Sector 13-R/Bath F

The 2019 iteration of ART 148, Antioch through the Ages, taught by Alan Stahl, focused on the area of the excavation that previous work by graduate student Joe Glynias had signalled as having by far the greatest concentration of Late Antique and, especially, early Islamic coin finds of any area excavated by Princeton team.

The principal finding of the research carried out during the seminar was that the areas of the site referred to in archival and published sources variously as Arzouzi’s Dig, Sector 13-R, and Bath F represented two distinct ancient buildings, uncovered in the course of two major campaigns, one in 1934-35, and one in 1938-39. The following account is based on the unpublished term paper jointly written by Noah Hastings ’19 and Chris Villani ’20, with input from Asa Eger, Andrea De Giorgi, and Joe Glynias.

The sector 13-R was identified by the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and its Vicinity as an area of interest in the third year of the expedition, after two years of digging on the northern and southern edges of the ancient city and the hippodrome, as well as at neighboring Daphne. The area, northeast of the city center and near the Aleppo road, was initially chosen because of objects turned up in an illicit dig by the owner of the land, Mr. Arzouzi, which included a marble head with a Phrygian cap and a black granite male head.

The land was rented from Mr. Arzouzi, and excavation was begun in June 1934 under the direction of William Campbell, the general director of the Antioch excavations. They soon discovered a large apse, whose surrounding walls had been looted. Because the water table was encroaching on the dig, this architectural feature was left for Jean Lassus, the French representative on the expedition’s staff, to continue excavating in the fall. Lassus’s stated research goal in October was to descend as far as possible without expanding the trench, but even in the dry season, they soon reached the water table and further descent proved impossible even with the pump from the town’s fire brigade.

Excavation continued in the campaign of 1935 in March, with digging to the west and south around the apse. Of paramount interest to the excavators, mosaics were discovered at the southernmost edge of the new excavations. Unfortunately for the excavators and their museum donors, the mosaics were exclusively plain and poorly preserved geometric carpet mosaics. Finally, toward the end of 1935, the corner of a large building was found. At the end of the 1935 campaign it was decided to move away from Arzouzi’s land and dig the northern half of 13-R.

Later work in 13-R was at first focused on uncovering the northern extent of the large building containing the apse. As per the 1936 Field Report:

In 13-R a trench was dug to the north of the excavations of the previous campaigns to determine the limit in this direction of the large building in this quadration. The northern limit was not established but the trench uncovered a colonnade between a marble pavement of opus sectile and a mosaic pavement in the so-called “carpet” pattern of repeated rosettes. A little above the latter pavement was found a headless statue of Hygeia which may be dated in the II century.

Eventually the work migrated farther north, through a series of numbered individual trenches rather than a systematic excavation, culminating in 1938 in the discovery of Bath F and its large mosaic floors, including one depicting Tethys.

Another mosaic floor bore an inscription in Greek commemorating the rebuilding by Philotheus of a public bath in the year CE 537/38.

A hypocaust excavated below the level of the mosaics confirms the identification of this building as a bath.

An analysis of the coins found in the first structure (Arzouzi’s dig) illustrates the continuity of the use of this section of Antioch well into the Islamic era. The location of this sector right along the Main Street, just inside the gate leading to the road to Aleppo, may have been a factor in its long period of occupation.