Al Mina

36.08044444444435.987083333333Koordinaten: 36 ° 4 ' 50 "N, 35 ° 59' 13" E

Al Mina (Arabic الميناء, DMG al - ʾ Mīnā ) was an ancient settlement on the Mediterranean coast of Syria on the territory of present-day Turkey, at the mouth of the Orontes. Maybe it was one of the earliest ancient Greek colonies; from the traditional Greek historians is not mentioned there, and hence the Greek name remains unknown.

History

The oldest archaeological remains of the settlement, the beginning you can start with BC 825, are Syrian. Around the middle of the 8th century BC Greek influence can be detected on the basis of large quantities of Greek pottery found. The vessels were found to be euböisch. At the same time, there are also frühsyrische and Phoenician pottery products. Whether Al Mina is a Syrian settlement with Syrian architecture and Greek influences or a Greek trading post, is controversial among archaeologists. Undeniably Al Mina was an important trading center where goods from Urartu and - via caravan routes - were transhipped from Assyria.

Individual researchers are of the opinion that arrived on Al Mina the Phoenician alphabet, and other cultural and technological achievements during the 8th century to Greece.

Around 700 BC, Al Mina was destroyed, but then again rebuilt. At the same time Euboean activity ends in Al Mina, which is very likely with the Lelantine war, in which the two trading powers Euboea Eretria and Chalcis were involved, related. On the basis of pottery finds can be a Greek influence to the 4th century BC prove.

Excavation history

First archaeological excavations were carried out in 1936 by Leonard Woolley instead. This, however, had hoped for an older, Bronze Age harbor and shifted his search soon after Alalakh. Since 2000, the Orontes River estuary is studied within the framework of an interdisciplinary research project. It succeeded the changes of the coastal landscape over the past six millennia to reconstruct. The center of the ancient port city of Al Mina is now 1.6 km inland at a bend of the Orontes.