his dating of the early Atyad dynasty; and the period of the later Mermnads, especially Croesus, is amply documented by Greek and Roman authors.

The Lydian capital, Sardis (Sartmustafa), according to the findings of excavations, was in the Bronze Age a village of wholly Anatolian character but possessing cultural links with Greece, as we see from ceramic pieces discovered there. After total destruction in the wave of migrations of about 1200 BC, along with most of the rest of Anatolia, the Thracian-origin Heraclid/Tylonid dynasty is said by Herodotus to have continued for 22 generations, over a period of 505 years from 1185 BC. The last king, called in Greek Mursylos, was known in the Lydian language as Kandaules (Candaules), also the name of a Lydian god—meaning 'dog-strangler'; indeed, excavation has revealed the remains of a ritual feast given in honor of the god Kandaules which included the skeletons of a number of new-born puppies, strangled, sacrificed and very likely consumed.

On the accession of Gyges (c 687-652 BC), the first of the Mermnads, the historians Herodotus, Nicolaus of Damascus and Plato agree that he killed Kandaules with the help of a woman, possibly Kandaules' queen, and then took over both throne and queen. From this time, Lydia and its capital, Sardis, took the names by which they have been known since, in place of Maionia and Hyde respectively, as Homer knew them. And until its destruction in 547/6 BC, Sardis assumed the position of the richest, most powerful and most influential city of ancient Anatolia.

During the reign of Gyges, Lydia rose from obscurity to the status of a great power alongside Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia. After his internal administrative and, particularly, military reforms to counter the Cimmerian threat that engulfed Phrygia, Gyges subjugated the northern city-state of Troy and the major Ionian cities of Magnesia ad Sipylum (Manisa), Miletus, Smyrna (Izmir) and Colophon (near Degirmendere) and thus established Lydian control of the western trade centers. He is acknowledged by Herodotus as being the first barbarian king after Midas to send gifts to the Oracle at Delphi—a policy clearly designed to ingratiate himself with the Greek market, and one continued by his successors However, unable to maintain his initially successful resistance against the Cimmerians, he suc cumbed to them in a battle during which the city of Sardis, but not the impressively fortified acropolis, was sacked and destroyed.

Under Gyges’ son, Ardys (c 652-629 BC), Sardis underwent a second sacking before the Cimmerians moved on to the shores of the Aegean and thence down the Mediterranean coast until they settled in Cappadocia. Ardys was able to re-establish Lydia and build on his father's policy of expansion.

This episode tells us much about the strength of the Lydian economy at this time, which was able to withstand the sacking and destruction of its capital twice in rapid succession. Founded on trade and prosperity in natural resources, the state could be restored as long as the acropolis survived; for this defensive bastion, with its palace complex, contained the core of Lydia's political, adminis trative and military power, and served as a protection and refuge for Sardis' lower town. However, the Cimmerian invasions of the late 8th and early 7C BC thoroughly disrupted the balance of power so painstakingly constructed after the Hittite collapse; with the pre carious position of Urartu and the complete collapse of Phrygia in her prime, the Near East was in a state of chaos.

Under Alyattes (c 610-560 BC), the fourth Mermnad king and apparently the most able, Lydia reached its greatest territorial extent, reasserting its sway over Priene, Caria and the Ionian cities and arranging marriage alliances with Ephesus and with the Medes of Persia—a great power in Anatolia after the Assyrian Empire had fallen to the combined onslaught of the Medes and Scythians, and from 585 BC (on the conclusion of a five-year war with Lydia) the neighbors of Lydia across the Kizilirmak. Thus a short-lived bal ance of power among Media, Lydia, Babylonia and Cilicia was achieved—to be destroyed by the rise of the Persian Empire in 547/6 BC, with the conquest of Lydia.

In view of the strength of this new Near Eastern power in Anatolia, Media, it is no wonder that Alyattes attended so assiduously to affairs in the west and concentrated on developing relations with Greece— building shrines in Miletus, sending gifts to the Delphic Oracle, improving relations with Corinth and inviting Greek sculptors and artists to his capital. It is from Alyattes' reign that Hellenic influence really begins to become evident in western Anatolia.

Alyattes' son, Croesus (560-547/6 BC), inherited a prosperous state, and it was during his reign that it reached its zenith in wealth, cultural development and political influence. His is the best-known name of the Mermnads among the early Greek and Roman authors, who praised his wealth and generosity; and his name has continued to be synonymous with extreme wealth, the expression 'Karun gibi zengin' ('As rich as Croesus') still current in Turkey and elsewhere. A great patron of the arts, he established Lydia as the center of ancient eastern Greek art. Using his wealth, he brought Ephesus under Lydian domination and financed the re-building of the city, including its temple to Artemis—which acknowledges his donation in its inscription—after its destruction by the Cimmerians. Croesus soon held sway over the Greek city-states, all of which paid him taxes (an important source of Lydian wealth) except the privileged Miletus. Yet these city-states, despite Croesus' assistance, must have remained vulnerable to external attack, for they never organized themselves as a defensive confederation and so lost their indepen dence one by one when Lydian protection was no more.

An example of Lydian commercial development is the prominent trading port of Smyrna once it had recovered from the sacking of Alyattes in 600 BC—which is supposed to have rendered it uninhabi table for 30 years. Excavation has turned up innumerable native lydion vases, made in Sardis. These, used as containers for the much-prized Lydian cosmetic creams, were exported all over the western Anatolian coast, Greece and even Italy; but since their form and workmanship is far inferior to contemporary Greek ware, we may infer that they merely comprised the packaging, as it were, and were not valued in themselves as works of art. We know that Lydia was famous for its perfumes and cosmetic creams—as indeed is that region of western Anatolia today.

The people of Sardis are credited with the development of the marketplace during the late 7th and early 6C BC, with its one-roomed shops collected together along with places of refreshment and brothels. Herodotus description of the marketplace at Sardis has been borne out by excavations and his epithet of kapeloi (thought to mean retail-traders, also huckster) for the Lydians seems most apt. Finds of ceramics from the Greek city-states of the Aegean coast, figurines in bronze and ivory from Phrygia, carvings from the Scythians, beads from Phoenicia and glazed ceramics from Assyria indicate the extent of the trading network that converged at Sardis. But most important to Lydia's economy was the rich gold resource of the Paktolos (Sartcay) valley. It is interesting to note that the gold-working and industrial area of Sardis was well distant from the acropolis. This, combined with historical references to wealthy indi viduals who were able to loan large sums even to royalty, implies the existence of a moneyed class independent of the king, and would distinguish the Lydian monarchy from the absolute monarchies of the east.

The invention of the coin was undoubtedly Lydia's most significant contribution to human history. For as a natural result of this inven tion, trade by barter came to be replaced by a money economy, and commercial and business development was accelerated. The use of precious metal as a unit of value had been practiced in a primitive way since the end of the third millennium BC, most notably in the Babylonian system based on silver weights. But this cumbersome arrangement by weight impeded transport of valuable goods and was virtually inaccessible to villagers and small artisans who were unable to obtain the ingots of gold or silver for use as a measure. The Lydian invention, then, of small and easily portable coins made of electrum (a natural mixture of gold and silver) for use in exchange for goods facilitated and regularized commercial transactions. In addi tion, with each coin being guaranteed by the stamping of an official inscription on it, the need for more general literacy and for good scribes provided the initiative for the creation of a simple alphabet that could readily be understood. The new Lydian coinage quickly caught on, and every important trade center in western Anatolia was before long issuing its own coins. The spread of money from there and its important contribution to the development of civilization since requires, I think, no further explanation here.

Yet, despite the great reputation of Croesus in particular among the contemporary Greeks, he may not have been a ruler with such business acumen at they maintained. Historical evidence does not show that he increased the wealth of his extremely prosperous inheritance by very much. On the contrary, it may be argued that the profits from the developing Lydian industry and trade were used, not productively, but in military campaigns—for which the Lydians consistently utilized paid soldiery—and in conspicuous consumption. Thus, the economic base of the society (and its purchasing power) did not increase, making the collapse of the kingdom, when it came, very sudden. So sudden indeed was the fall of Croesus, his capital and his kingdom to the forces of the Persian king Cyrus in 547/6 BC that the shock spread right through the Near East, affecting most of all the ancient Greek world which seems to have taken its Lydian protector very much for granted.

The conspicuous consumption of the Lydians is most evident in their architecture, in their sculpture and in their jewellery, as may be seen from archaeological research. Jewellery, particularly gold jew ellery, was evidently much in demand among wealthy Lydians, to judge from the quantity of earrings, headbands, rings and necklaces found in their tombs. Yet there is no trace of the large-scale gold artifacts referred to in the historical sources—no doubt too valuable to remain unscathed for long. But it was Lydia's school of sculpture and its works in marble and ivory that set it at the center of early eastern Greek art. And in this respect mention must be made of a small marble model belonging to a shrine of Kybele (Kubile) found in the agora in Sardis. This beautifully carved and decorated model, with a figurine of Kybele in the doorway, quite clearly establishes the original character of the Lydian school of sculpture and its role in the creation of the Ionian style, a style of sculpture which blends the Ionian delicacy with the power and vivacity of eastern art.

Architecture, on the other hand, falls into two distinct groups—the poor housing of the citizens of Sardis (for of the rest of the country there is virtually no archaeological evidence as yet) and the magnifi cent tombs of their aristocracy and royalty. The humble inhabitants of Sardis lived mostly in one- or two-roomed houses of rough stone and rubble, topped with clay-brick and roofed with thatched mud and rushes, with a hard floor of compressed clay and containing a hearth and two bins or pits—for storage and for rubbish. Some of them inhabited wooden-framed houses covered with painted mud-brick. However, it is likely that the houses were supplied with both plain and painted pottery and they may have been decorated with carpets, screens and curtains, like modem Turkish village houses. They were constructed in terraced rows, often around courtyards, and tended to burn down easily. Indeed, Herodotus tells of an Ionian revolt (499-494 BC) in which the attackers were totally unable to loot the town of Sardis because it was so rapidly swept through by fire; a great contrast to the marble and limestone splendor of its noble tombs. It has also been suggested that the Lydian love of outdoor games of dice, knucklebones and gambling was related to their eagerness to keep outside their miserable dwellings as much as possible. Be that as it may, Sardis was sacked and burned at least twice during the Mermnad period before its destruction by Cyrus of Persia in 547/6 BC, and there may well have been a disinclination to build and rebuild housing of quality at the lower end of the town away from the protection of the acropolis. Yet the superb craftsman ship and excellent material so evident in the construction of tombs for the rich and powerful can leave us in no doubt about Lydian social division. The burial chambers themselves are all of about the same size, and constructed of elaborately carved marble or limestone to form a dwelling in which the deceased were evidently expected to continue their existence. Over the chambers were built barrows, the size of which attested the importance of the individual within. The royal cemetery of Lydia, on the shores of the Marmara Golu(Gygaean Lake) north of Sardis, is situated in the area called Bintepe ('A Thousand Hills') where there are about 100 such barrows, of which a number are particularly large and thought to belong to the Mermnad kings Gyges, Ardys and Alyattes. Not many have yet been exca vated, and that of Alyattes, for example, was found to have been stripped completely bare by ancient grave-robbers. In the valley of the Kucuk Menderes river, on either side of the Izmir-Ankara highway, the plain is dotted with small barrows—a parallel burial tradition dating from the Mernmads. Ordinary folk were interred in rock-cut chamber tombs.

Regarding the religious beliefs of the Lydians, not a great deal is known beyond the continuation of the cult of Kybele (Agdistis). Artemis too was worshipped—indeed throughout the Hellenistic period ranked as the major divinity of Sardis—and reference is made to a god, Kandaules, possibly related to the Greek Hermes. Euripides, the dramatist, claimed that the god Bacchus came to Greece from his homeland in Lydia—a claim now generally accepted. Certainly, what is known of Lydian religious ceremonies, with the long-haired eunuch-priests screaming themselves to a high pitch of frenzy and dedicating locks of their hair, tambourines and whips to the goddess, fits in broadly with ceremonies associated with the Bacchic cult, whether in Greece or in western Anatolia. Later Greek and Roman inscriptions in Sardis reveal the growing import ance of Greek deities such as Athena. Apollo, Dionysus, Zeus and Hermes, and it is possible to view the Lydian rulers as increasingly under the influence of the Greek religion. But this is not entirely to deny the existence of a popular Lydian religion, which I would designate as the cult of Kybele. especially in view of the spread of the Lydian kingdom over the precise territory occupied by the Phrygian state, whose well-attested and certainly popular devotion to the goddess is known to have continued after the collapse of Phrygia as a political entity.

Music—by reputation often high-pitched and wild—played an important part in Lydian life, especially religious life, and the Lydians are credited with the invention of the 'Lydian mode and a number of instruments, such as the 20-stringed harp, the paktis (lyre), the megadis (a lower-pitched lyre) and the barbitos—invented to create sound harmony with the paktis. According to Herodotus, the armies of Alyattes went into battle to the sound of pipes, horns, harps and flutes.

In music, as in so many other fields, Lydians set the fashion for numerous urban centers in the area. For example, Lydian love of purple cloth, of scents and saffron, of finely-carved ivory and other luxuries such as carpets and fine woolen and mohair textiles, spread rapidly through the Mediterranean coastal towns. But visual beauty ranked higher than aural for the Lydians, as may be inferred from their patronage far more of sculpture and architecture than of music and poetry. There is no evidence, to date, of any great literary achievement, and very few Lydian tablets. Most examples of Lydian inscriptions are on steles at tombs, in the Lydian alphabet. The language itself appears to be related to Human and Luwian, identi fying it, therefore, as an Anatolian language with Indo-European affinities.

Yet, in sum, the 6C BC, and particularly the reign of Croesus, saw a flowering of Lydia as a major center of art, particularly in sculpture and architecture. And the characteristic and original Lydian blend of Anatolian and Greek elements, attributable to the patronage of its Lydian kings, served as an important phase in the development of the coming Hellenistic era.