Earlier this month, excavations began in Kyzikos, a 2,500-year-old city in Balıkesir, in northwest Turkey. The prize in sight? A relief of Hadrian. Speaking to Hürriyet Daily News last week, the head of the excavations and an Associate Professor at the Archaeology Department at Atatürk University, Nurettin Koçhan, said that his excavations team will be exploring the area around the site where a Corinthian-style column from the Temple of Hadrian (the one at Ephesus) was unearthed last year. Dating from the Roman period and measuring 2.5 metres in height, Koçhan described it as the ‘biggest and most elegant Corinth column made during the Roman Empire’.
‘We have started excavations in the area where we found the column heading last year. This is the most important finding here in the last two years and one of the highest columns from the Roman era. An ancient source tells of a relief of Hadrian in the temple area. If it’s right, I believe we can find its remains,’ Koçhan told Hürriyet Daily News.
A giant statue of Emperor Hadrian, one the finest of its kind, was unearthed by Professor Marc Waelken in the ruins of the Imperial Baths of Sagalassos in 2007, as detailed in Cornucopia 48.
Photo shows Associate Professor Koçhan and the Corinthian column discovered last autumn in Kyzikos (photo: archeolog-home.com).