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Alahan Monastery, Fourth Preliminary Report1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Michael Gough
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Extract

This report should really have appeared in Anatolian Studies XVI (1966). Dis aliter visum. During the autumn of 1965 and the first half of 1966 the present writer was either ill or in hospital, and so unable to work to any purpose.

After a fallow season in 1964, excavations at Alahan were resumed in 1965 between the 26th June and the 21st August, a period of exactly eight weeks. The average number of men employed was twenty-five. The Director was again in charge, with Mr. R. P. Harper as his deputy. Mr. G. Bakker again acted as our architect, while Mrs. Bakker dealt with small finds and conservation. Field assistants were Miss Margaret MacDonald, Messrs. T. B. Mitford (Institute Fellow for 1964–1965) and Anthony Ray. Towards the end of the excavation Mr. J. W. Hayes visited the site to advise on pottery and coins, while Miss Margaret Ramsden assisted in the tedious but skilled task of cleaning up skeletons for photographing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 17 , December 1967 , pp. 37 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1967

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Footnotes

1

I am indebted to Dr. Elisabeth Rosenbaum for Pls. IVb, V, IXc, and X; and to Professor Bastiaan van Elderen for Pls. VIIIb and IXb. Mr. G. Bakker's photographs will, it is hoped, illustrate the final publication.

References

2 Although it is still possible that the ἀπαντητήρια were at the foot of the hill (see Gough, , “Some Recent Finds at Alahan (Koca Kalessi),” AS. V (1955), pp. 117–18Google Scholar), we now know that the ancient settlement below the present main road was of considerable extent, and the civilian authorities there could have been responsible for accommodating travellers. The series of rooms east of the Basilica seems more likely to have been built for official guests than to supplement the already adequate accommodation for the monks.

3 The name of Tarasis occurs on the silver reliquary from Çırga, now in the Adana Museum (see Gough, , “A Fifth Century Reliquary from Byzantine Isauria,” Byzantinoslavica XIX (1958), pp. 244–250 Google Scholar). Grabar, A., “Un reliquaire provenant d'Isaurie,” Cahiers Archéologiques XIII (1962), p. 57 Google Scholar, though agreeing with little else in my paper, concedes that the Tarasis in question may be identified with the monk at Alahan. Could the shrine be a memoria of Tarasis?

4 The difference in style is apparent from Verzone, P., Alahan Monastir, Turin, 1956, Figs. 32 and 33Google Scholar; cp. also Gough, , AS. XII (1962), Pl. XXXGoogle Scholar (b). The slightly coloristic treatment of the eastern capital with its deep drilling is closer to Verzone's Fig. 98; the western to our present Pl. IIc of a capital from the Basilica.

5 Headlam, A. C., “Ecclesiastical Sites in Byzantine Isauria” Supplementary Papers No. II of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 1893, Pl. I, Fig. IGoogle Scholar, and Verzone, op. cit., Tav. I.

6 Gough, , “The Church of the Evangelists at Alahan,” AS. XII (1962), Pl. XXIXGoogle Scholar (c).

7 ibid., Pl. XXII (a).

8 The merits of the Basilica (so far only partially published by the present writer) have been almost entirely overlooked by scholars. Indeed Krautheimer, R., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, Harmondsworth, 1965, pp. 177 and 179 Google Scholar, appears to divorce it from its own main door, in the phrase “the church (the Eastern Church) is preceded farther west by a sculptured gate and two buildings in ruins, one a basilica.…” His suggestion that the Eastern Church might have been the main church at the monastery by virtue of its size (nearly 19 m. × 12 m.) cannot be maintained. The internal dimensions of the Basilica are about 32 m. × 16 m.

9 Verzone, op. cit., Tav. VII, Fig. 107.

10 Gough, , “Excavations at Alahan Monastery,” AS. XIII (1963), Fig. 1Google Scholar.

11 Verzone, op. cit., uses the same general argument for the fifth-century date of the two main churches and the colonnade. G. Forsyth in an otherwise meticulous report ( Dumbarton Oaks Papers XI (1957), pp. 223 ff.Google Scholar) appears to disregard the epigraphic evidence.

12 Headlam, op. cit., p. 18.

13 Kleinasien, Ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte, Leipzig, 1903, pp. 109–113 Google Scholar.

14 Verzone, op. cit., pp. 52–54, and Gough, , AS. V (1955), pp. 116–8Google Scholar.

15 Forsyth, op. cit., pp. 232–3. Without being self-contradictory, his views on the dating of the Eastern Church lack precision. E.g. “The architectural style of the church did not seem to me to be Byzantine, if that appellation be taken to mean the type of architecture developed at Constantinople under Justinian.” “The style of the decorative details suggests for it and all the other buildings a later date. My own impression is that they belong to the period of Justinian.”

16 Kautzsch, R., Kapitellstudien. 1934, pp. 96 and 221 Google Scholar.

17 Although (op. cit., p. 179) the plan of the Eastern Church is labelled fifth/sixth century (?), it nevertheless appears in the chapter entitled “Standard Building in the Age of Justinian”.

18 Mango, C., “Isaurian Builders,” Polychron. Fest. F. Dölger (1966), p. 364 Google Scholar, is quite prepared to consider a date in the last quarter of the fifth century for the Eastern Church, and, together with it, the churches of Corycus, Meryemlik and Dağ Pazarı (the ambulatory church).

19 Verzone, op. cit., p. 44.