Message #132600

[Bianca]

Like Rome and Athens, both ancient cities that have built subways in modern times despite frequent delays to explore buried antiquities, tunneling for the metro (and a parallel dig beneath the Four Seasons Hotel in Sultanahmet) in 2800-year-old Istanbul has unearthed numerous other treasures, including what is believed to have been the fifth-century main doorway of the Imperial Palace. This monumental bronze gate, some six meters (20') tall, was uncovered near the Blue Mosque, along with Byzantine mosaics, frescoes, and portions of a 16-meter (52') street, sewer system and hammam, or Turkish bath. So far, the later discoveries have not caused engineers to alter the subway tunnel route, however, and it is uncertain what will happen to the ruins that have recently emerged in Sultanahmet.

Meanwhile, the gargantuan dig at Yenikapi continues to disgorge an eclectic mix of the marvelous and the mundane. Apart from the 32 watercraft dating from the seventh to the 11th centuries—including four naval galleys—archeologists have dug up more than 170 gold coins, hundreds of clay amphorae for wine and oil, ivory cosmetics cases, bronze weights and balance scales, finely-wrought wooden combs and exquisite porcelain bowls. They’ve recovered bones of camels, bears, ostriches, elephants and lions—probably imported from Africa for entertainments at the Hippodrome, suggests Kocabaş. Some 15 human skulls retrieved from a dry well may have belonged to executed criminals. Iron anchors have been recuperated, objects so highly prized in medieval Byzantium that they are noted in the dowry records of wealthy merchants’ daughters. The oldest find is an 8000-year-old Late Neolithic hut containing stone tools and ceramics—the earliest settlement ever located on the city’s historic peninsula. One particularly mind-boggling find, discovered aboard a ninth-century cargo ship, was a basket of 1200-year-old cherries nestled next to the ship’s captain’s ceramic kitchen utensils—a cooking grill, hot pot, pitcher and drinking cup—as if waiting for the ancient mariner’s imminent return.

“No, I didn’t taste them,” laughs Kocabaş. “But I did think about planting a few pits to see if they would sprout.” (Kocabaş rejected the notion when he realized both the fruit and the pits had turned to carbon.) The site’s ships, bones and artifacts (and cherries) were so unusually well preserved, he maintains, because silt from the Lykos River and sand from the Marmara Sea quickly covered over the wrecks.

After a fortifying lunch of stuffed grape leaves and meat-filled eggplant at a busy local eatery, Kocabaş and Metin Gökçay, site chief from the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, take me along to explore the first portion of the harbor brought to light. It is also the oldest part of the port, a flashpoint alerting local archeologists to the unique historical significance of a site that had nearly been bulldozed.

En route, we pass dozens of laborers pushing wheelbarrows of powdery, pale-brown dirt up wooden or earthen ramps crisscrossing the immense six-meter-deep (20') pit. Next to a cluster of modern-day shipping containers converted to field offices and conservation labs are hundreds of blue plastic milk crates stacked and loaded with amphorae, pottery fragments and animal bones. In the distance, several long white sheds shelter ships. Beyond tall metal fences enclosing the site stand rows of two-story shops backed by high-rise apartment blocks.

Arriving at a quiet, overgrown area on the western fringes of the site, we push aside branches of fig and bamboo to inspect massive limestone blocks. “These were the original quays,” says Kocabaş. “You can see the notched holes hewn out of the rock for tying up the boats.” Next to the quays is a stone wall that Kocabaş, Gökçay and others believe was part of the earliest city wall laid out by Constantinople’s founder, the Roman Emperor Constantine i, in the fourth century, more than 50 years before Theodosius i constructed the harbor. Researchers at the dendrochronological laboratory at Cornell University have confirmed that wooden supports from the 53-meter (170') portion of the wall that has been dug out date from the fourth century, he explains. Even though the wall and quays lay only a meter (39") underground, they remained hidden and forgotten for centuries.

Initially, the area was to be part of the train and metro station, but when the ancient remains were found four years ago, they were declared off-limits and plans for the station were changed so as to leave the historic monuments intact.