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MIKRA KIVIRA (Ancient city) TURKEY
Very probably at Guney Kalesi, about 19 km NW of Alanya, 48 km E of
Side and 11 km from the coast. Kibyra is mentioned as a city of Pamphylia by pseudo-Skylax
in the 4th c. B.C.; it is named in the Stadiasmus, and Strabo places "the
coastland of the Kibyrates" close to Side. The site has long been sought,
as the indications given by the ancient geographers are not consistent. The only
precise location is that in the Stadiasmus (§ 212-14), which places it 109 stades
E of Side, and this agrees with Strabo's indication. Coinage began in the 2d c.
B.C. but did not continue into Imperial times, and apart from a mention by Ptolemy
the city only reappears in the authorities in the 10th c. as giving its name to
the Cibyrrhaeotic thema, extending from Miletos to Seleuceia. Constantine Porphyrogenitus
(De Them. 14) calls it "a cheap and undistinguished township," and observes
that the thema was called after it by way of insult rather than praise, because
of a haughty and self-willed attitude towards the imperial commands.
The ruins at Guney Kalesi, discovered in 1964, occupy two summits
some 750 m above sea level, but are not well preserved. The city wall, of inferior
masonry, stands in part some 6 m high, but the buildings within it are utterly
ruined. The inscriptions, however, refer to a Caesareum and to games; they show
also that the city possessed civic status down to the 3d c. A.D. Beyond the city
wall to the W a third summit carries some tombs. The water supply was dependent
on cisterns, spring water being scarce.
G. E. Bean, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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