Mud Flood in Sardis: archaeologists are silent...

While you are hunting for arrowheads, chinese pants, egyptian socks, leather shoes, and other non-sense... why don't you tell us where all this dirt came from. In this case we have the city of Sardis in today's Turkey. Where do you place this Sardis City on your historical time line? The answer is:

• Founded... somewhere around 1220 BC
• The city was abandoned in 1402 AD​
• Sardis - Wikipedia​

Pseudo-Historical Punch Line:

• However once the Byzantines retook Constantinople in 1261, Sardis with the entire Asia Minor was neglected and the region eventually fell under the control of Ghazi emirs. The Cayster valleys and a fort on the citadel of Sardis was handed over to them by treaty in 1306. The city continued its decline until its capture (and probable destruction) by the Turco-Mongol warlord Timur in 1402.

Where did ~20 feet of dirt come from?

• Fell from the sky?​
• Arrived by land?​
• Materialized from ether?​
• A version of your own...​

And in general... why do you always have to dig stuff out? Who buried our artifacts?

TPTB has it covered:

• Disaster came to the great city under the reign of the emperor Tiberius, when in 17 AD, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake, but it was rebuilt with the help of ten million sesterces from the Emperor and exempted from paying taxes for five years. It was one of the great cities of western Asia Minor until the later Byzantine period.
• AD 17 Lydia earthquake - Wikipedia
• KD: What else could they use to explain the dirt, I do not know...

I found this image interesting enough to look for additional ones from the same series. Based on the dude with a shovel, it had to be some early dig. Some reverse image searching brought me to this wonderful site about the archaeological exploration of Sardis:

• Sardis Expedition​
• The above image took me to this page, which gave me a further lead.​
  • Excavation of one of the elevated porch columns (#11) by H.C. Butler, 1911.
  • Howard Crosby Butler Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University

Eventually I ended up on this Princeton University Archaeological Archives website. And here are some additional photographs from the above series. You can use my search string, or create the one of your own. Additionally, you can use this link :

• Excavation of Sardis 1910-1914
• Wanna see what the area looked like before they started digging? Click here.

One has to enjoy the disrespect this society has to unknowingly endure:

• According to modern estimates based on historical accounts, each of these columns consisted of a single piece of marble over 60 feet long and weighing close to 100 tonnes. Exactly how these columns were erected isn’t clear, which only made the temple more visually impressive to ancient travellers and worshippers, many of whom were simply awed by its sheer size.​
• That time a guy destroyed one of the ancient wonders of the world just so people would remember him​
• Wouldn’t we want to know the real reason why Herostratus destroyed the temple-factory?

KD: Nice little square at the bottom of the above column, isn't it. Some of those photographs from Princeton Archaeological Archives are rather interesting. We don't see too many of these advertised by the mainstream.

• So, if this happened to this Sardis City around 1402 AD... where is the info? What happened, and where did all this dirt come from? Earthquake in 17AD did it? Right.​

Oh, and by the way... what exactly were them "archaeologists" with guns looking for at the Temple of Cybele? I do not believe for a second they cared about cultural heritage back then. I think they were looking for technology.

• Ancient Genetics Factory: The Temple of Artemis​

Some of the related things are fun as well. Like this little 1705 map with ruins of Troy, Philadelphia and Sardis marked and noted.