Sector 17-O: Classical Period

Sector 17-O produced what is probably the oldest artefact excavated at Antioch, a small stone fragment, 7.2 x 4 cm. with a cuneiform inscription which Jacob Lauinger of Johns Hopkins University has tentatively dated to the period of Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 605-564 BCE) and identified as a part of a building inscription. According to narrative sources, Antioch was founded at around 300 BCE, but there is mention of a pre-existing settlement on the site; the lower Orontes valley was part of the Neo-Assyrian empire in the period of Nebuchadnezzar II. The tablet, which was found in a Hellenistic level of a room to the west of the Nymphaeum, which also produced the fragment of a statue of Endymion, might have been brought to the site from elsewhere.

The structure called in reports the Nymphaeum was considered by the excavators the only ‘successful’ aspect of the 17-O excavation, a monumental building of high quality construction. What was found was the corner of a structure of unknown size, reaching back towards the hillside, which had clearly been built to hold water. This feature went through three stages of construction, whose exact chronology is uncertain. The original form had a flooring of large tufa blocks on a thin layer of concrete. After a destructive fire, a layer of concrete half a meter thick was poured on the tufa blocks and sealed with a thin layer of cement, the edge of which was lined with a wall of finely hewn ashlars.

The majority of this wall was toppled during an earthquake that led to a reconstruction with bricks of the ‘opus tetaceum’ type, placed on top of the stone walls which remained at the angle at which they were thrown by the earthquake. The remains of seven column drums on the basin that waterproofed this level suggest that the monument was colonnaded. The whole structure is overlain with a cinder level possibly to be associated with the cataclysmic 526 CE earthquake.

The account of this level is based on the analysis of structures by Nick McAfee ’16, and of objects by Margaret W. Spencer ’16.