PRUSIAS AD HYPIUM
(Konuralp or Üskübü) Turkey.
City in Bithynia 8 km N of Düzce, which lies
midway between Istanbul and Ankara, and on the road
from Düzce to Akçakoca on the Black Sea. It was an important city on the road from Nicomedia (Izmit) to Amastris (Amasra) in Pontos, and lay E of the Hypios river.
The site is on a defensible hill at the foot of Mt.
Hypios, and is mentioned by Pliny and Memnon. According to the latter, King Prusias I conquered Kieros
and changed its name to Prusias. When the city was conquered by the Romans in 74 B.C. it consisted of four
phylai; it flourished under Roman rule, and inscriptions
indicate that it had 12 phylai in the 2d c. A.D. Hadrian,
Caracalla, and Elagabalus visited it, and in the 4th c.
it became a bishopric. Georgios, bishop of Prusias ad
Hypium, was present at the Council of Nicaea, and another bishop, Olympios, attended the Council of Calchedon in 451.
Remains are of the Roman period and Roman walls
surround the site. The S and W walls and a S gate called
Baltali Kapi are still standing; they incorporate many
earlier inscriptions. The theater, 100 by 74 m, probably
dates from the 2d c. A.D. Most of the cavea is standing,
and the scaenae frons and parodoi are visible. A three-arched bridge, 10 m long, outside the walls to the W,
was intact until recently, when a flood ruined the pavement. A colonnaded street runs SE from the bridge;
carved entablatures, arches, pediments, pavements, and
drains are still visible. Pavement mosaics, now covered,
have been found S of the city outside the wall. They
include scenes of Achilles and Thetis and of Orpheus
with the Seasons.
Buildings of the early Ottoman period include a bath
and an aqueduct. Many inscriptions, architectural fragments, bomoi (especially the funerary bomos of an
Athenian actor), and a garland sarcophagus can be seen
in the museum depot. Other finds are in the Istanbul
Archaeological Museum, including a bust of a boy, and
statues of Tyche, a philosopher, and a seated woman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. Magie,
Roman Rule in Asia Minor
(1950); F. K. Dörner, “Prusias ad Hypium,”
RE XXII
(1959) 1128ff; L. Tuğrul,“New Inscriptions from
Üskübü (Prusias),”
Annual of the Archaeological Museums of Istanbul 10 (1962) 121-26; A. N. Rollas,
Guide
to Prusias-ad-Hypium (1967).
N. FIRATLI
