THE MUSEUM OF MILETUS, TURKEY

There’s a classic excursion that everyone who has stayed in Kusadasi does – it ticks off the three most attractive nearby ruins: Priene, Miletus and Didyma. We didn’t want to take the classic tourist approach, however, and decided instead to split up the day, with one excursion to Miletus and Didyma, and the second to Priene.

We didn’t take the sacred road from Didyma to Miletus, even though it’s been well excavated and reconstructed in recent decades. We used the normal road, which meant that on our way, we passed the newly established museum in which the discoveries from Miletus, its surrounding area and Didyma are on display.

Where today, you park your car in the middle of a flood plain, there was nothing but sea 3,000 years ago. Miletus lay on a spur of land on which archaeologists have found almost as many Bronze Age strata as in Troy. Around 1100, the city was then destroyed so that Ionic colonists – according to legend – could found the city anew in the year 1053 BC. The myth says that a son of the last King of Athens led the settlers there, which led to attempts to explain the close alliance between the two cities.

Miletus. Stater. Gorny & Mosch 190 (2010), 261.

Miletus 1/12 stater. Gorny & Mosch 200 (2011), 1818.

The museum of Miletus is truly worth a visit. It provides an excellent overview on the history of the city. Of particular note was a statue of the Meander river god.

Finds from the sacred way are also on display in the new museum. Among them is the hoard discovery of Söke Tekkisla, which came to the Museum of Miletus in 1996. It consists of 125 Ottoman gold coins, minted almost exclusively under Suleiman I, and 174 contemporaneous Venetian coins. There are also 676 Ottoman silver coins.

To read the complete article, see: Springtime in Turkey – Part 8 (www.coinsweekly.com/en/News/4?&id=2085)





Wayne Homren, Editor

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