Through the Outer Gardens of the Saray - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 93

see today, one of the great museums of Europe. One of the most
dramatic events in this development came in 1887 during Osman
Hamdi Bey's excavation of the royal necropolis at Sidon, when he
unearthed the magnificent group of sarcophagi which are the pride of
the museum. Since the Çinili Köşk, where antiquities were first stored,
proved too small to house these new acquisitions, a new museum
was built directly opposite and opened to the public in 1896. Later
discoveries by Osman Hamdi Bey and other archaeologists soon filled
this museum to overflowing and it became necessary to build two
additional wings, which were opened in 1902 and 1908. A new four-
storey annexe was begun behind the museum in 1988 and completed
in 1992.
On entering the museum notice the colossal porphyry sarcophagi
arrayed along the side of the building between the two stairways.
These contained the remains of early Byzantine emperors of the
fourth and fifth centuries and were originally in the crypt of the
church of the Holy Apostles on the Fourth Hill, now the site of Fatih
Camii (see Chapter 12).
On entering from the first stairway we will first turn left to see
the exhibits in the northern half of the museum; after which we will
then retrace our steps to see the southern half; we will then go on
to look at the antiquities in the annexe, whose entrance is opposite
the museum shop between the two stairways. In the lobby we see a
colossal statue of Bes, the Cypriot Hercules, holding up a headless
lioness by her hind paws. A great hole gapes from the god's loins; it
has been politely suggested that this once served as a fountain, but it
was perhaps more likely the seat of an appropriately gigantic phallus.
The statue is from Cyprus and dates from the imperial Roman era,
first to third century A.D.
The first two rooms beyond the museum shop contain a number
of the extraordinary sarcophagi discovered by Osman Hamdi Bey
in the royal necropolis at Sidon in Syria. These sarcophagi belonged
to a succession of kings who ruled in Phoenicia between the mid-
fifth century B.C. and the latter half of the following century. Just
inside the doorway of the first room we see the Tabit Sarcophagus,
made in the sixth century B.C. for an Egyptian general and reused