Lykos Creek | Bayrampaşa Deresi

Mavi Boncuk | Lycus (river of Constantinople), running through ancient Constantinople (modern Istanbul), partly underground. (see map). It entered the city from the land walls and a watch tower was erected for it's security and cleanliness. The location gave the area of Sulukule(Watery tower) it's name.

Lycus or Lykos (Greek: Λύκος), a common name for Greek rivers, seems to have originated in the impression made upon the mind of the beholder by a torrent rushing down the side of a hill, which suggested the idea of a wolf (Greek: Lykos) rushing at its prey.

"The site’s ships, bones and artifacts (and cherries) were so unusually well preserved, he maintains, because silt from the Lykos River and sand from the Marmara Sea quickly covered over the wrecks...Sediment from the Lykos, which emptied into the port, was also caught by the break-water. But instead of flowing out to sea, the alluvial soil gradually backed up, silting up the harbor. By the 12th century, the port was so shallow it was only used by small fishing boats. Four centuries later, the once-bustling harbor was a memory. A 16th-century account by Pierre Gilles, a natural historian dispatched by the French king François I to acquire manuscripts in what had become the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, describes the former Byzantine port as a garden spot covered with vegetable plots watered by waterwheels known as norias...That nemesis of nautical archeologists, the rapacious Teredo navalis mollusk, bores holes into wrecks in the open sea, ultimately turning their planks and beams into crumbly sponge. Yet Teredo did little damage at Yenikapi because the fresh-water inflow from the Lykos river kept them away."

SOURCE: Uncovering Yenikapi

In the Yenikapı Metro excavation area a new Neolithic cave settlement has been recently discovered by the İstanbul Archeological Museums. In the same excavated area, which is known as the Yenikapı since the Ottoman period (Vlanga or Langa of the Byzantium period), the largest port of the Byzantium period ‘Theodosius’ is also located. This port is placed at the mouth of the Bayrampaşa (Lykos) Stream, which is the only channel draining the old ‘fortified İstanbul’ (Constantinople) area. The stream originates in the high Maltepe Hills area, being fed by the waters of small tributaries. It enters into the “fortified İstanbul” area through the ‘Sulukule Gate’, flows in an east west direction, and then makes a sharp turn to the south, emptying into the Sea of Marmara at Yenikapı. The width of the main Bayrampasa valley is 3.5 km, with its drainage area constituting about 1/3 of the “fortified İstanbul” area that forms the main old settlement. The Valley passes near the main squares and social structures of the “old” İstanbul. Its morphology has been continuously changed by natural and antropogenic developments, being terminally erased from the land surface by 1960s, as result of a rapid increase in population and urbanization in İstanbul. The Theodosius port area at the mouth of the Bayrampasa Stream was a coastal marsh during the Neolithic period. It was inundated by sea around 6,000−5,000 a BP with the increase in the global sea level, and used as a Port starting around 300−400 A.D., according to the archeological records. The port was completely filled in by about 1.200 A.D., with sediments sourced from the Bayrampaşa Stream and the sea, as well as with anthropogenic wastes from the settlement to the north.

SOURCE (Turkish)
Course of Changes in the Drainage Basin of Bayrampaşa (Lykos) Stream and the Yenikapı (Theodosius) Port’s Coastal Area at its Outlet (Sea of Marmara) 
Kürşad Kadir Eriş, Christian Beck & Namık Çağatay İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Maden Fakültesi, Jeoloji Mühendisliği Bölümü (Doğu Akdeniz Oşinografi ve Limnoloji Araştırmaları Merkezi), Avcılar, TR−34469 İstanbul, Türkiye (E-mail: akcer@itu.edu.tr)