Tenedos (Greek: ΤÎνεδος, Tenedhos; Latin: Tenedus), or Bozcaada in Turkish, is an island of Turkey in the northeastern part of the Aegean Sea. Administratively, the island constitutes the Bozcaada district of Çanakkale Province. With an area of 39.9 km2 (15 sq mi) it is the third largest Turkish island after Imbros (Gökçeada) and Marmara. In 2018, the district had a population of 3023.[3] The main industries are tourism, wine production and fishing. The island has been famous for its grapes, wines and red poppies for centuries. It is a former bishopric and presently a Latin Catholic titular see.
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Tenedos is mentioned in both the Iliad and the Aeneid, in the latter as the site where the Greeks hid their fleet near the end of the Trojan War in order to trick the Trojans into believing the war was over and into taking the Trojan Horse within their city walls. The island was important throughout classical antiquity despite its small size due to its strategic location at the entrance of the Dardanelles. In the following centuries, the island came under the control of a succession of regional powers, including the Persian Empire, the Delian League, the empire of Alexander the Great, the Attalid kingdom, the Roman Empire and its successor, the Byzantine Empire, before passing to the Republic of Venice. As a result of the War of Chioggia (1381) between Genoa and Venice the entire population was evacuated and the town was demolished. The Ottoman Empire established control over the deserted island in 1455. During Ottoman rule, it was resettled by both Greeks and Turks. In 1807, the island was temporarily occupied by the Russians. During this invasion the town was burnt down and many Turkish residents left the island.
Under Greek administration between 1912 and 1923, Tenedos was ceded to Turkey with the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) which ended the Turkish War of Independence following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I. The treaty called for a quasi-autonomous administration to accommodate the local Greek population and excluded the Greeks on the two islands of Imbros and Tenedos from the wider population exchanges that took place between Greece and Turkey. Tenedos remained majority Greek until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when many Greeks emigrated because of systemic discrimination and better opportunities elsewhere. Starting with the second half of the 20th century, there has been immigration from mainland Anatolia, especially Romani from the town of Bayramiç.
Antiquity
Ancient Tenedos is referred to in Greek and Roman mythology, and archaeologists have uncovered evidence of its settlement from the Bronze Age. It would stay prominent through the age of classical Greece, fading by the time of the dominance of ancient Rome. Although a small island, Tenedos's position in the straits and its two harbors made it important to the Mediterranean powers over the centuries. For nine months of the year, the currents and the prevailing wind, the etesian, came, and still come, from the Black Sea hampering sailing vessels headed for Constantinople. They had to wait a week or more at Tenedos, waiting for the favorable southerly wind. Tenedos thus served as a shelter and way station for ships bound for the Hellespont, Propontis, Bosphorus, and places farther on. Several of the regional powers captured or attacked the island, including the Athenians, the Persians, the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, the Seleucids and the Attalids.[20]
Mythology
Homer mentions Apollo as the chief deity of Tenedos in his time. According to him, the island was captured by Achilles during the siege of Troy.[21] Nestor obtained his slave Hecamede there during one of Achilles's raids. Nestor also sailed back from Troy stopping at Tenedos and island-hopping to Lesbos.[22] The Odyssey mentions the Greeks leaving Troy after winning the war first traveled to nearby Tenedos, sacrificed there,[20] and then went to Lesbos before pausing to choose between alternative routes.[23]
Homer, in the Iliad mention that between Tenedos and Imbros there was a wide cavern, in which Poseidon stayed his horses.[24][25]
Virgil, in the Aeneid, described the Achaeans hiding their fleet at the bay of Tenedos, toward the end of the Trojan War, to trick Troy into believing the war was over and allowing them to take the Trojan Horse within Troy's city walls. In Aeneid, it is also the island from which twin serpents came to kill the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons as punishment for throwing a spear at the Trojan Horse.[26] According to Pindar (Nemean Odes no. 11), the island was founded after the war by bronze-clad warriors from Amyklai, traveling with Orestes.[27]
According to myth, Tenes was the son of Cycnus, himself the son of Poseidon and Calyce. Philonome, Cycnus's second wife and hence Tenes's stepmother, tried to seduce Tenes and was rejected. She then accused him of rape leading to his abandonment at sea along with his sister. They washed up on the island of Leucophrys where he was proclaimed king and the island renamed Tenedos in his honor. When Cycnus realized the lie behind the allegations he took a ship to apologize to his son. The myths differ on whether they reconciled.[28] According to one version, when the father landed on the island of Tenedos, Tenes cut the cord holding his boat. The phrase 'hatchet of Tenes' came to mean resentment that could not be soothed.[29] Another myth had Achilles landing on Tenedos, while sailing from Aulis to Troy. There his navy stormed the island, and Achilles fought Tenes, in this myth a son of Apollo, and killed him, not knowing Tenes's lineage and hence unaware of the danger of Apollo's revenge. Achilles would also later kill Tenes's father, Cycnus, at Troy.[30] In Sophocles's Philoctetes, written in 409 BC, a serpent bit Philoctetes in the foot at Tenedos. According to Hyginus, the goddess Hera, upset with Philoctetes for helping Hercules, had sent the snake to punish him. His wound refused to heal, and the Greeks abandoned him, before going back to him for help later during the attack on Troy.[31] Athenaeus quoted Nymphodorus's remarks on the beauty of the women of Tenedos.[25]
Callimachus talked of a myth in which Ino's son Melikertes washed up dead in Tenedos after being thrown into the sea by his mother, who killed herself too; the residents, Lelegians, built an altar for Melikertes and started a ritual of a woman sacrificing her infant child when the town's need was dire. The woman would then be blinded.[32] The myths also added that the custom was abolished when Orestes' descendants settled the place.[33]
Neoptolemus stayed two days at Tenedos, following the advice of Thetis, before he go to the land of the Molossians together with Helenus.[34]
Archaic period
It was at Tenedos, along with Lesbos, that the first coins with Greek writing on them were minted.[35] Figures of bunches of grapes and wine vessels such as amphorae and kantharoi were stamped on coins.[36] The very first coins had a twin head of a male and a female on the obverse side.[37] The early coins were of silver and had a double-headed axe imprinted on them. Aristotle considered the axe as symbolizing the decapitation of those convicted of adultery, a Tenedian decree.[38] The axe-head was either a religious symbol or the seal of a trade unit of currency.[39] Apollo Smintheus, a god who both protected against and brought about plague, was worshipped in late Bronze Age Tenedos.[40] Strabo's Geography writes that Tenedos "contains an Aeolian city and has two harbours, and a temple of Apollo Smintheus" (Strabo's Geography, Vol. 13). The relationship between Tenedos and Apollo is mentioned in Book I of the Iliad where a priest calls to Apollo with the name "O god of the silver bow, that protectest Chryse and holy Cilla and rulest Tenedos with thy might"(Iliad I).[41]
During the later part of the Bronze Age and during the Iron Age, the place served as a major point between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Homer's Iliad mentions the Tenedos of this era. The culture and artisanship of the area, as represented by pottery and metal vessels recovered from graves, matched that of the northeastern Aegean. Archaeologists have found no evidence to substantiate Herodotus's assertion Aeolians had settled in Tenedos by the Bronze Age. Homer mentions Tenedos as a base for the Achaean fleet during the Trojan war.[42]
The Iron Age settlement of the northeast Aegean was once attributed to Aeolians, descendants of Orestes and hence of the House of Atreus in Mycenae, from across the Aegean from Thessaly, Boiotia and Akhaia, all in mainland Greece. Pindar, in his 11th Nemean Ode, hints at a group of Peloponnesians, the children of the fighters at Troy, occupying Tenedos, with Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, landing straight on the island; specifically he refers to a Spartan Peisandros and his descendant Aristagoras, with Peisandaros having come over with Orestes. Strabo places the start of the migration sixty years after the Trojan war, initiated by Orestes's son, Penthilos, with the colonization continuing onto Penthilos's grandson.[35]
The archaeological record provides no supporting evidence for the theory of Aiolian occupation. During the pre-archaic period, adults in Lesbos were buried by placing them in large jars, and later clay coverings were used, similar to Western Asia Minor. Still later, Tenedians began to both bury and cremate their adults in pits buttressed with stone along the walls. Children were still buried covered in jars. Some items buried with the person, such as pottery, gifts and safety-pin-like clasps, resemble what is found in Anatolia, in both style and drawings and pictures, more than they resemble burial items in mainland Greece.[35]
While human, specifically infant, sacrifice has been mentioned in connection with Tenedos's ancient past, it is now considered mythical in nature. The hero Paleomon in Tenedos was worshipped by a cult in that island, and the sacrifices were attributed to the cult.[43] At Tenedos, people did sacrifice a newborn calf dressed in buskins, after treating the cow like a pregnant women giving birth; the person who killed the calf was then stoned and driven out into a life on the sea.[33] According to Harold Willoughby, a belief in the calf as a ritual incarnation of God drove this practice.[44]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenedos#Antiquity
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