TYANA
(Kemerhisan/Bahçeli, Bor, Niğde) Cappadocia, Turkey.
Capital of a Hittite kingdom in the
2d millennium B.C., Xenophon mentions it (
An. 1.2.20),
under the name of Dana, as a large and prosperous city.
In the Cappadocian kingdom it was the second of the
only two proper cities, its territory, Tyanitis the rich
strategia in the SW of the country, stretching down to
the Cilician Gates. At a spring near the city was the Temple of Zeus Asbamaeus (Amm. Marc. 23.6.19). Renamed Eusebeia by Tauros in honor of the Hellenizing
king Ariarathes V Eusebes, Philopater, 163-30 B.C., it
was more usually known by its former name. It was
birthplace of Apollonius, “Trappist” philosopher of the
1st c. A.D., whose biography was written by Philostratus.
Under Caracalla it became a colony as an important station on the main highway to Syria. In the provincial reorganization by Valens in A.D. 371-72, it became capital of Cappadocia Secunda.
The chief surviving monument is the fine stone aqueduct with many arches still standing. It brought water from Köşk Pinar, a strong spring below a small Neolithic settlement, where the rectangular spring-head basin
from Roman times has recently been commercially excavated and restored as a swimming pool. Other small remains abound in Kemerhisar where there is an open-air museum of inscriptions and architectural fragments.
There are more in Nigde Museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. J. Hamilton,
Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia (1842).
R. P. HARPER
