Sardis was the capital of ancient Lydia and one of the largest cities in western Asia Minor from the first half of the last millennium B.C. to the end of the first Christian millennium. The position of Sardis near the river Pactolus, with Mount Tmolus to the north, made it a strategically and commercially important city.

The ancient temple was dedicated to Artemis c. 300 B.C. In the 4th century a Christian church was built on one corner of the temple ruins. Acts 3, 1-6 rebukes Sardis for its lack of virtue; although a few of its members “have not defiled their garments.” The church of Sardis grew. As late as the 10th century it was a metropolitan see with 27 suffragan bishops.

The river Pactolus was famous for the gold it carried. Archeologists from Harvard found a metal factory that separated gold and silver. This was the first city to mint coins. The oldest occupation levels excavated at Sardis date from the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1400 BC, but much older artifacts, going back to the Early Bronze Age and Neolithic Period in the 3rd-7th millennia BC have been recovered at the site.

Sardis remained a flourishing center of commerce both in the
Hellenistic and in Byzantine times even after Lydia was deprived of independence when conquered by Cyrus, king of Persia. There seems to have been a Jewish colony in Sardis in the 5th century B.C.

Here Susan, Cathy & Cora pose by a window of the 4th century church. In the 20th verse of the prophetic book of Obadiah we read that “the Jerusalemite exile community of Sepharad shall possess the towns of the Negeb.” Sepharad was identified in the Targum as Spain, but is more likely, the rabbis agree, to be Sardis of Asia Minor.

Hope Lara walks down the Roman road that ran through Sardis. Behind her are the shops that lined the highway. In Roman times, (1st century BC to 4th century AD) Sardis was a Graeco- Roman metropolis with the usual civic amenities such as public baths and stadium. Its final phase as a great city was in late Roman times, 4th-7th centuries AD, and many prominent ruins of the site date from that era. Thereafter the settlement gradually diminished in size and population.

In 1306 Sardis was taken by the Seljuks, and in 1402 was devastated. David Garcia stands in what is left today of ancient Sardis. Excavations here were carried out by American archeologists from 1910 to 1914, and since 1958.