Ancient Smyrna

Karşıyaka, Ord. Prof. Ekrem Akurgal Cd, 35580 Bayraklı, Turkey

About

The continuous excavations on the Bayraklı ridges by Prof. Dr. Ekrem Akurgal since 1959, the discovery of the Zeus Altar by the German archaeologist Carl Humman in Pergamon (Bergama) between 1866 and 1878, the discovery of the Seljuk Artemis Temple in 1869 by the British wood and the continuous excavations by Austrian archeologists at certain intervals of the city of ancient Ephesus since 1904. Also many researchers in different universities are still investigating on the city's historical development. Turkey is one of the countries in which the world railroad transportation was first practiced. The first railroad routes in turkey are the ones between Izmir- Aydın and Izmir- Turgutlu, which began working between 1856 and 1863 during the period of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. In the years of the struggle of liberation İzmir underwent a great wreckage with great destructions and fires. With the driving away of the Greeks by the leadership of the great leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on September 9th 1922, Izmir started to become a modern city of the young Turkish Republic and developed this character more everyday. Many legends are known about the derivation of the name of Izmir. According to the knowledge acquired from scientific studies the word "IZMIR" came from Smyrna in the ancient Ionian dialect and it was written as Smyrna in the Attikan (around Athens) dialect. The word Smyrna was not Greek. It came from Anatolian rootb like many other names in the Agean Region from the texts belonging to 2000 B.C. in the Kultepe settlement in Kayseri, a place called Tismyrna was come across in the (Ti) at the beginning was omitted and the city was pronounced as Smyrna. So the city was called Smyrna the early years of 3000 B.C. or late 1800 B.C In the Turkish era the city was called Izmir. Smyrna was erected on a much older city. It was captured and destroyed by Alyattes, king of Lydia, in 600 and later was reconstructed and restored. Following the defeat of the Lydians by the Persians, the latter seized it before it was eventually taken by Alexander the Great in 334 BC. (It is at Bayraklı near Izmir that we see the traces of the first settlements. The excavations carried out in this place have proved that the initial settlements here dated back to the 3rd century BC. At the time, the city possessed wide frontiers. The ceramics of foreign origin discovered in the excavations indicate that the city flourished, particularly in maritime trade.) In the y

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