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

* Aegean Sea Bottom Water – occurring at depths below 500 – 1000 m with a very uniform temperature ( 13 – 14 ° C ) and salinity ( 39. 1 – 39. 2 %).

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.

These fragments were discovered in 1992 by Adamantios Sampson, Inspector of Antiquities, during a project whose more general purpose was to clarify the prehistoric occupation sequence in the area, with an emphasis on the pre-pottery sequences from the Late Pleistocene, especially two thick areas of deposits: Late Aegean Neolithic Ib and Early Neolithic II.

Included in the category Aegean art is Mycenaean art, famous for its gold masks, war faring imagery and sturdy architecture consisting of citadels on hills with walls up to 20 feet thick and tunnels into the bedrock, the art of the Cyclades, famous for its simple " Venus " figurines carved in white marble, and Minoan art which is famous for its animal imagery, images of harvest, and light, breezy, unwarlike architecture which is almost the antithesis of the Mycenaean art.

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.

The Aegean Islands are found within its waters, with the following islands delimiting the sea on the south ( generally from west to east ): Kythera, Antikythera, Crete, Kasos, Karpathos and Rhodes.

Located on the west coast of Anatolia, the Aegean region has a fertile soil and a typically Mediterranean climate ; with mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers.

W. H. Roscher thinks that both nectar and ambrosia were kinds of honey, in which case their power of conferring immortality would be due to the supposed healing and cleansing powers of honey, and because fermented honey ( mead ) preceded wine as an entheogen in the Aegean world ; on some Minoan seals, goddesses were represented with bee faces ( compare Merope and Melissa ).

He was born into the aristocratic, warrior class that dominated Mytilene, the strongest city-state on the island of Lesbos and, by the end of the seventh century BC, the most influential of all the North Aegean Greek cities, with a strong navy and colonies securing its trade-routes in the Hellespont.

there is very close commerce with Egypt, and Aegean things find their way to all coasts of the Mediterranean.

The Aegean written documents have not yet proved ( by being found outside the area ) to be epistolary ( letter writing ) correspondence with other countries.

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

Thus the " Aegean Area " has now come to mean the Archipelago with Crete and Cyprus, the Hellenic peninsula with the Ionian islands, and Western Anatolia.

The world's narrowest strait used for international navigation, it connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara ( which is connected by the Dardanelles to the Aegean Sea, and thereby to the Mediterranean Sea.

Greece was the only Balkan country with a navy powerful enough to deny use of the Aegean to the Ottoman Empire, thus a treaty between Greece and Bulgaria became necessary ; it was signed in May 1912.

After the end of the operations in Thrace — and confirming Greek concerns — Bulgaria was not satisfied with the territory it controlled in Macedonia and immediately asked Greece to relinquish its control over Thessaloniki and the land north of Pieria, effectively handing over all Aegean Macedonia.

Prominent issues in Hellenic foreign policy include the claims in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean by Turkey, the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, the dispute over the name of the Republic of Macedonia ( recognized under the provisional denomination of " former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia "), and relations with the United States and Russia.

The Gallipoli peninsula (; ; ) is located in Turkish Thrace ( or East Thrace ), the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east.

A bird that had been associated with Hera on an archaic level, where most of the Aegean goddesses were associated with " their " bird, was the cuckoo, which appears in mythic fragments concerning the first wooing of a virginal Hera by Zeus.

The Treaty of Bucharest, which concluded the war, left Greece with southern Epirus, the southern half of Macedonia, Crete and the Aegean islands, except for the Dodecanese, which had been occupied by Italy in 1911.