02-24-2017, 04:02 PM
I am hopefully going to have at least a day trip to Istanbul on my trip over there. I don't want to spend too much time there due to on-going problems in that city, its not as safe as when I went there several years ago unfortunately.
I honestly believe that the 'supplicant soldiers' stone has been removed and probably sold to a collector. I hope to be proved wrong if it turns up in the museum but to be honest I doubt very much it has been preserved. We must not forget that the Turkish people as a whole have but a passing interest in anything before the Ottoman period in Turkey, as they were at pains to tell me during my last research trip. Hence they see no problem in digging a trench through the old Forum Tauri site with no archaeologists present, or digging up huge blocks of white marble after demolishing a building and leaving them stacked to one side of the construction site or removing sections of the Theodosian Walls to use as building materials for their houses.
I honestly believe that the 'supplicant soldiers' stone has been removed and probably sold to a collector. I hope to be proved wrong if it turns up in the museum but to be honest I doubt very much it has been preserved. We must not forget that the Turkish people as a whole have but a passing interest in anything before the Ottoman period in Turkey, as they were at pains to tell me during my last research trip. Hence they see no problem in digging a trench through the old Forum Tauri site with no archaeologists present, or digging up huge blocks of white marble after demolishing a building and leaving them stacked to one side of the construction site or removing sections of the Theodosian Walls to use as building materials for their houses.
Adrian Coombs-Hoar
