Pamphylian sculpture and its interaction with Syria

Due to its location in the Eastern Mediterranean, Pamphylia has been an indispensable stopping point for maritime transport and trade since the early periods. In addition to Egypt and Cyprus, the region is also in commercial interaction with Cilicia and Syria. The commercial relations between the regions have inevitably led to intensive interaction in different fields such as economic, socio-cultural, political, religious, military, tourism, education and art. This situation has undoubtedly affected the plastic arts. From this point of view, in order to understand the relationship between the region and Syria, the sculptural artefacts recovered from Pamphylia, Cilicia and partly Northern Syria are the subject of this study. In this context, 86 artefacts were identified as a result of the material studies carried out in Side Museum, Alanya Museum, Antalya Museum, Anamur Museum, Mersin Museum, Tarsus Museum, Adana Museum, Hatay Museum and Gazinatep Museum in accordance with the necessary permissions. After the catalogue study of the artefacts, under the title of general evaluation, their posture positions, clothing types, jewellery iconography, finding places, purposes of use, historical distribution, material types, technical and stylistic characteristics were evaluated within comparative examples. As a result of all evaluations, important results have been obtained in terms of Pamphylian Sculpture. At this point, it has been determined that the artefacts present similarities with Palmyra in Syria in terms of their posture positions, clothing types, headscarf usage and jewellery. In this direction, the presence of influences in the field of sculpture based on the multidirectional relations between the regions has also been determined with this study.