Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – The ancient city of Teos is located on the western coast of Türkiye, directly opposite Athens across the Aegean Sea. Presently, it stands as a site of rubble and ruins; however, two millennia ago, it flourished as a vibrant hub of Hellenistic and Roman art, culture, and commerce.
The team noticed that the architrave blocks—those that would’ve sat just atop columns, but that were now randomly strewn from previous excavations—appeared to bear a 30-cm high monumental inscription that had been erased. Only in the oblique light of the winter months was the inscription more visible. (Image: Courtesy Teos Archaeological Project)
Few have lived in the area since the third century CE, and nothing was built on the site, offering archaeologists like Mantha Zarmakoupi, Morris Russell, and Josephine Chidsey Williams a unique opportunity for discovery.
Specifically, Zarmakoupi has focused on excavating an ancient city council building called the bouleuterion.
“This is the best-preserved building in the city of Teos, and it seems to preserve for us the early history of Teos underneath it,” she says.
Four seasons of fieldwork later, her team’s research is beginning to shed light on the complex history of the structure and the once-grand city that surrounded it.
Underneath layers of built-up dirt, Mantha Zarmakoupi and colleagues began to uncover the tiled edge of at least two mosaics, spread across separate rooms dating back to the 3rd century BCE. One that stood out depicted two fighting cupids (top), figures of Eros, the Greek god of love, whose imagery is related to Dionysos, the Greek god of wine and the patron deity of Teos, with a major temple in the city. (Image: Courtesy Teos Archaeological Project)
The work has been able to pinpoint the timeline for the bouleuterion’s additions, uncover early Hellenistic mosaics, and reveal a monumental inscription that Zarmakoupi has partially deciphered.
An Ancient City
Zarmakoupi, who has worked in Teos since 2021, was drawn to the bouleuterion in part because it had been renovated through the centuries, meaning its function had transformed over time. As both a classical archaeologist and an architectural historian, she was fascinated by this progression. Today, the bouleuterion ruin consists of the exterior building’s wall, sloping curvilinear stone seating, and dismantled architectural pieces that dot an overgrown landscape.
Peter Satterthwaite, a fifth-year PhD candidate in Ancient History working with Zarmakoupi on the excavation, emphasizes the bouleuterion’s significance as the heart of democratic political decision-making in Teos. “This building is extremely important for understanding the ancient communities that were living here and their institutions,” he says.
During the Hellenistic period, residents of Teos would have looked up at a massive east façade with a monumental inscription naming the person who paid for the building; two entryways to the façade’s north and south led to the interior where seating could fit several hundred people. In the Roman period, the bouleuterion was adapted to theatrical uses when the citizens of Teos added a stage structure to the center of the space and a three-sided courtyard, or portico, to the building, offering another gathering place.
Mosaics Revealed
Previously found inscriptions at Teos provided information about the history of the city and its bouleuterion, but many questions remained, in particular about its timeline and how its function had evolved. Zarmakoupi began digging for answers—literally.
The excavations proved challenging. With summer temperatures reaching 100°F, the international team of archaeologists arrived at the site each day by 6 a.m. to beat the scorching Mediterranean sun. In the afternoon, they moved inside to catalogue items and analyze data. They continued in this manner for six weeks at a time.
After several years of work, the team was able to pinpoint the timeline for the bouleuterion and its architectural additions: The bouleuterion itself was built during the Hellenistic period, probably toward the end of the third century BCE. The portico was added in the first century CE, during the Roman period.
The work also uncovered some unexpected surprises. Underneath layers of built-up dirt, Zarmakoupi and colleagues began to uncover the tiled edge of a mosaic. As they continued working, they realized there was not one mosaic but at least two, spread across separate rooms dating back to the third century BCE. One that stood out depicted two fighting cupids, figures of Eros, the Greek god of love, whose imagery is related to Dionysos, the Greek god of wine and the patron deity of Teos, with a major temple in the city.
Sloping curvilinear stone seating that is part of the bouleuterion ruin, which also includes the exterior building’s wall and dismantled architectural pieces that dot an overgrown landscape. (Image: Courtesy Teos Archaeological Project)
“There’s this feeling of euphoria,” Zarmakoupi says, describing the moment she found the mosaics. “You’re like, ‘Oh my god, there’s something really there.’”
A Dedication on Scattered Stones
After the first excavation season of 2021, Zarmakoupi’s collaborator and the director of the Teos Archaeological Project, Musa Kadıoğlu, was walking around the site in October and, in the gentler light than occurs during the summer, noticed something strange: the architrave blocks—those that would’ve sat high on the building, but that were now randomly strewn from previous excavations—appeared to bear a 30-cm high monumental inscription that had been erased. Only in the oblique light of the winter months was the inscription more visible.
Figuring out what those faded letters spelled seemed nearly impossible, but the archaeologists realized each stone block had marks made by their original masons that indicated their position in the building. “We did some detective work to put them together,” Zarmakoupi says. With the help of advanced 3D modeling technology, Zarmakoupi and her team ordered the blocks so as to reconstruct the building’s façade and read the erased dedicatory inscription.
So far, Zarmakoupi has reconstructed all but a small portion. Most importantly, the team may have learned who dedicated the bouleuterion: It is possible that the sponsor belonged to a group of Dionysian artists once popular in the city, but who were eventually driven out, which would explain the erasure. Zarmakoupi is still trying to reconstruct the last small part, referring to what exactly the sponsor paid for, something for which the archaeological record will be essential.
“The inscription gives us a really valuable indication of the process by which the structures were built and who was involved,” Satterthwaite says. “The fact that it’s erased is a clue to another chapter in the city’s history, in which they no longer wanted to commemorate that person or his involvement in the project.”
Zarmakoupi says she is waiting to finish the excavation to assess the building’s development, which, in turn, will help reconstruct the inscription’s missing part. She will then publish it in its entirety. In the future, she hopes to home in on the date of the city council building even more precisely and confirm her theories about the significance of the inscription on its facade.
“Every piece of this process has been revealing itself like an onion,” she says. “It peels off and another thing arrives.”
Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer
