Among the marble decorations are capitals with stalking lions, bulls, and reliefs showing birds drinking from the fountain of life, as well as fishes and doves.
A strong wall separated the synagogue from a long row of shops, at least two of which belonged to Jewish merchants named Jacob, Sabbatios, and Theoktistos, whose names were incised on jars found on the floor of the shops. Jacob was also a presbyter of the synagogue. Glass, vessels, bronze jugs, weights, scales, and small bronze coins were scattered in profusion throughout the shops, which were pillaged when the Persian king Chosroes II destroyed the city in 615 A.D.
On the bank of the gold-bearing river Pactolus, an unusual Byzantine church with many small domes, Roman houses and porticoes with mosaics of animal hunts, and immense system of Roman water-mains, and Persian and Lydian houses span two thousand years of history.
Mysterious tunnels, cutting into the cliffs of the citadel, were explored by an expedition members. Winding for some 300 feet down the north face of the towering Acropolis, the tunnels continue downward in a spiralling staircase. The expedition hopes to discover next year whether they led to a water source or to some important building of the city.
Explore Tunnels
The mound of King Alyattes (c. 600 B.C.), father of Croesus, was the scene of other underground explorations by members of the expedition. Measuring two thirds of a mile in circumference, this huge pile was compared by the Greek historian Herodotus to the pyramids of Egypt.
Crawling through tunnels less than two feet high, three architects of the expedition made the first modern survey of the underground passages and the marble chamber, concealed deeply within the 200-foot high mound.
V. Wickwar of Harvard took the first pictures of the royal burial chamber. The underground structures were discovered in 1853 by Spiegelthal, the German consul at Smyrna. Since then the tunnels leading to them have become clogged with earth and a dangerous fall of rubble has completely covered one chamber and spilled into the other. The one still accessible is built with astonishing precision out of marble blocks fitted together in razor-blade joins. Its huge ceiling blocks weigh several tons