Lydian Architecture

The terrace of Pasargadae, Tall-i Takht, is one of the few Achaemenid period monuments in the Persian heartland that “directly” feature characteristics of Ionian-Lydian architecture. According to earlier scholarship, the beginning of construction of the platform of Tall-i Takht dates to the reign of Cyrus, but it remained unfinished when Cyrus died, and Darius changed its function. In fact, leaving aside some few blocks at the center of the western facade and on the southern one, the majority of blocks of the terrace still await final dressing. A new analysis of the unfinished state of these blocks has provided significant information about the construction of the terrace, including the organization of labor, allowing for a reconsideration of the origins of Achaemenid masonry and indeed of cross-cultural interaction between Persians and the West.

In his Book I, Herodotus relates the war between Lydia of Alyattes and Media of Cyaxares. This war ended with the well-known occurrence of the total solar eclipse, which astronomical researchers propose to date to 585 BC. After these hostilities, a treaty between the two kingdoms was concluded, and was sealed by a royal wedding. This paper analyzes this event, better known as the " battle of the eclipse ". It will revisit the problem of the location of the battle and that of the identity of the Lydian and Median kings who reigned during this conflict. The paper will study the role that the eclipse played on the conclusion of hostilities and its impact on the minds of the Greeks; it will also examine the nature of the treaty concluded between the Lydians and the Medes. Finally, the paper will examine the problem of the Halys border that separated the Lydian and the Median kingdoms, modern scholars asserting that this border was chosen during the Lydo-Median treaty. This examination will allow us to study the view of the ethnic, geographical and political space that the river played in Herodotus's mind.

Although well known from the literary sources, the Lydian (or Perso-Lydian) domination over Karia in the 6th and 5th centuries BC left almost no archaeological traces. Some of the rare physical remains recalling this part of Karian history consist in a few built tombs under tumuli that can clearly be identified with traditional Lydian burial customs. The aim of this paper, based on a study of tombs from north Karia in the Harpasos and Marsyas valleys, is to reveal the use the Lydians made of their ostentatious burial traditions in order to shape the landscape and emphasize their control over a foreign land.

In the 8th and early 7th century BCE, Lydia was a small kingdom with a core in central western Anatolia. Lydia, then, expanded its territory rapidly, encompassing the majority of western Asia Minor in the first half of the 6th century BCE. Based on this historical account, I ask one major question: how is this expansion architecturally represented in the archaeological record. This presentation consists of two main parts: an introduction to the types of monumental construction at Sardis, the capital of Lydia, and presentation of the diachronic patterns of monumental building practice, particularly focusing on scale, site organization, architectural elements and building materials of the Lydian capital. This research observes i) growth in the scale of investment in elaborate large-scale building projects, ii) increase in the demarcation of elite, domestic, and mix-use areas, iii) shift to an eclectic way of building monumental architecture combining diverse building materials and construction technologies that seem to originate elsewhere.