Beneath the later ruins of Miletus lies a Bronze Age city tied to sea trade, shifting identities, and the Hittite archives that may preserve the clearest trail of Mycenaean influence in Anatolia.

The world city of Ephesus, home to the Temple of Artemis — one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world — was located 50 miles north of Miletus. At precisely this moment, Heraclitus, the Ionian from ...