Lebedos Antik Kenti

Lebedos is an ancient city built on and around a small headland on the Ürkmez coast of Seferihisar, known today as the Kısık Peninsula. It was one of the twelve cities that formed the Ionian League. To its north lay Smyrna and Klazomenai, its immediate neighbour was Teos, and to the south lay Ephesus. According to ancient sources the city stood 90 stadia east of Cape Myonnesos and 120 stadia west of Kolophon. For those who visit Teos and Sığacık, it offers a quieter and lesser-known third stop on the same coast. The heart of the city has three parts. The acropolis stands on the hill called Kısıktepe or Belentepe; south-east of the acropolis lies a small peninsula called Adacıktepe, and a narrow isthmus stretches between the two. According to the measurements given on Wikipedia, the headland is a low, rocky promontory about 175 metres long, joined to the mainland by an isthmus 201 metres wide, and the acropolis sits on a hill 61 metres high. The founding of the city is usually dated to the 7th century BC. However, the discovery of a small worked flake of obsidian during a survey in 2004 has suggested that there may have been a much older, perhaps Neolithic, settlement on the peninsula. Ancient writers tell the story of the founding in different ways. Pausanias writes that Carians lived here before the Ionians arrived and that the settlers came under the leadership of Andraimon, son of Kodros. Strabo, on the other hand, says that the city was founded by Andropompos and that the place had earlier been called Artis. Lebedos stayed in the shadow of its famous neighbours. It had no good harbour, its hinterland was narrow, and it was surrounded by powerful cities such as Kolophon and Teos. In the 5th century BC it first paid a tribute of three talents to the Delian League, and this amount was later reduced to one talent. Turkish Wikipedia reports that Lebedos was the only Ionian city that did not mint coins in the Classical period. The Hellenistic period was a turbulent time for the city. Around 304 BC Antigonos tried to merge the city with Teos, but this attempt was never completed. In 292 BC Lysimachos moved most of the population to Ephesus. Even so, the city survived and was for a time known as Ptolemais, after the Ptolemaic dynasty. The Roman poet Horace mentions Lebedos in one of his letters as a town even more deserted than Gabii and Fidenae. In the Roman period, however, the city revived when it became the meeting place of the theatre artists of Ionia who had been sent away from Teos. In antiquity the city is also known to have been famous for its healing mineral springs. No archaeological excavation has yet been carried out at Lebedos, so what we know about the city's buildings is limited. The remains of the walls that once ringed the whole peninsula have, however, survived and stand as the most visible trace of the city. According to the records of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the "Archaeological Survey of Lebedos and its Territory" led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gökhan Coşkun began in 2017. During the work of Kütahya Dumlupınar University between 2017 and 2019, large quantities of pottery sherds and traces of walls were recorded on the slopes, and the foundations of a large building were found on a flat hilltop. The area is protected as a first-degree archaeological conservation site. The finest moment of the visit is climbing the slope above the coastal road to see the whole headland at once. From here the acropolis hill, Adacıktepe and the isthmus between them can be read like a map. The coves and the beach on either side of the peninsula can be crowded in summer, so spring and autumn are better for looking at the remains. On the protected site you should not step on the stones, climb the wall remains or take any piece away. At sunset the silhouette of the headland makes a very fine photograph along the shore. Ürkmez is reached quickly from the centre of Seferihisar along the coastal road; for public transport lines, see the transport page of the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality. Combined on the same day with the ancient city of Teos and Sığacık Castle, it lets you see three different faces of the Ionian coast.