Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2020 - 28

believe the wall above the hypogeum, and another fourthcentury wall found in the 1930s in front of the main entrance
to Hagia Sophia, could be a remnant of the Megale Ekklesia
("Great Church"), which was dedicated in 360. "If so," says
Dark, "this is the first time any part of the fourth-century
church, the earliest predecessor of Justinian's Hagia Sophia,
has been found in archaeological work at the site."
The Megale Ekklesia burned down in 404, and was
immediately replaced with a more impressive basilica. Texts
dating to the fifth century and later record that it had a series
of galleries, likely for female worshippers, and a baptistery.
Excavations in the 1930s also unearthed fragments of
sculpture that once decorated the fifth-century church's
exterior, including a cross in a roundel and a frieze of lambs
that scholars believe represent the 12 Apostles. At the time,
archaeologists also uncovered a sloping area that Dark and
Kostenec have interpreted as evidence of a monumental
staircase that once led to a west-facing entrance to the
basilica. An extant circular rotunda on the northeast corner
y the sixth century, the ground on which Justinian
of Hagia Sophia, called the skeuophylakion ("church treasury"),
built his Hagia Sophia already possessed a long history
also dates to this period.
of religious import, having been the site of two earlier
A little more than 100 years after it was built, the fifthchurches. Just north of the cathedral is a hypogeum, or
century church was also destroyed in flames. In January of
underground tomb. Dark and Kostenec have dated the
532, less than five years into Justinian's reign, a nine-day
lowest course of brickwork and masonry in a wall above
uprising known as the Nika Revolt broke out in response
the hypogeum to the fourth century a.d. Because this
to deteriorating relations between the emperor and an
area was incorporated into subsequent churches on the
aristocratic faction that opposed him. Rioters set fire to
site, the researchers suggest that it was the burial place of
the church, the palace, and many other monuments and
an important religious figure, such as a saint or martyr, or
imperial buildings in Constantinople, much of which
perhaps of multiple such individuals. Dark and Kostenec
was decimated by the conflagration. Rebuilding the city
center was a massive undertaking
that Justinian began immediately,
contemporaneous sources note.
"After the riot and the destruction,
the emperor felt a real need to
act quickly and dramatically to
show that he was in control," says
Alchermes.
To rebuild his city and restore
his people's confidence, Justinian
enlisted two Byzantine architects,
Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius
of Tralles, who oversaw the design
of the new Hagia Sophia. "Justinian
gave them a brief that he wanted a
building that could have no parallel,
the likes of which the world had
never seen," says Alchermes. "They
were theoreticians, not master
builders trained in the trade of
architecture or experienced in actual
construction." For their design of the
cathedral, Isidore and Anthemius
combined basic architectural
An inscribed invocation recently found on the southeast buttress pier is one of many
elements that had been employed
examples of graffiti likely left by the church's builders. It reads K(YRI)E BOETHI TO SO
in earlier Christian basilicas, such
DOULO ("Lord help your servant") and is followed by an illegible name.
rest of the great ecclesiastical complex in the center of the
Byzantine capital actually stood."
The rapid pace of the restoration work meant that Dark
and Kostenec were unable to excavate. "We had to view this
as rescue archaeology, using survey techniques to record
things as well as possible without excavating," says Dark.
They measured, photographed, and recorded Byzantine-era
archaeological features, including ones that had never been
documented. By examining brickwork and masonry, they
established relationships between walls and floors of known
date and the newly recognized features. In these ways, they
dated many of the remains of the Patriarchal Palace and other
structures outside the church, and, in some cases, tentatively
matched rooms of the complex with spaces described in
Byzantine-era sources. Inside the church building itself, the
removal of plaster dating to the Ottoman period and later
revealed previously unrecorded decoration and architectural
elements stretching back to the Byzantine period.

ARCHAEOLOGY * July/August 2020

Archaeology Magazine - July/August 2020

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