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The Site of Derbe; A New Inscription

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2015

M. Ballance
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Extract

The question of the site of Derbe has for many years exercised the ingenuity of those who have studied the topography of ancient Lycaonia.

As long ago as 1824 Leake wrote that “of the cities, which the journey of St. Paul has made so interesting to us, the site of one only (Iconium) is yet certainly known. Perga, Antioch of Pisidia, Lystra, and Derbe, remain to be discovered”.

Leake's own conjecture as to the site of Perga was confirmed within thirty years; Antioch was fixed beyond reasonable doubt by Arundell in 1833; and fifty-two years later Sterrett confirmed Leake's suggestion that Lystra lay at Hatunsaray.

The following dedication by the council and people of Derbe, found by the writer in 1956 at Kerti Hüyük, twenty-two kilometres north-north-east of Karaman, provides an answer to the last of Leake's problems and shows that his own location of Derbe at Maden Şehir, based though it was on the slenderest of evidence, was probably closer to the truth than any of those proposed by his successors in the field.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 7 , December 1957 , pp. 147 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1957

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References

1 The writer is indebted to Sir William Calder for his help at all stages of the preparation of this article and to Mr. M. R. E. Gough, who has read the manuscript.

2 Leake, W. M., Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor, 1824, p. 103Google Scholar.

3 Perga; CIG. III, p. 1160Google Scholar, No. 4342b3. Antioch; Arundell, F. V. J., Discoveries in Asia Minor I, 1834, 268 ffGoogle Scholar. Lystra; Sterrett, J. R. S., Papers of the American School at Athens III, 1884–1885, p. 142Google Scholar.

4 Leake, op. cit. p. 101. For other early identifications, ranging as far as Divle, some 55 km. east of Karaman, see Ruge in RE., s.v. Derbe. Sterrett (op. cit. p. 22 f.) having fixed the position of Lystra, put Derbe in the area of Losta and Bosola, 30 km. west of Karaman, apparently on the assumption that Acts xiv, 20Google Scholar, implied that Paul and Barnabas travelled from Lystra to Derbe in a single day. Ramsay, (Jahresheft d. Österreichischen Arch. Inst. VII, 1904Google Scholar, Beiblatt, col. 75–7) located the Byzantine Posala at the modern Bosola and moved Derbe still further west to Gudelisin.

5 For other early examples of the square omikron, see MAMA. IV, No. 53; VII, No. 14a. The former is of Neronian date.

6 e.g. Année Épigraphique, 1910, 154Google Scholar (Sutunurca); 1916, 17 (Cuicul); 1926, 93 (Nicopolis ad Istrum); 1930, 40 (Zama).

7 IGR. III, 704Google Scholar, III B–C (Cyaneae), and TAM. II, 905Google Scholar, cap. 53, 59 = IGR. III, 739 (Rhodiapolis). This phrase can hardly imply a personal visit by the Emperor and thus explain the occasion on which he was honoured by Derbe. There is no hint of such a visit in the Lycian examples and there is a strong presumption that Pius never left Italy during his principate (von Rohden, P. in RE. II, 2508Google Scholar, and Hüttl, W., Antoninus Pius I, Prague, 1936, p. 60Google Scholar).

8 Hill, G. F., Greek Coins of Lycaonia, Isauria and Cilicia, British Museum, 1900, p. xixGoogle Scholar.

9 PIR. II, 1936, pp. 316 f.Google Scholar, no. 1344; CIL. VIII, 8934Google Scholar.

10 The emendation was proposed by Coray, in Géographie de Strabon traduite du Grec en Français IV, ii, Paris, 1816, p. 97 fGoogle Scholar. Even if Ramsay's explanation (op. cit. col. 75, N. 22) of λιμήν as a customs'-post on a land frontier is theoretically possible, it is most unlikely that Stephanus would have used the word in this sense without explanation. To his readers it would have meant simply that Derbe was a harbour on the coast of Cilicia Tracheia.

Marshes in the region of Kerti Hüyük are shown on the Turkish 1: 800,000 map. Drainage works are in progress and a sizeable channel now passes a mile or two west of the mound.

11 Ramsay (op. cit. col. 72) assumes that the Eleventh Strategia of Cappadocia was formed in 129 B.C. Magie, D. (Roman Rule in Asia Minor, Princeton, 1950, I, p. 375Google Scholar) assigns its creation to Pompey in 62 and concludes that Cappadocian control over Lycaonia from 129 to 62 was only nominal. Strabo (537), when referring to the areas added to Cappadocia by the Romans, mentions Castabala, Cybistra and τὰ ἐν τῇ τραχείᾳ κιλικίᾳ, but not Laranda or Derbe.

12 There remains the problem of the identification of Gudelisin. There is no certain evidence of its having been a city in the full sense of the word. It is perhaps too much to hope, on the evidence of a slight resemblance in name, that it may prove to be Dalisandos.

13 Uzunçarşılıoǧlu, I. H., in Belleten I, 1937, pp. 103, 108Google Scholar.