page_title: Miletus
section_title: Late Bronze Age
hierarchical_section_title: Miletus / History / Late Bronze Age
caption_attribution_description: English: IONIA, Miletos. Late 6th-early 5th century BC. AR Obol (9mm, 1.07 g). Forepart of lion left, head right Stellate and floral design within incuse square
context_page_description: Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria. Its ruins are located near the modern village of Balat in Aydın Province, Turkey. Before the Persian invasion in the middle of the 6th century BC, Miletus was considered the greatest and wealthiest of Greek cities.
  Evidence of first settlement at the site has been made inaccessible by the rise of sea level and deposition of sediments from the Maeander. The first available evidence is of the Neolithic.
  In the early and middle Bronze Age the settlement came under Minoan influence. Legend has it that an influx of Cretans occurred displacing the indigenous Leleges. The site was renamed Miletus after a place in Crete.
  The Late Bronze Age, 13th century BC, saw the arrival of Luwian language speakers from south central Anatolia calling themselves the Carians. Later in that century other Greeks arrived. The city at that time rebelled against the Hittite Empire. After the fall of that empire the city was destroyed in the 12th century BC and starting about 1000 BC was resettled extensively by the Ionian Greeks.
context_section_description: Recorded history at Miletus begins with the records of the Hittite Empire and the Mycenaean records of Pylos and Knossos, in the Late Bronze Age.
caption: Coinage of Miletus at the time of Aristagoras. Late 6th-early 5th century BC.
exif: {}