Muršili ordered his generals Mala-Ziti and Gulla to raid Millawanda, and they proceeded to burn parts of it damage from LHIIIA found on-site has been associated with this raid. 1320 BC, the city supported an anti-Hittite rebellion of Uhha-Ziti of nearby Arzawa. Miletus was a Mycenaean stronghold on the coast of Asia Minor from c. Recorded history at Miletus begins with the records of the Hittite Empire and the Mycenaean records of Pylos and Knossos, in the Late Bronze Age. Ī panoramic view of The Theatre of Miletus, Didim. The legends recounted as history by the ancient historians and geographers are perhaps the strongest the late mythographers have nothing historically significant to relate.

According to Strabo: Įphorus says: Miletus was first founded and fortified above the sea by Cretans, where the Miletus of olden times is now situated, being settled by Sarpedon, who brought colonists from the Cretan Miletus and named the city after that Miletus, the place formerly being in possession of the Leleges. For some centuries the location received a strong impulse from that civilization, an archaeological fact that tends to support but not necessarily confirm the founding legend-that is, a population influx from Crete. Beginning at about 1900 BC artifacts of the Minoan civilization acquired by trade arrived at the site. The earliest Minoan settlement of Miletus dates to 2000 BC. The prehistoric archaeology of the Early and Middle Bronze Age portrays a city heavily influenced by society and events elsewhere in the Aegean, rather than inland. The graziers in the valley may have belonged to them, but the location looked to the sea. The islands offshore were settled perhaps for their strategic significance at the mouth of the Maeander, a route inland protected by escarpments. Sparse Neolithic settlements were made at springs, numerous and sometimes geothermal in this karst, rift valley topography. Pollen in core samples from Lake Bafa in the Latmus region inland of Miletus suggests that a lightly grazed climax forest prevailed in the Maeander valley, otherwise untenanted. The earliest available archaeological evidence indicates that the islands on which Miletus was originally placed were inhabited by a Neolithic population in 3500–3000 BC. History Map of Miletus and other cities within the Lydian Empire Neolithic In the 6th century BC, Miletus was the site of origin of the Greek philosophical (and scientific) tradition, when Thales, followed by Anaximander and Anaximenes (known collectively, to modern scholars, as the Milesian school), began to speculate about the material constitution of the world, and to propose speculative naturalistic (as opposed to traditional, supernatural) explanations for various natural phenomena. The Archaic Period of Greece began with a sudden and brilliant flash of art and philosophy on the coast of Anatolia.

The Greek Dark Ages were a time of Ionian settlement and consolidation in an alliance called the Ionian League. Legend offers an Ionian foundation event sponsored by a founder named Neleus from the Peloponnesus. After the fall of that empire the city was destroyed in the 12th century BC and starting about 1000 BC was resettled extensively by the Ionian Greeks. The city at that time rebelled against the Hittite Empire. Later in that century other Greeks arrived. The 13th century BC saw the arrival of Luwian language speakers from south central Anatolia calling themselves the Carians. Recorded history at Miletus begins with the records of the Hittite Empire, and the Mycenaean records of Pylos and Knossos, in the Late Bronze Age. In the early and middle Bronze Age the settlement came under Minoan influence. The first available evidence is of the Neolithic. Įvidence of first settlement at the site has been made inaccessible by the rise of sea level and deposition of sediments from the Maeander.

Before the Persian rule that started in the 6th century BC, Miletus was considered among the greatest and wealthiest of Greek cities. Its ruins are located near the modern village of Balat in Aydın Province, Turkey. Miletus ( / m aɪ ˈ l iː t ə s/ Greek: Μῑ́λητος, romanized: Mī́lētos Hittite: 𒈪𒅋𒆷𒉿𒀭𒁕 Mīllawānda or 𒈪𒆷𒉿𒋫 Milawata ( exonyms) Latin: Mīlētus Turkish: Milet) was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Ionia.

Meander river greece