11. Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

The 1992 measurements of the column-foundations, ineluding severalnear the south end that i failed to see in 1956, make it quite certain thatthe spacing of the columns was about 4.82 m between centres. Thoughthe foundations nearest to the north end are now buried, it is elear that thecentres of the northemmost columns were in fact about 7.20 m from thenorth wall (Fig. 1). The only explanation seems to be that here, as at thesouth end, the colonnade retumed across the end instead of being connectedto the wall. in fact the north-west angle column, or rather squarepier with engaged half-columns on two adjacent sides, still lies where itfell. Of pink crystalline limestone, it was made in two sections, with acombined height of just over 6 m. This jmplies that the colonnade, andalso most if not all of the elaborate substructure on which much of itstood, was not the one for which the north wall, with its slots of upperand lower entablatures, was originally designed. Moreover if, as seemslikely from the remains of smaller "double columns" lying on the site, thelater colonnade, like the original one, was two-storeyed, it would havecompletely obscured the great arch in the centre of the wall. At some periodall threearehes were blocked with walls of mortared rubble; thisblocking may have been contemporary with the building of the colonnades,but a final decision on this question must await the completion ofreconstructed drawings.The apse and, so far as they survive, the side walls of the Basilica,are built 'almost entirely of mortared rubble, much of it reused (Fig. 6, 7).So indeed arelarge areas of the Vestibule wal1s; it has sometimes beenassumed that this is due to alater repair'; if so, it is strange that the rubbleis distributed in asimilar pattem on all four sides of the Vestibule, beingconfined to the backs of the internal niches and the non-loadbearing partsof the upper walls.The stylobates that carried the Basilica colonnades are, where visible,entirely of large conglomerate blocks, forming a solid wal1 on thewest (Fig, 7) and south and a series of piers joined by arehes on the east(Fig, 8). The southem part of the west wal1 of the Basilica, with its peculiarventilation-slots, rests on a line of smal1 rectangular piers joined byarehes that are partly cut out of the solid wal1-blocks, though almost all--of-tliem ilave a separate Keystone at iIle centre (Fig:- 2). The two eridopenings are much wider, with flat arehes built on the same principle andpartly supported on corbels. Lauter's theory that these arches, togetherwith the southem part of the west stylobate and the foundations of theouter porch, original1y belonged to a HelIenistic market-building, is inge-(5) M. Edip Özgür Aspendos (1990) 26.455