It is a peninsula bound by the Black Sea to the north, Georgia to the north-east, the Armenian Highland to the east, Mesopotamia to the south-east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west.

The Aegean Sea (;, Aigaio Pelagos ; or historically ) is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i. e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey.

The Aegean Sea covers about in area, and measures about longitudinally and latitudinally.

The word archipelago was originally applied specifically to the Aegean Sea and its islands.

The bays and gulfs of the Aegean beginning at the South and moving clockwise include on Crete, the Mirabelli, Almyros, Souda and Chania bays or gulfs, on the mainland the Myrtoan Sea to the west, the Saronic Gulf northwestward, the Petalies Gulf which connects with the South Euboic Sea, the Pagasetic Gulf which connects with the North Euboic Sea, the Thermian Gulf northwestward, the Chalkidiki Peninsula including the Cassandra and the Singitic Gulfs, northward the Strymonian Gulf and the Gulf of Kavala and the rest are in Turkey ; Saros Gulf, Edremit Gulf, Dikili Gulf, Çandarlı Gulf, İzmir Gulf, Kuşadası Gulf, Gulf of Gökova, Güllük Gulf.

The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Aegean Sea as follows:

Aegean surface water circulates in a counter-clockwise gyre, with hypersaline Mediterranean water moving northward along the west coast of Turkey, before being displaced by less dense Black Sea outflow.

The Black Sea outflow moves westward along the northern Aegean Sea, then flows southwards along the east coast of Greece.

The physical oceanography of the Aegean Sea is controlled mainly by the regional climate, the fresh water discharge from major rivers draining southeastern Europe, and the seasonal variations in the Black Sea surface water outflow through the Dardanelles Strait.

* Aegean Sea Surface Water – thick veneer, with summer temperatures of 21 – 26 ° C and winter temperatures ranging from in the north to in the south.

* Aegean Sea Intermediate Water – Aegean Sea Intermediate Water extends from 40 – 50 m to with temperatures ranging from 11 – 18 ° C.

Historic map of Aegean Sea by Piri Reis

The subsequent Bronze Age civilizations of Greece and the Aegean Sea have given rise to the general term Aegean civilization.

Water flows in both directions along the strait, from the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean via a surface current and in the opposite direction via an undercurrent.

Of the main islands in the Aegean Sea, two belong to Turkey – Bozcaada ( Tenedos ) and Gökçeada ( Imbros ); the rest belong to Greece.

* 1922 – The Turkish army takes the Aegean city of Afyonkarahisar from the Greeks.

* 338 BC – A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean.

* 1820 – The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

* 1966 – The Greek ship sinks in a storm in the Aegean Sea, killing over 200.

* 1992 – The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea, carrying 80, 000 tonnes of crude oil, runs aground in a storm while approaching La Coruña, Spain, and spills much of its cargo.

* 1824 – Greek War of Independence: Egyptian forces capture Psara in the Aegean Sea.

* 1913 – A Greek flotilla defeats the Ottoman Navy in the Naval Battle of Lemnos during the First Balkan War, securing the islands of the Northern Aegean Sea for Greece.

It is also widely held by scholars that the island was not occupied by humans during the Middle Bronze Age ( 2300 – 1600 ), though researchers have recently suggested that the lack of evidence from this period may only demonstrate the lack of excavations on Chios and the northern Aegean.

This came to an end when the island was briefly held ( 1090 – 97 ) by Tzachas, a Turkish bey in the region of Smyrna during the first expansion of the Turks to the Aegean coast.

* 1916 – World War I: A mine explodes and sinks HMHS Britannic in the Aegean Sea, killing 30 people.

Certainly cultures which appeared at Franchthi Cave in the Aegean and Lepenski Vir in the Balkans, and the Murzak-Koba ( 9100 – 8000 BCE ) and Grebenki ( 8500 – 7000 BCE ) cultures of the Ukrainian steppe, all displayed these adaptations.

The evening of our first day we drove with Christopher and Judy Sakellariadis, who were friends and patients of Norton, to dine at a restaurant on the shores of the Aegean.

Before that time, at the peak of the last ice age ( c. 16, 000 BC ) sea levels everywhere were 130 metres lower, and there were large well-watered coastal plains instead of much of the northern Aegean.

* Structures ; Ruins of palaces, palatial villas, houses, built dome-or cist-graves and fortifications ( Aegean islands, Greek mainland and northwestern Anatolia ), but not distinct temples ; small shrines, however, and temene ( religious enclosures, remains of one of which were probably found at Petsofa near Palaikastro by J. L. Myres in 1904 ) are represented on intaglios and frescoes.

; In the Aegean area at a later time, discordant with the civilization in which they were practised and indicating survival from earlier systems.

Aegean vases have been exhibited both at Sèvres and Neuchatel since about 1840, the provenance ( i. e. source or origin ) being in the one case Phylakope in Melos, in the other Cephalonia.

When this discovery was followed up in 1870, on the neighbouring Santorin ( Thera ), by representatives of the French School at Athens, much pottery of a class now known immediately to precede the typical late Aegean ware, and many stone and metal objects, were found.

Schliemann got to work again at Hissarlik in 1878, and greatly increased our knowledge of the lower strata, but did not recognize the Aegean remains in his " Lydian " city of the sixth stratum.

During the Acropolis excavations in Athens, which terminated in 1888, many potsherds of the Mycenaean style were found ; but Olympia had yielded either none, or such as had not been recognized before being thrown away, and the temple site at Delphi produced nothing distinctively Aegean ( in dating ).

Melos, long marked as a source of early objects but not systematically excavated until taken in hand by the British School at Athens in 1896, yielded at Phylakope remains of all the Aegean periods, except the Neolithic.

A map of Cyprus in the later Bronze Age ( such as is given by J. L. Myres and M. O. Richter in Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum ) shows more than 25 settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that at Enkomi, near the site of Salamis, has yielded the richest Aegean treasure in precious metal found outside Mycenae.

E. Chantre in 1894 picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissariik, in central Phtygia and at Pteria, and the English archaeological expeditions, sent subsequently into north-western Anatolia, have never failed to bring back ceramic specimens of Aegean appearance from the valleys of the Rhyndncus, Sangarius and Halys.

In Egypt in 1887, W. M. F. Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style at Kahun in the Fayum, and farther up the Nile, at Tell el-Amarna, chanced on bits of no fewer than 800 Aegean vases in 1889.

There have now been recognized in the collections at Cairo, Florence, London, Paris and Bologna several Egyptian imitations of the Aegean style which can be set off against the many debts which the centres of Aegean culture owed to Egypt.

Two Aegean vases were found at Sidon in 1885, and many fragments of Aegean and especially Cypriot pottery have been found during recent excavations of sites in Philistia by the Palestine Fund.

Sicily, ever since P. Orsi excavated the Sicel cemetery near Lentini in 1877, has proved a mine of early remains, among which appear in regular succession Aegean fabrics and motives of decoration from the period of the second stratum at Hissarlik.

Sardinia has Aegean sites, for example, at Abini near Teti ; and Spain has yielded objects recognized as Aegean from tombs near Cadiz and from Saragossa.

Within a few months, however, the two countries were again at odds over Aegean airspace and sovereignty issues.

Samos excavations have revealed votive offerings, many of them late 8th and 7th centuries BC, which show that Hera at Samos was not merely a local Greek goddess of the Aegean: the museum there contains figures of gods and suppliants and other votive offerings from Armenia, Babylon, Iran, Assyria, Egypt, testimony to the reputation which this sanctuary of Hera enjoyed and to the large influx of pilgrims.