Archaeologists uncovered a pair of mosaics that once decorated the city council building of Teos, an ancient Greek city whose ruins now rest on the western coast of Türkiye.
Teos: From Ancient Greece to Modern-Day Türkiye
Teos was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, a small peninsula in the Aegean Sea. It was one of twelve cities that formed the Ionian League, a union of city-states that survived through the Hellenistic and Roman periods until the 3rd century CE. The Hellenistic Period comprises three centuries of ancient Greek history. It began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. By then, Alexander’s conquests had spread the Greek culture, language, and rule all the way to Egypt and parts of the Middle East. In 30 BC, the Roman conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt and the death of Cleopatra VII gave way to the Roman Period.
The ruins of Teos are located in the İzmir Province in western Türkiye. Teos was once a bustling cultural hub, but few people have inhabited the area since the 3rd century CE, and nothing was built atop its Greek and Roman ruins. For the past four years, archaeologist Mantha Zarmakoupi and her colleagues have focused on excavating the ancient city’s bouleuterion, or city council building. The building was likely constructed in the 3rd century BCE and was once able to host a few hundred people with auditorium-like seating. During the Roman Period, it was renovated to add a stage for theatrical performances.
Archaeologists Find Mosaic Floors and Stone Inscription
The city council building “is the best-preserved building in the city of Teos,” said Zarmakoupi. “It seems to preserve for us the early history of Teos underneath it.” While digging into layers of built-up dirt, Zarmakoupi and her colleagues uncovered the tiled edge of mosaic flooring. The excavation eventually revealed two large mosaics, dating back to the 3rd century BCE and spread across separate rooms of the city council building. The mosaics depict a pair of fighting cupids, as well as imagery relating to Eros, the Greek god of love, and Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and the patron deity of Teos.
The team also identified the remains of a stone block at the building. Interestingly, it once bore an inscription that had since been erased. They partially deciphered the inscription, which indicates the building was likely dedicated by a group of Dionysian artists. During the Hellenistic Period, the monumental inscription stones would have been displayed atop columns to indicate who paid for the building.
“The inscription gives us a really valuable indication of the process by which the structures were built [in Teos] and who was involved,” said Peter Satterthwaite, a PhD student in Ancient History working on the excavation. “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.”
