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Ancient Musical Chamber Discovered in Turkey

Friday, September 26, 2014

alexander mosaic issos turkey ideon music theaterISSOS, TURKEY—Archaeologists working at the site of Issos in the province of Hatay, Turkey, a thriving city beginning in about 545 B.C. and lasting several millennia down to the Ottoman period, have discovered an ancient music chamber according to the Hurriyet Daily News. The room is shaped like a small odeon, and likely dates back to the Roman period when Issos was filled with good roads and plentiful shops. Excavators believe that the chamber may have been used at some point as a kind of healing center for treatment of the sick. In their eighth season of digging, the archaeological team from the Hatay Museum also found the remains of an ancient Roman theater, which they are continuing to uncover. Issos is notable for being very close to the location on the Plain of Issos where the Persian king Darius fought Alexander the Great. To read more about a remarkable fourth-century B.C. tomb unearthed in Turkey, go to ARCHAEOLOGY’S “The Tomb of Hecatomnus.” 

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