Kibyra by Dick Osseman (original) (raw)

From the Wikipedia I quote: “Kibyra or Cibyra (Greek: Κιβύρα), also referred to as Cibyra Magna, is an ancient city and an archaeological site in south-west Turkey, near the modern town of Gölhisar, in Burdur Province. It was the chief city of a district Cibyratis. Strabo says, that the Cibyratae are called descendants of the Lydians, of those who once occupied the Cabalis, but afterwards of the neighbouring Pisidians, who settled here, and removed the town to another position in a strong place, which was about 100 stadia in circuit. It grew powerful under a good constitution, and the villages extended from Pisidia and the adjoining Milyas into Lycia, and to the Peraea of the Rhodians. When the three neighbouring towns of Bubon, Balubura, and Oenoanda were joined to it, this confederation was called Tetrapolis. Each town had one vote, but Cibyra had two votes; for Cibyra alone could muster 30,000 infantry and 2000 cavalry. It was always under tyrants, but the government was moderate. The tetrapolis formed under the leadership of Kibyra during the 2nd century BC, was dissolved by the Roman general Lucius Licinius Murena in 83 BC, at the time of the First Mithridatic War. Balbura and Bubon were assigned to the Lycians. The conventus of Cibyra, however, still remained one of the greatest in Asia. The Cibyratae had four languages, the Pisidian, the Hellenic, the language of the Solymi and of the Lydians. It is also the place where, according to Strabo, the Lydian language was still being spoken among a multicultural population around his time (1st century BC), thus making Kibyra the last locality where the culture, by then extinct in Lydia proper according to extant accounts, is attested. It was a peculiarity of Cibyra that the iron was easily cut with a chisel, or other sharp tool. Strabo does not fix the position of Cibyra precisely. After mentioning Antiochia on the Maeander as being in Caria, he says, to the south the great Cibyra, Sinda, and the Cabalis, as far as Taurus and Lycia. Ptolemy places Cibyra in Great Phrygia, and assigns the three cities of Bubon, Balbura, and Oenoanda to the Cabalis of Lycia, which is consistent with Strabo. The place is identified by inscriptions on the spot. The ruins cover the brow of a hill between 300 and 400 feet above the level of the plain. The material for the buildings was gotten from the limestone in the neighbourhood; and many of them are in good condition. On a block there is an inscription, Καισαρεων Κιβυρατων ἡ βουλη και ὁ δημος, from which it appears that in the Roman period the city had also the name Caesarea. The name Καισαρεων appears on some of the coins of Cibyra. There are no traces of city walls.

Most objects can be idientified from the name of the pictures. The findings that were taken away are to a great extent in the Burdur Museum