Magnesia on the Maeander is an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, located on the Maeander river upstream from Ephesus, its site near the modern town of Germencik, Turkey. The ancient city was founded by colonists from the inhabitants of Magnesia in Thessaly - also known as the Magnetes in Greece, who provided its name.

Magnesia was at an important location commercially and strategically in the triangle of Priene, Ephesus and Tralles.

It lays within Ionia, but because it had been settled by Aeolians from Magnesia of Greece, was not accepted into the Ionian League. During its existence, Magnesia was subject first to the Lydians, then to the Persians. In later years, Magnesia on the Maeander, with its similarly named neighbor Magnesia on the Sipylum, supported the Romans in the Second Mithridatic War.

Gyges, king of Lydia captured it and afterward it suffered from the Cimmerian raids, and was often under the control of the Persians. Themistocles retired to Magnesia. There was a Temple of Artemis but little remains at the site today.

Magnesia was also the source for the mysterious stones that could attract or repel each other, and thus its name came to be used for the phenomenon known as magnetism.

Excavations

The first excavations at the archaeological site were performed during 1891 and 1893 by a German archaeological team conducted by Carl Humann, discoverer of the Pergamon Altar. These lasted 21 months and partially revealed the theatre, the Artemis temple, the agora, the Zeus temple and the prytaneion. Excavations were resumed at the site, after an interval of almost 100 years, in 1984, by Orhan Bingöl of the University of Ankara and the Turkish Ministry of Culture.

Findings from the site are now displayed in Istanbul and Aydın, as well as in Berlin and Paris. Copies of the portico (pronaos) of the Zeus temple and of a bay of the Artemis temple can be visited in the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin. The most of the architectural remains of Magnesia have been destroyed by local lime burners. The well preserved remains of the Zeus temple have been destroyed by local residents even after Humann's excavation campaign.

Notable people

• Bathycles (6th century BC) Greek sculptor.

Sources

• Carl Humann: Magnesia am Maeander. Bericht über die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen der Jahre 1891–1893. Berlin: Reimer, 1904
• Volker Kästner: Der Tempel des Zeus Sosipolis von Magnesia am Mäander, in: Brigitte Knittlmayer and Wolf-Dieter Heilmeyer: Die Antikensammlung, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1998, p. 230-231
• Johannes Althoff: Ein Meister des Verwirklichens. Der Archäologe Theodor Wiegand, in: Peter Behrens, Theodor Wiegand und die Villa in Dahlem. Klaus Rheidt and Barbara A. Lutz (ed.), Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2004, p. 151