Return to Cnidus
British Museum Excavations in Turkey
The Classical city of Cnidus (or Knidos, if you prefer a Greek
to a Latin spelling) is situated at the end of a long and narrow
peninsula projecting into the Aegean sea from the coast of
south-west Turkey. In antiquity Cnidus commanded a prominent
position amidst the sea lanes around the coast of ancient Caria,
and the nearby islands of Cos, Nisyros, Tilos, Syme and more
distant Rhodes. Mausolus, the powerful satrap of this province of
the Persian empire, was probably behind the Cnidians' decision
around 360-340 BC to re-found their city using a rational street
plan. Cnidus is just a day's sail away from Mausolus' capital at
Halicarnassus, which was similarly developed at this time. In its
heyday Cnidus boasted four stone-built theatres, a number of fine
temples, substantial private houses, a vast cemetery, massive
fortifications and two harbours - one military with a great chain
suspended across its entrance, and the other commercial. Cnidus was
best known for its now lost nude marble statue of Aphrodite by the
celebrated Athenian sculptor Praxiteles.
Unlike Halicarnassus, with its busy tourist resort of Bodrum,
Cnidus has no modern settlement. Today its Classical and later
Byzantine remains lie strewn over the hillsides, and the place
looks much as it did in nineteenth-century engravings and
photographs. While Troy, Ephesus, Priene, Miletus and other sites
along the Turkish coast have been robbed of their sea view by the
alluvial action of rivers, Cnidus is fortunate in retaining its
proximity to the sea and is much visited by pleasure boats in
summer.
British travellers and archaeologists have a long history of
involvement in the antiquities of the Cnidian peninsula. Sir
William Gell and his companions pioneered modern understanding of
the site when they went there under the auspices of the Dilettanti
Society in the summer of 1812. Their published account was the
principal inspiration for Charles Newton's decision to excavate in
1857-9. In the twentieth century George Bean and John Cook surveyed
the entire peninsula in 1949-50, while a number of British
archaeologists joined Iris Love's international team for a series
of excavations that began in July 1967.
The British Museum at Cnidus
More recently, the British Museum has developed a partnership to
work at Cnidus with Professor Dr Ramazan Özgan, his wife Professor
Dr Christine Bruns-Özgan and colleagues of the Selçuk University of
Konya in Turkey, who have been excavating at Cnidus since the late
1980s.The purpose of the British Museum's current research project
directed by Dr Ian Jenkins is to seek a better understanding of the
ancient context for objects, especially marble sculptures, which
came to the Museum from Charles Newton's excavations. Interest
focuses on the Sanctuary of Demeter, on a place Newton called a
Sanctuary of the Muses - now recognised as a Nymphaeum - and on his
so-called Gymnasium. Reports of each season's research since 1999
can be found in Anatolian Archaeology, published by the British
Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. The Museum's work has been
funded by the BIAA, The Caryatids (Supporters of the Greek and
Roman Department), The Townley Group of British Museum Friends and
The Philanthropic Fund. A permit to undertake research in Turkey is
kindly granted by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and
Tourism.