The Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes.

The sea was traditionally known as Archipelago ( in Greek, Αρχιπέλαγος, meaning " chief sea "), but in English this word's meaning has changed to refer to the Aegean Islands and, generally, to any island group.

The Aegean Islands, which almost all belong to Greece, can be divided into seven groups:

# Northeastern Aegean Islands

Many of the Aegean Islands, or chains of islands, are actually extensions of the mountains on the mainland.

In Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity, the Arcipelago ( from medieval Greek * ἀρχιπέλαγος ) was the proper name for the Aegean Sea and, later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands ( since the sea is remarkable for its large number of islands ).

During the first invasion, Thrace, Macedon and the Aegean Islands were added to the Persian Empire, and Eretria was duly destroyed.

), the continental part of Portugal ( as opposed to the Madeira Islands and Azores ), or the continental part of Greece ( as opposed to Ionian Islands, Aegean Islands, Crete ).

Indeed, Athens would create the Delian League in 478 BC, uniting the naval power of the Aegean Islands and Ionia under Athenian leadership.

* The Heruli capture Athens and raid the Aegean Islands as far as Crete and Rhodes.

Also called Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak, when it included much of West Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, parts of the Balkans ( Bulgaria-Romania-Pannonia ), portions of north and northeast Africa including Egypt ( Mudrâya ), eastern Libya, coastal Sudan, Eritrea, as well as most of Pakistan, the Aegean Islands and northern Greece / Thrace-Macedonia.

The architecture of Ancient Greece is the architecture produced by the Greek-speaking people ( Hellenic people ) whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland and Peloponnesus, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Asia Minor and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest remaining architectural works dating from around 600 BC.

Hydra (, pronounced in modern Greek ) is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece, located in the Aegean Sea between the Saronic Gulf and the Argolic Gulf.

During the first half of the 18th Century, Hydra built the same kind of vessels as were built in the other Aegean Islands.

In ethno-cultural terms, the population of Edremit is a mixture of Balkan Turks, descendants of immigrants from Aegean Islands, some Circassians, as well as native Tahtacı Turkmens, who pursue their own traditions and life-style to this day.

The ruins of the oldest human settlement in the Aegean Islands found so far have been unearthed in archaeological excavations on Lemnos by a team of Greek, Italian and American archaeologists at the Ouriakos site on the Louri coast of Fyssini in Moudros municipality.

In 536, Justinian I made it the seat of the Quaestura exercitus ruled by a prefect of Scythia or quaestor Justinianus and including Lower Moesia, Scythia, Caria, the Aegean Islands and Cyprus ; later, the military camp outside Odessus was the seat of another senior Roman commander, magister militum per Thracias.

Populations, mainly from the Aegean Islands, continued arriving to reside in Piraeus.

During the Cypro-Classical period, Polis became one of the most important ancient Cypriot city-kingdoms on the island, with important commercial relations with the eastern Aegean Islands, Attica and Corinth.

It never formed a theme proper, but occupied parts of the southern coast of Asia Minor and the Aegean Islands, with its stratēgos seat most likely at Samos.

The majority of Thrace ( previously under Bulgarian and Turkish domination ) and several Aegean Islands ( such as Imbros and Tenedos ) now became part of Greece, and the region of Smyrna, in Ionia, was placed under Greek mandate.

Those modern scholars who urge that we must keep in mind the fundamental continuity of Aegean development from earliest times -- granted occasional irruptions of peoples and ideas from outside -- are correct ; ;

These are the centuries in which the inhabitants of the Aegean world settled firmly into their minds and into their institutions the foundations of the Hellenic outlook, independent of outside forces.

The growing contacts between Aegean and Orient are also a phase which should be linked primarily to the remarkable broadening of Hellenic culture after 750.

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.

Between the two countries, there are political disputes over several aspects of political control over the Aegean space, including the size of territorial waters, air control and the delimitation of economic rights to the continental shelf.

Representations of ships are not common, but several have been observed on Aegean gems, gem-sealings, frying pans and vases.

* 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 West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean early copper zinc alloys are now known in small numbers from a number of third Millennium BC sites in the Aegean, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kalmykia, Turkmenistan and Georgia and from 2nd Millennium BC sites in West India, Uzbekistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq and Israel.

They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago.

Nereids are particularly associated with the Aegean Sea, where they dwelt with their father in the depths within a silvery cave.

Such wheels are known to have been used for portable cultic stands in the Aegean region during this period, and it is therefore assumed that this building served cultic functions.

" Therasia " and its ethnikon " Therasios " are both attested in later Greek ; and, since-sos was itself a genitive suffix in the Aegean Sprachbund, * Qeras could also shrink to * Qera.

The cuisines of the Aegean, Marmara and Mediterranean regions are rich in vegetables, herbs, and fish.

Greek towns across the Aegean Sea in Ionia are again the subjects of the Persian Empire.

The Heruls are first mentioned by Roman writers in the reign of Gallienus ( 260-268 ), when they accompanied the Goths ravaging the coasts of the Black Sea ( today southern Ukraine ) and the Aegean.

* c. 1700 BC: Aegean metalworkers are producing decorative objects rivaling those of Ancient Near East jewelers, whose techniques they seem to borrow.

* c. 1700 BC: Aegean metalworkers are producing decorative objects rivaling those of Ancient Near East jewelers, whose techniques they seem to borrow.

The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the Aegean and Mediterranean in the 14th century BC.

* Rhodes becomes a bulwark against pirates, the Rhodians are unable to suppress piracy in the Aegean Sea.

Crocuses are native to woodland, scrub and meadows from sea level to alpine tundra in central and southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, on the islands of the Aegean, and across Central Asia to western China.

Ptolemy II's ambitions in the Aegean Sea are threatened by Antigonus Gonatas ' fleet, so he carefully builds up a coalition against Macedonia in Greece.

But the two islands are close to each other, at the northern end of the Aegean, and the cults are at least similar, and neither fits easily into the Olympic pantheon: the Cabeiri were given a mythic genealogy as sons of Hephaestus.