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TYBERISSOS or Tyberisos (Tirmisin Asari) Turkey.

Site in Lycia 3 km S of Kyaneai, 15 km W of Myra. The city is known only from its inscriptions and has no history. The name was at first read erroneously as Tybenissos; the true name is preserved in that of the village. The antiquity of the site is proved by two Lycian rock tombs with inscriptions in the epichoric script. Some rare coins of Lycian type inscribed ΤΥ are probably to be ascribed to Tyberissos; otherwise there is no coinage. The inscriptions indicate that the principal deity was Apollo Tyberisseus, with the epithet Patroos, and that Tybenissos was united in a deme with Teimiusa.

The hill, high and steep, has a summit in two parts. The higher N part formed the acropolis, and has remains of a fortification wall in solid ashlar, and some small buildings; on the lower S part is a church built largely from the stones of a Doric temple. Among the ruins are many sarcophagi with so-called Gothic lids of the familiar Lycian type. At the foot of the mountain, immediately above the E end of the plain of Tirmisin, is a glade containing a dozen more Gothic sarcophagi and a number of pigeon-hole tombs; at the lower end is an unusual tomb with the door and two sides cut from the rock, and the two other sides of masonry. In several cases the epitaphs make the fine for violation payable to Myra.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. Petersen & F. von Luschan, Reisen in Lykien II (1889) 52-54; L. Robert, Hellenica x (1955) 194-95.

G. E. BEAN

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