History
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Building at the hill of Poliochne, dating from the early Bronze Age
Kabeirio archaeological site
Ancient theatre in Hephaistia
The Lemnos stele, Lemnian (related to Etruscan) inscriptions discovered in a crypt
Prehistory[edit]
The ruins of the oldest human settlement in the Aegean Islands found so far have been unearthed in archaeological excavations on Lemnos by a team of Greek, Italian and American archaeologists at the Ouriakos site on the Louri coast of Fyssini in Moudros municipality. The excavation began in early June 2009 and the finds brought to light, consisting mainly of high quality stone tools, are from the Epipaleolithic Period, indicating a settlement of hunters and gatherers and fishermen of the 12th millennium BC.
A rectangular building with a double row of stepped seats on the long sides, at the southwest side of the hill of Poliochne, dates back to the Early Bronze Age and was possibly used as a kind of Bouleuterion.[citation needed]
In August and September 1926, members of the Italian School of Archaeology at Athens conducted trial excavations on the island. The overall purpose of the excavations was to shed light on the island's pre-Hellenic "Etrusco-Pelasgian" civilization, following the discovery of the "Lemnos stele", bearing an inscription philologists related to the Etruscan language. The excavations, with then-current political overtones, were conducted on the site of the city of Hephaistia (i. e., Palaiopolis) where the Pelasgians, according to Herodotus, surrendered to Miltiades of Athens in 510 BC, initiating the social and political Hellenization of the island. There, a necropolis (ca. 9th–8th centuries BC) was discovered, revealing bronze objects, pots, and over 130 ossuaries. The ossuaries contained distinctly male and female funeral ornaments. Male ossuaries contained knives and axes whereas female ossuaries contained earrings, bronze pins, necklaces, gold-diadems, and bracelets. The decorations on some of the gold objects contained spirals of Mycenaean origin, but had no Geometric forms. According to their ornamentation, the pots discovered at the site were from the Geometric period. However, the pots also preserved spirals indicative of Mycenaean art. The results of the excavations indicate that the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of a Mycenaean population and, in addition, the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is the Mycenaean Greek ra-mi-ni-ja, "Lemnian woman", written in Linear B syllabic script. Professor Della Seta reports:
The lack of weapons of bronze, the abundance of weapons of iron, and the type of the pots and the pins gives the impression that the necropolis belongs to the ninth or eighth century B.C. That it did not belong to a Greek population, but to a population which, in the eyes of the Hellenes, appeared barbarous, is shown by the weapons. The Greek weapon, dagger or spear, is lacking: the weapons of the barbarians, the axe and the knife, are common. Since, however, this population … preserves so many elements of Mycenaean art, the Tyrrhenians or Pelasgians of Lemnos may be recognized as a remnant of a Mycenaean population.
Antiquity[edit]
According to Homer, Lemnos was inhabited by the Sintians. Thucydides mentions Tyrrhenians as the pre-Greek inhabitants.
Homer speaks as if there were one town in the island called Lemnos. In Classical times there were two towns, Myrina (also called Kastro) and Hephaistia, which was the chief town. Coins from Hephaestia are found in considerable number, and various types including the goddess Athena with her owl, native religious symbols, the caps of the Dioscuri, Apollo, etc. Few coins of Myrina are known. They belong to the period of Attic occupation, and bear Athenian types. A few coins are also known which bear the name of the whole island, rather than of either city.
A trace of the Lemnian language is found on a 6th-century inscription on a funerary stele, the Lemnos stele. Lemnos later adopted the Attic dialect of Athens.
Coming down to a better authenticated period, it is reported that Lemnos was conquered by Otanes, a general of Darius Hystaspis. But soon (510 BC) it was reconquered by Miltiades the Younger, the tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese. Miltiades later returned to Athens and Lemnos was an Athenian possession until the Macedonian empire absorbed it. By 450 BC, Lemnos was an Athenian klēroukhia (or cleruchy, i.e. a dependency subject to direct rule by Athens). The Athenian settlers brought with them Athenian drama, dated to at least 348 BC. However, the tradition of theater seems to date back to the 5th century, and recent excavations at the site Hephaisteia suggest that the theater dated to the late 6th to early 5th century.
On a barren island near Lemnos there was an altar of Philoctetes with a brazen serpent, bows and breastplate bound with strips, to remind of the sufferings of the hero.
In 197 BC, the Romans declared it free, but in 166 BC gave it over to Athens which retained nominal possession of it until the whole of Greece was made a province of the Roman Republic in 146 BC.
Pliny the Elder writes about a labyrinth on Lemnos which was built by the Lemnian architects Zmilis, Rhoecus, and Theodorus.
Middle Ages[edit]
Further information: Byzantine Greece and Frankokratia
View of the fortress of Myrina
As a province of the Byzantine Empire, Lemnos belonged to the theme of the Aegean Sea, and was a target of Saracen raids in the 10th century and of Seljuk raids in the 11th century. Following the dissolution and division of the Empire after the Fourth Crusade, Lemnos (known by Westerners as Stalimene) was apportioned to the Latin Empire, and given as a fief to the Navigajoso family under the Venetian (or possibly of mixed Greek and Venetian descent) megadux Filocalo Navigajoso. Filocalo died in 1214, and was succeeded by his son Leonardo and his daughters, who partitioned the island into three fiefs between them. Leonardo retained the title of megadux of the Latin Empire and half the island with the capital, Kastro, while his sisters and their husbands received one quarter each with the fortresses of Moudros and Kotsinos. Leonardo died in 1260 and was succeeded by his son Paolo Navigajoso, who resisted Byzantine attempts at reconquest until his death during a siege of the island by the Byzantine admiral Licario in 1277. Resistance continued by his wife, but in 1278 the Navigajosi were forced to capitulate and cede the island back to Byzantium.
During the last centuries of Byzantium, Lemnos played a prominent role: following the loss of Asia Minor, it was a major source of food, and it played an important role in the recurring civil wars of the 14th century. As the Ottoman threat mounted in the 15th century, possession of Lemnos was demanded by Alfonso V of Aragon in exchange for offering assistance to the beleaguered Byzantines, while the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, offered it to the Genoese captain Giustiniani Longo, if the Ottoman besiegers were driven off. Dorino I Gattilusio, the ruler of Lesbos, also acquired Lemnos as his fief shortly before the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Ottoman period[edit]
Further information: Ottoman Greece
Map of Lemnos, 1809
Following the fall of Constantinople (1453), and thanks to the intercession of Michael Critobulus, Sultan Mehmed II recognized Dorino I Gattilusio's possession of Lemnos and Thasos in exchange for an annual tribute of 2,325 gold coins. When Dorino died in 1455, his son and successor Domenico was only granted Lemnos, however. In 1456, Mehmed II attacked and captured the Gattilusi domains in Thrace (Ainos and the islands of Samothrace and Imbros). During the subsequent negotiations with Domenico Gattilusio, the Greek populace of Lemnos rose up against Domenico's younger brother Niccolò Gattilusio and submitted to the Sultan, who appointed a certain Hamza Bey as governor under the Bey of Gallipoli, Isma'il. Mehmed granted a special legal charter (kanun-name) to Lemnos, Imbros, and Thasos, at this time, later revised by Selim I in 1519. In 1457 a Papal fleet under Cardinal Ludovico Scarampi Mezzarota captured the island. Pope Callixtus III (in office 1455–1458) hoped to establish a new military order on the island, which controlled the exit of the Dardanelles, but nothing came of it as Isma'il Bey soon recovered Lemnos for the Sultan.
In 1464, during the First Ottoman–Venetian War, the Venetians seized Lemnos and other former Gattilusi possessions, but the area reverted to Ottoman control in accordance with the 1479 Treaty of Constantinople. In the aftermath, the Kapudan Pasha, Gedik Ahmed, repaired the island's fortifications and brought in settlers from Anatolia. At this time, the administration of the island was also reformed and brought in line with Ottoman practice, with a governor (voevoda), judge (kadi), and elders (kodjabashis) heading the local Greek inhabitants. In the late 16th century, Lemnos is recorded, along with Chios, as "the only prosperous island of the Archipelago". It had 74 villages, three of them inhabited by Turkish Muslims.
In July 1656, during the Fifth Ottoman–Venetian War, the Venetians captured the island again following a major victory over the Ottoman fleet. The Ottomans under Topal Mehmed Pasha recovered it barely a year later, on 15 November 1657, after besieging the capital of Kastro for 63 days. The famous Sufi poet Niyazi Misri was exiled to Lemnos for several years during the late 17th century. In July 1770, Russian forces under Count Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov besieged Kastro for three months during the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. The fortress had just surrendered when an attack by the Ottoman fleet under Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Pasha on the Russian vessels in Mudros Bay forced the Russians to withdraw (9–10 October 1770). Only a few days later, the pasha and Orlov clashed once again at Mudros, which once again resulted in an Ottoman victory.
Ottoman fountain in Myrina
Under Ottoman rule, Lemnos initially formed part of the sanjaks of Gallipoli or Mytilene under the Eyalet of the Archipelago, but was constituted as a separate sanjak in the reforms of the mid-19th century, at the latest by 1846. Abolished in 1867, the sanjak was re-formed in 1879 and existed until the island's capture by the Greeks in 1912. It comprised the islands of Lemnos (Limni in Turkish), Agios Efstratios (Bozbaba), Imbros (Imroz) and Tenedos (Bozcaada).
The French scholar Vital Cuinet, in his 1896 work La Turquie d'Asie, recorded a population of 27,079, of which 2,450 were Muslims and the rest Greek Orthodox.
Modern period[edit]
Diagram by the French L'Illustration, depicting the Greek and Ottoman fleets and the warships that participated in the Battle of Lemnos (1913)
View of Moudros during the Gallipoli campaign in WWI, with a French military wine store in the foreground and a hospital in the background
WWI Allied cemetery in Mudros
On 8 October 1912, during the First Balkan War, Lemnos became part of Greece. The Greek navy under Rear Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis captured it after a brief action without any casualties from the Ottoman garrison, who were returned to Anatolia. Peter Charanis, born on the island in 1908, and later a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University, recounts when the island was liberated and Greek soldiers were sent to the villages and stationed themselves in the public squares. Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like; "What are you looking at?" one of them asked; "At Hellenes," the children replied; "Are you not Hellenes yourselves?" a soldier retorted; "No, we are Romans;" which might seem odd at a first glance, but indicates that in parts of Greece the locals self-identified as a continuation of the Eastern, Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire (Ρωμιοί), along with their Greek identity.
Moudros Bay became a forward anchorage for the Greek fleet, which enabled it to keep watch on the Dardanelles and prevent a foray by the Ottoman Navy into the Aegean. The Ottomans' two attempts to achieve this were beaten back in the battles of Elli and Lemnos. Thus the Ottomans were prevented from supplying and reinforcing their land forces in Macedonia by sea, a critical factor in the success of the Balkan League in the war.
During World War I, in early 1915, the Allies used the island to try to capture the Dardanelles Straits, some 50 kilometres (31 miles) away. This was done chiefly by the British and largely due to the urging of Winston Churchill. The harbour at Moudros was put under the control of British Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, who was ordered to prepare the then largely unused harbour for operations against the Dardanelles.
The harbour was broad enough for British and French warships, but lacked suitable military facilities, which was recognized early on. Troops intended for Gallipoli had to train in Egypt, and the port found it difficult to cope with casualties of the Gallipoli campaign. The campaign was called off in evident failure at the close of 1915. Moudros's importance receded, although it remained the Allied base for the blockade of the Dardanelles during the war. The town of Lemnos, Victoria, Australia, established in 1927 as a soldier settlement zone for returning First World War soldiers, was named after the island. There are three Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemeteries on the island, the first one for the 352 Allied soldiers in Portianou, the second one for the 148 Australian and 76 New Zealander soldiers in the town of Moudros and the third one for the Ottoman soldiers (170 Egyptian and 56 Turkish soldiers).
In late October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies was signed.
After the Red Army victory in the Russian Civil War in 1920, many Kuban Cossacks fled the country to avoid persecution from the Bolsheviks. A notable evacuation point was the Greek island of Lemnos where 18,000 Kuban Cossacks landed, though many later died of starvation and disease. Most left the island after a year.
During World War II, the island was occupied by the Germans on 25 April 1941, part of the Axis occupation of Greece, by the Infanterie Regiment 382/164 Inf.Division under the command of Oberst Wilhelm-Helmuth Beukemann. The same bay of Moudros used by the Allies in WWI served as a base for German ships controlling the northern Aegean sea. An important fact is that the occupation forces included German punitive bataillon, the famous 999 units, in this case the 999th Light Afrika Division (Wehrmacht) and its Afrika Schützen Regiment 963 (later Festungs Infanterie Bataillon 999). These included many German and Austrian antifascist political prisoners enrolled by force, many of whom then joined the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS), such as Wolfgang Abendroth. Partially evacuated since August 1944, the island was liberated on 16 and 17 of October 1944 by the Greek Sacred Band or Greek Sacred Squadron under the command of the British Raiding Forces (as part of the SAS or Special Air Service).
Today the island has about 30 villages and settlements. The province includes the island of Agios Efstratios to the southwest which has some exceptional beaches.
