Geschichte Kleinasiens in der Antike

by Christian Marek

Christian Marek und Peter Frei geben einen souveränen Überblick über 10.000 Jahre Historie eines menschheitsgeschichtlich hochbedeutenden Territoriums, wo sich der Prozess der Sesshaftwerdung des Menschen vollzog. Seit dem Auftreten der altorientalischen Hochkulturen lag es im Kraftfeld der Großreiche.
Ägypter, Hethiter, Urartäer, Lykier, Karer, Phryger, Lyder, Assyrer, Griechen, Perser und Römer haben das Gebiet geprägt, das mit über 750.000 km2 ziemlich genau dem Staatsgebiet der heutigen Türkei entspricht. Hier fand der Zug der Zehntausend statt, hier wurde das Geld erfunden, hier kämpfte Alexander der Große, hier zerfleischten sich die Diadochen, hier schuf Pompeius seine Neuordnung des Ostens, hier blühten Dichtung und Philosophie, hier missionierte der Apostel Paulus, hier verbreiteten sich die Häresien des Christentums. All diese und viele weitere Aspekte der Geschichte Kleinasiens in der Antike werden in diesem einzigartigen, reich bebilderten und mit zahlreichen Karten, Stammbäumen und Herrscherlisten ausgestatteten Werk lebendig und anschaulich dargestellt.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Theology

950 pages, Hardcover

Published October 29, 2010

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absorbing overview of Asia Minor's history from the Agricultural Revolution to the fourth century AD. Skip chapter two, which covers the efforts of modern historians and archaeologists in discovering the region's history, but the other chapters offer up a fascinating look at the peninsula.

For me the most interesting where the pre-Hellenistic Era chapters that looked at non-Greek and non-Persian cultures and polities like the Phrygians or Carians. But there's still a lot of fascinating details in later chapters about non-Greek/Persian cultural survivals and how the Romans governed the territory.

[Stan Prager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of: In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World,
by Christian Marek
by Stan Prager (11-17-16)

As a rule, I never review a book that I have not read to completion; I feel an obligation to the author to turn every page and absorb every paragraph. But some books are not designed as cover-to-cover reads, so I believe that Christian Marek will forgive me for only reading about a third of his magnificent reference work, In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World, prior to reviewing it. Originally published in German, this first English edition (translated by Steven Rendall) was written in collaboration with the late scholar Peter Frei, who duly receives cover credit for his contributions. Marek, professor emeritus of ancient history at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, has spent a lifetime studying the ancient Mediterranean and specializing in ancient Asia Minor, and has been conducting epigraphical and archaeological fieldwork in Turkey for more than thirty years. The result is a superb work that is not only encyclopedic in scope but brilliant in depth and analysis.
In modern times, except for the European sliver that hosts Istanbul, most of the huge geography of the Republic of Turkey is located within the giant landmass of the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia. The population today is primarily a Muslim Turkic-speaking people descended from the nomad Turks that, like the Huns and other similar ethnicities, once roamed the vast northern steppes and later moved south to conquer and dominate settled agricultural communities. But students of Classical history know that it was an entirely different universe in the ancient world. There are traces of mysterious proto-cities from deep antiquity, and there is the impressive archaeological heritage in the celebrated Çatalhöyük Neolithic settlement that dates back to 7500 BCE. The original agriculturalists were most likely overrun and absorbed by Indo-Europeans from the Caucasus – the horse, wheel and chariot folks resurrected elsewhere by David Anthony – and native Hattians and Hurrians were to be supplanted by the Hittites, later to rise to prominence with their consequential Bronze Age empire that dominated Asia Minor but was lost to memory for millennia in the still unexplained cataclysmic collapse of that era of human history. Troy was part of that Anatolian peninsula on the strategic edge of the Hellespont (modern Dardanelles) that provided access to the Black Sea, and the legendary Trojan War – if historic, as suspected (although Marek has his doubts) – either preceded or was coterminous with that collapse, which in addition to the Hittites brought down the Mycenaean Greeks, the New Kingdom Egyptians and the Kassite Babylonians. The remnants of the Hittite Empire fragmented into various powers over the centuries to come, but most significant to history is that the remains of earlier Bronze Age Mycenaean cities on the Aegean Sea were vastly supplemented by numerous Greek settlements along the coast that came to be known as “Ionia,” which later – along with the rest of Anatolia and the Near East – came to be dominated by the Persian Empire. The efforts of those Ionian Greek poleis to liberate themselves from Persian control sparked a war led by Athens and Sparta that unpredictably resulted in Persian defeat, leading to independence for the Ionian poleis and Greek dominance of the Aegean. Athens-Sparta rivalry in subsequent decades led to the Peloponnesian War that devastated the Hellenic world and so divided it that Philip of Macedon was able to crush and contain it. After his assassination, his son and heir Alexander the Great unexpectedly routed the Persian Great King and soon dominated all of his possessions, including Asia Minor, but his sudden death on the cusp of world empire meant that Greece, Egypt, the Near East and Anatolia became the trophies of his surviving generals, the Diadochoi, as well as their descendants, the Epigoni, so Hellenistic rulers ran roughshod over those lands for centuries, jockeying for power, until Rome got interested. Much more blood of bystanders flowed but eventually it was Rome that absorbed all of that territory. As the huge Roman Empire grew unwieldy, a new eastern Roman capital was established at Constantinople (ancient Byzantium, modern Istanbul), ruling over all of Asia Minor and a good deal beyond it. When Rome and the western empire fell, this became the Roman Empire of the East, the Byzantine Empire, and a large chunk of it was Anatolia, although much of that was to fall away over time. And all of that fascinating history occurred long before the Seljuk Turks moved in circa the eleventh century to bring Islam and the Turkic language to Anatolia!
If you judge that long paragraph – which is only an abbreviated summary of Asia Minor’s ancient historical narrative – as oversize, you can only imagine what a deep exploration would amount to. So then try to imagine the thick volume that is Christian Marek’s In the Land of a Thousand Gods, which in its printed form makes oversize seem understated: there are in fact some 552 pages of type that can only be described as footnote size subscript, not including an appendix of 75 pages as well as a thick section of endnotes. The main narrative is equivalent to a normal text of approximately 1500 pages! In short, there is a lot of material. The good news is that every single sentence is welcome and substantial, as Marek applies fine historical inquiry and analysis to every paragraph, expertly guiding the reader from the Neolithic to the end of antiquity, meticulously and exhaustively. Do I recommend this as a book to take to the beach and devour over a long weekend? Of course not. But if you are seeking THE definitive ancient history of Asia Minor, look no further: this is clearly going to be the gold standard on the subject for a long time to come. Don’t skip it!

My Review of: "In the Land of a Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World," by Christian Marek, is live on my book blog https://regarp.com/2016/11/17/review-...

[Grady · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably an excellent, even magisterial, survey of a thousand years of the history of Asia Minor - essentially, the area that is modern Turkey. That said, it has taken me months to get through. The writing is organized well, and the translation is very clear, but the text is a waterfall of names of people and places and goes on and on. I found that I most enjoyed Chapter 3 (prehistory to the beginning of written culture - so this chapter is dominated by discussions of archeology) and Chapter 9 (economy and culture of the region under the Romans). Both chapters include a lot of discussion of the material aspects of day to day life, and the structure and values of communities. In contrast, the intermediate chapters are heavy on obscure dynastic histories and analyses of how the region was parceled into administrative structures. The latter are important from the perspective of political history, but I doubt I’ve retained much of them.

[Robert Schikowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

The one good thing about this book is that it is very rich in data, overview tables and citations - this makes it a good start for somebody who's interested in the history of Anatolia. But there are a great many buts.

First of all, the book is very boring. The reason is that the author is unusually bad at making history into stories but also simply at creating coherence. Many parts read like endless lists of feats and names of big men without a bigger picture emerging. The style is unbalanced so that one battle may be described in minute detail whereas some other development spanning half a century only gets half a page. The more one proceeds into the book, the more one gets lost and disoriented. This is also due to an utterly useless section formatting system: only the top-level chapters are numbered and make for a rough chronological backbone whereas all lower-level sections are only distinguished by different types (the title of 1.1 is 12 pt with wide spacing, 1.1.1 is the same size but in italics, 1.1.1.1 is bold and a little smaller... you get the idea).

In terms of content I'm not enough of an expert for serious criticism, yet there is one basic point that struck me: for a history of Anatolia, the book does not really make clear why Anatolia should be a subject in its own right at all. There is a geographic definition, alright; but what about the historical dimension? For example, the history of Greek Anatolia is hard to write while ignoring all the other regions where the Greek settled, including their heartland in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. Similarly, Persian Anatolia was only part of a larger empire stretching far into the opposite direction. The Hittite Empire presents an exception in being roughly congruent with geographic Anatolia, but why should this period set the standard for all others? An obvious justification from a modern perspective would be to write a history of what is now Turkey, but then such a history couldn't possibly stop around the time of the split of the Roman Empire. The book also fails to weave common threads through all the subsequent empires and cultures, so in the end I had the impression that it provided counterproof to its own cause: Anatolia as a historical unit does not exist, so why write about it?

[Cal Goski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for the faint of heart, this is a densely written examination that is nonetheless worth the effort. Once one gets past the chapter on archaeological discovery - who explored where and found what - and progresses to the meat of the book, there is a veritable treasure trove of information to be absorbed. I found the parts of the book before the Persian Empire took control of the region to be the most interesting, though the examination of the Roman establishment was not far behind. There is not a lot of analysis, the author preferring to simply put down what is known and what is generally thought to be the facts as going much further would have resulted in a multi-volume work. Definitely worth the effort to read if one is interested at all in the period covered and there is a sense of accomplishment felt when that last page is read.

[Augustine Kobayashi · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be more accurate, this is a history of Asia Minor in Antiquity, which essentially means the Classical and Roman times on the eve of late antiquity. The main focus was the development of Asia Minor under strong Greek influence; even under Roman rule, Asia then remained staunchly Hellenised. This book does not go into details of the process of Christianisation of Roman society; yet lots of suggestions are made in view of how Asia Minor made this new religion their own. Asia Minor was a heartland of Christianity, including numerous heretic sects, which inherited older gods of Asia.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent research book. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this work. Extensive notes and references were provided. Anyone who wants to understand the archaeology and history of Anatolia will benefit from this work.

[Caomhghain · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview and pretty highly detailed. It gets perhaps overdetailed into the late Roman period from when so much evidence survives but nonetheless gives a total shape to an area which is more often seen as semi-peripheral.