Harbours and shipbuilding in Byzantine Constantinople

Summary

ABSTRACT. The author describes the Golden Horn ports and the Sea of Marmara by concentrating on the importance of the archeological finds at Yenikapi revealed by the ruins of Theodosius harbour and thirty-seven abandoned fishing and transport vessels and six galleys. She highlights the factors associated with the rise of Constantinople as a central naval power.

RÉSUMÉ. L'auteur décrit successivement les ports de la Corne d'Or puis de la mer de Marmara, en insistant sur l'importance des fouilles menées à Yenikapi, qui ont mis au jour les ruines du port Théodosien, trente-sept épaves de bateaux de pêche, de transport et six galères. Elle met en valeur les facteurs favorisant l'essor de Constantinople comme centre de puissance navale.

In the mid-7^th century BC when Byzas, the leader of colonists from Megara (a city state near Athens), consulted the Oracle at Delphi to ask where to establish his new city, he was told to find it ‘opposite the blind ones’ and that the site would look like a ‘horn’. This is the legend of the founding of modern Istanbul, capital of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires, ‘queen city’ of all ages.

Byzas sailed northeast across the Aegean Sea, through the Dardanelles, and into the Sea of Marmara. It is only when he reached the Bosphorus that he understood the words of the Oracle. Here he saw the established city of Chalcedon on the eastern shore (Asia). When he then looked at the western shore, he saw a hill overlooking an inlet from the sea in the shape of a horn! He thought the people who had founded Chalcedon must have been blind not to have chosen the site on the western shore with the inlet subsequently known as the Golden Horn. After his death, the city he established there was called Byzantion after his name. The city stood where the land route between Europe and Asia was severed by the sea route between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Until the rise of the Italian maritime states, it was the most important commercial, political, and cultural centre in the Mediterranean world, as well as a goal or stopping place for pilgrims and other travelers.