Aphrodisias Museum is situated by the ancient city of Karaca district in Aydin province.
The museum exhibits a collection of artifacts, coins and sculptures unearthed during excavations carried out at ancient city of Aphrodisias.
The site of Aphrodisias has been sacred since as early as 5,800 BC, when Neolithic farmers came here to worship the Mother Goddess of fertility and crops. In Greek times, the location was dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of affection and fertility. the location was named Aphrodisias during the 2nd century BC and therefore the great Temple of Aphrodite was in-built the first century AD.
The cult of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias was different and specific, following the goddess' ancient origins and commonalities with other Anatolian gods (such as Artemis of Ephesus) while also taking in familiar Greco-Roman themes that made her universal.
For centuries Aphrodisias consisted of just the shrine, but when the Romans defeated the Pontic ruler Mithridates in 74 BC, Aphrodisias was rewarded for its loyalty and commenced to prosper. Sulla and public leaders were believers of Venus and favored her city, and also the emperor Augustus awarded it the high opportunities of autonomy and tax-free status, claiming Aphrodisias "the one city from all of Asia that I've got selected to be my very own."
Thereafter it became a cultural and artistic hub known for its exquisite marble sculptures made of quarries of lovely white and blue-gray marble that lay a couple of miles east of town. Sculptures produced in Aphrodisias were exported as far as geographic area and Rome. Aphrodisias remained a pagan center long after the introduction of Christianity to the world, but it had been eventually renamed Stavropolis ("city of the cross") than Caria after the historical region.
(The modern Turkish name, Geyre, derives from Caria.)During the Byzantine era, Aphrodisias/Stavropolis became the seat of the metropolitan bishop of Caria and therefore the Temple of Aphrodite was a Christian basilica. it had been a serious undertaking, unique among all temple-to-church conversions. Walls and columns were destroyed and reused to expand and modify the building. The columns of the front and back of the temple were wont to extend the side colonnades, creating two long rows of 19 columns each.
The cellar of the temple was also dismantled, with its stone reused within the construction of recent walls on all sides. The church was renovated within the middle Byzantine era and stood for hundreds of years until it was destroyed, possibly within the Seljuk raids of the late 12th century. The town faded into obscurity and today is an element of the Turkish village of Geyre.
The Aphrodisias Museum (on site) displays a number of the city's famous marble sculptures. It also includes the cult statue of Aphrodite that stood within the temple, which is exclusive and interesting. Excavators of Aphrodisias describe the statue as follows:Like them [other Anatolian deities], the Aphrodisian goddess stands during a stiff frontal pose, along with her upper arms pressed near her body and her hands extended forward.
Her most distinctive attribute is her heavy overgarment (known as an ependytes) that conceals most of her body. The front of this garment is split into horizontal zones, each of which is full of complex figural reliefs.... it's this series of reliefs that distinguishes the Aphrodisian goddess and shows her individual significance. Each motif symbolizes a part of the goddess's divine identity and mythological sphere of power; they include the three Graces, Selene, Helios, erotes, and Aphrodite herself, here shown not in her distinctive local guise but during a more traditional Hellenistic mode of presentation: half-nude and seated on a sea goat, in the course of a dolphin and a triton.
A Sebasteion could be a temple complex structure and within the case of Aphrodisias, it absolutely was within a court-yard, had three storeys and typical trends of that point, were the sculptures of Roman emperors or statesmen could never be beyond the gods that were placed on the third storey. Aphrodisias broke that decree splendid fashion by placing Roman emperors and gods on the identical storey. Had they succumbed to the notion that they were even as great because the gods and this eventually result in their downfall?