Royal necropolis of Ayaa

Royal necropolis of Ayaa
Plan of the necropolis, showing Hypogea A and B in orange and brown, respectively
Coordinates	33°34′2.4″N 35°23′4.0″E / 33.567333°N 35.384444°E / 33.567333; 35.384444
Built for	Resting place of the Phoenician Sidonian royalty
Architectural style(s)	Phoenician

The royal necropolis of Ayaa (Arabic: قياعة, romanized: Qiyā'ah or Qiyâa;^[a][1] also romanized as "Ayaʿa") was a group of two hypogea housing a total of 21 sarcophagi of kings and nobles of the city of Sidon (modern Saida), a coastal city in Lebanon, and a prominent Phoenician city-state. The sarcophagi were highly diverse in style, ranging across Egyptian, Greek, Lycian and Phoenician styles. The Phoenicians exhibited diverse mortuary practices that included inhumation and cremation. While written records about their beliefs in the afterlife are scarce, archaeological evidence suggests they believed in an afterlife known as the "House of Eternity." Burial sites in Iron Age Phoenicia, like the Ayaa necropolis, were typically located outside settlements, and featured various tomb types and burial practices.

The royal necropolis of Ayaa was located at the base of Hlaliyeh hill, at an elevation of 35 meters and approximately 500 meters from the sea, at the outskirts of the city of Sidon. The site had been previously surveyed by French orientalist and biblical scholar Ernest Renan who noted the presence of remnants of ancient ashlar masonry. The plot was owned by Mehmed Cherif Efendi, a Sidon local who was quarrying the land for construction material. The discovery of the necropolis in Ayaa was made in early 1877 by one of Cherif Efendi's workmen. The discovery is credited however to American Presbyterian minister William King Eddy who first learned of the necropolis from Cherif Effendi's workman. Eddy subsequently reported the discovery to the media and played a significant role in bringing attention to the site. The royal necropolis of Ayaa is the most famous of the royal necropoli of Achaemenid period Sidon; these consist of clusters of rock cut subterranean burial chambers accessible through vertical shafts.^[2]

The discovery of the necropolis was a watershed moment for the career of Osman Hamdi Bey, the founding father of Ottoman archaeology and museology; it was his "most significant archaeological accomplishment", and firmly elevated his stature in the Western archaeological community. It was the reason for the construction of the main building of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, which became known as the "Sarcophagus Museum". Even today the Ayaa sarcophagi are among the highlights of the museum, which remains by far the largest such museum in Turkey.^[3][4]

The timing of the site's discovery was politically significant, as the Ottoman Empire had just begun to assert itself in the field of archaeology. The discovery of the Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II three decades before, and Renan's subsequent Mission de Phénicie, had excited the European scholarly community; under the new regime photographs of this discovery were made available to European scholars but the finds were to be kept in Istanbul – this was considered a "failure in European acquisition".^[5]

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