Harbor of the Emperors: A Byzantine Exhibit

The City Between Two Seas

1In 330 CE the Roman emperor Constantine made the old Greek town of Byzantium his new capital and named it Constantinople. Today it is Istanbul, in Turkey. The city stood on a point of land beside the Bosporus, the narrow strait that joins the Black Sea to the Mediterranean world, where Europe meets Asia. Water surrounded it on three sides, and in the 400s emperors built huge walls across the land side.

2In 476 the last emperor in the west lost his throne, and the Western Roman Empire broke into Germanic kingdoms. The eastern half lasted nearly a thousand more years. Historians call it the Byzantine Empire, but its people called themselves Romans. Over time Greek replaced Latin as the main language, and the eastern church grew into the Eastern Orthodox Church, which split from the church of Rome in 1054.

3Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565, hoped to win back the lands of the old empire. His generals retook North Africa, Italy and part of Spain, but the wars were costly, and much of that land was lost again after his death. Justinian also had scholars gather centuries of Roman laws into one organized code, finished in the 530s. When riots in 532 burned much of the city center, he rebuilt the great church of Hagia Sophia in less than six years.

4Constantinople's wealth came largely from trade. Every ship sailing between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean passed the city, and the government taxed the goods. In Justinian's time grain came from Egypt, furs and honey from the lands to the north, and spices and silk from Asia. Around 552, according to the historian Procopius, monks smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople from Central Asia, so the empire could make its own silk. The government ran the finest silk workshops and controlled their sales. Its gold coin, the solidus, kept nearly the same weight for about 700 years.

5In 2004, workers digging a new rail tunnel in Istanbul found the remains of the Harbor of Theodosius, built in the late 300s. Archaeologists uncovered more than 30 shipwrecks from about the 400s to the 1000s, along with tens of thousands of objects. Over the centuries the harbor slowly filled with mud and sand, which buried and protected the ships.