HIERAPOLIS
(Pamukkale) Turkey.
Town in
Phrygia, 18 km N-NE of Denizli. Founded during the
Hellenistic period, probably by the Pergamene kings, and
most likely by Eumenes II; the earliest inscription found
there is a decree in honor of his mother Apollonis. The
earliest coins, down to the time of Augustus, give the
city's name as Hieropolis, which suggests that the site
was previously occupied by a temple village. Stephanos
Byzantios, although he quotes the name as Hierapolis,
explains it by the many temples in the city. A derivation
from Hiera or Hiero, wife of Telephos, has been suggested, but this idea was evidently not current in antiquity.
Hierapolis has virtually no history, apart from a series
of earthquakes and visits from the emperors. The worst
earthquake occurred under Nero in A.D. 60, and seems
to have necessitated extensive rebuilding. Christianity was
introduced early, and the apostle Philip ended his life at
Hierapolis, where his martyrium has recently been rediscovered. Coinage extends from the 2d c. B.C. to the
emperor Philip, though alliance coins continue a little
later.
The white cliffs of Pamukkale (Cotton castle), like
petrified cascades, have long been famous. They were
and are being formed by heavily lime-charged streamlets
issuing from a hot pool fed from the hill above. The city
lies on the plateau above the cliffs, and stood in large
part not on soil but on the calcareous mass deposited by
the streams. Its cardinal feature is a straight street over
a mile long, running N-S through the center. At either
end stood a monumental three-arched gateway flanked
by round towers; that on the N is still well preserved,
and is dated by its dedication to Domitian in A.D. 84-85.
These gates stood some 150 m outside the city wall,
in which was a second, simpler gate. The wall itself
surrounds the city except on the side of the cliffs; it is
low and of indifferent masonry, no earlier than the Christian era. The original city was apparently protected only
by its sanctity.
The great baths, close to the edge of the cliffs, stand
almost to their original height. In front is an open courtyard flanked on each side by a chamber entered through
a row of six pilasters; behind this is a complex of a
dozen rooms, with arches up to 16 m in span, and an
even larger central arch. Identification of the individual
rooms is hindered by the stonelike floor deposited since
antiquity. In many places the walls show the holes for
fixing the marble veneer, and traces of stucco are visible
on the arches. The hot pool, commonly called the sacred
pool, has a temperature somewhat under blood heat. In
it lie numerous ancient blocks and column drums. The
streamlets issuing from it deposit their lime as they go,
forming self-built channels 0.3 m or more wide which
change their position from time to time. Along the N
part of the main street they have formed walls up to
2 m high.
Up the slope E of the pool is the Temple of Apollo,
newly excavated. In its present form it is no earlier than
the 3d c. A.D., but it appears to have replaced an earlier
building. The SW front, approached by a flight of steps,
stands on a podium about 2 m high; the back part rests
on a shelf of rock. It contains a pronaos and cella, and
had a row of columns, probably six, on the front only.
Adjoining the temple on the SE is the Plutoneion,
which constituted the city's chief claim to fame. It was
described by Strabo (
629-30) as an orifice in a ridge of
the hillside, in front of which was a fenced enclosure
filled with thick mist immediately fatal to any who entered except the eunuchs of Kybele. The Plutoneion was
mentioned and described later by numerous ancient writers, in particular Dio Cassius (68.27), who observed that
an auditorium had been erected around it, and Damascius
ap. Photius (
Bibl. 344f), who recorded a visit by a certain doctor Asclepiodotus about A.D. 500; he mentioned
the hot stream inside the cavern and located it under the
Temple of Apollo. There is, in fact, immediately below
the sidewall of the temple in a shelf of the hillside, a
roofed chamber 3 m square, at the back of which is a
deep cleft in the rock filled with a fast-flowing stream
of hot water heavily charged with a sharp-smelling gas.
In front is a paved court, from which the gas emerges
in several places through cracks in the floor. The mist
mentioned by Strabo is not observable now. The gas was
kept out of the temple itself by allowing it to escape
through gaps left between the blocks of the sidewalls.
Just N of the temple is a large nymphaion, of familiar
form, with a back wall and two wings enclosing a water
basin, and a flight of steps in front. Five semicircular
recesses in the walls are surmounted by rectangular
niches; in the central niche is a pipe-hole. The walls were
decorated with moldings, statues, and reliefs.
Higher up the slope to the E is the theater. This is
large for the size of the city, reflecting the large numbers
of visitors to the warm baths and the Plutoneion. The
cavea, ca. 100 m wide, is well preserved, with some 50
rows of seats, one diazoma, a semicircular Royal Box,
and a vomitorium on either side. The stage building is
also standing in large part; it had three rows of columns
one above another, and was adomed with statues and a
Dionysiac frieze, but most of the decoration has fallen.
The stage itself was rather less than 4 m high. The orchestra, some 20 m in diameter and surrounded by a
wall ca. 2 m high, is being cleared of the mass of fallen
masonry. The building as a whole is of Graeco-Roman
type, dating from the Roman period; some vestiges of an
earlier Hellenistic theater may be observed in a hollow
of the hill N of the city.
Farther up the hill to the NE is a rectangular walled
reservoir, and beyond this again is the newly excavated
and elaborate martyrium of St. Philip. This is a square
building, approached from the SE by a broad flight of
steps; it has an octagonal central chamber containing the
semicircular synthronos; from this six other chambers
open off, and round the exterior are rows of smaller
chambers entered from the outside. The apostle's tomb
has not been discovered. The building is supposed to have
been used for commemorative services on the saint's feast
day; it dates from the early 5th c. A.D.
The necropolis, containing well over 1000 tombs, has
two main groups, one on the hillside beyond the city wall
on the E, the other lining the street outside the city on
the N. The earliest are of tumulus type, with a circular
wall at the base, a cone of earth above surmounted by
a phallos stone, and the burial chamber in the interior
with its own door; some also have a door in the semicircular wall. There are some house tombs, but most of
the tombs are simply sarcophagi, set in many cases on
a solid substructure; there are also a few large built
tombs. The tomb of Flavius Zeuxis stands W of the N
monumental gate; the inscription records that Zeuxis had
made 72 voyages round Cape Malea to Italy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
R. Chandler,
Travels in Asia Minor
(1817; repr. 1971) 186-92; C. Fellows,
Asia Minor
(1839) 283-85; C. Humann et al.,
Altertümer von Hierapolis (1898)
MI; excavation reports,
Annuario (1961-);
G. E. Bean,
Turkey beyond the Maeander (1971) 232-46.
G. E. BEAN
