Satala (Sadak) Ancient City Map And Location

Information About Satala (Sadak) Ancient City

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Satala (Armenian: Սատաղ Satalia), located in Turkey settlement. According to ancient geographers, it was located in a valley surrounded by mountains, just north of the Euphrates, where the road from Trapezus to Samosata crossed the border of the Roman Empire. Satala is Sadak, a village of 500 people in Kelkit district of Gümüşhane.

History

This site is as old as the lower Armenian annexation under Vespasianus. Trajan visited here in 115 and won the respect of the princes of the Caucasus and Euxine. It was undoubtedly the one who founded the Legion XV Apollinaris and initiated the construction of the great castra stativa (permanent camp) to be used until the 5th century. The town must have spread around this camp; At the time of Ptolemy, it was already important. In 530, the Persians were defeated in front of their walls. Justinian I built more powerful fortifications there, but they did not prevent Satala from being captured by the Persians in 607-8.

During the Middle Ages and the Ottomans, the important east-west road between Erzurum and Sivas or Tokat would pass through Satala; but until then Satala had ceased to be an important settlement.

Rediscovery
Satala, called Sadagh or Suddak, was visited by J. G. Taylor in 1868: he copied a destroyed Latin inscription referring to Domitianus at the Roman votive altar; a large figurative mosaic piece found a "magnificent example" used as the foundation of a fireplace; more and larger fragments of mosaics were found scattered throughout the village (all excavated from the top of a hill overlooking the village); and Byzantine grave inscriptions. Taylor reports that the cut stones were removed from the site to build government buildings in Erzincan.

The site's first thorough research was conducted by Alfred Biliotti, a British counselor at Trebizond. In response to the discovery of bronze sculpture fragments, including the so-called Satala Aphrodite, he visited Satala in September 1874 to produce a description of the site and a plan of the ruins. Lightfoot sees Biliotti's narrative as "the most accurate and valuable explanation of the remains of Satala." Although Sadagh is presumed to be the place of Satala by Taylor, and as stated by Kiepert in his maps, the area identified as Satala, two British academics, Vincent Yorke and DG Hogarth, were exact until 1894, when he found tiles bearing the stamp of Legio XV Apollinaris in the area. is not defined as. In 1894, Yorke described Satala as a Turkish village of about 150 houses, mostly built of reused stone blocks. Yorke described a 5-arched structure that Biliotti described as part of a basilica church and Taylor as part of a bathhouse, a misidentification that went on until the 1990s.

Archaeological remains
The remains of the walls of the rectangular legionary castle have survived, even if they have been destroyed. Their line covers an area of ​​15.7 hectares (smaller than most legionary castles) on all four sides of the castle. According to Prokopius, when the fortifications of Satala were extensively rebuilt by Justinian I, these walls probably belong to the 6th century AD, but the foundations of the previous walls were reused in places. The small ruins inside the walls and the ruined structures Biliotti noted are ruined. There was a civilian settlement to the north of the northern wall of the legionary base, but no sign of any important building has survived. A dilapidated structure consisting of a series of arches is a bit far from the southeast of the castle. Biliotti described it as a basilica, but since then, it was seen as the remains of an aqueduct leading to an undefined lower city. This theory is now reapproved as an outdated and ruined basilica church. Lightfoot, Satala's patron saint. He predicts that there may be a church dedicated to Eugenius.

The famous Satala Aphrodite, which was larger than the natural dimensions of the ancient Hellenistic bronze statue, was found in 1872 outside of Sadak. It is now on display at the British Museum.

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