Province Kilikia
Traveler’s Log
So these are the gates… Many crossed, but many failed too. This is the land that the people of the Nile called Kode. Its Hurrian name though is Kizzuwatna! The west is rugged mountain territory and the east is fertile river-land. Indeed, this is a land of contradictions. The mountains can provide shelter in time of need, but the lowlands offer none… and they invite invaders too often. From North and South they come; to hold the gates, to mine valuable ore and to reap the harvest of the fields. Trade too flourishes as natural harbors and emporia make Kilikia a haven for seafarers of all sorts in the eastern Mediterranean, sailing the ancient routes from the Levant, to Kilikia, to Cyprus, to Rhodes and the Ionian coast, to Hellas and the islands, to Crete, to Cyrene and to Egypt. Trade, grain, water, mines, gates, all make for a rich kingdom. Yet, only a handful of local kings ruled this land throughout history…. indeed, this is a land of contradictions.
Geography
The Kilikian coastline consists of a well-watered plain to the east and a rough wooded mountainous area to the west. The plain is embraced by mountains to its west and northeast and is accessible through passes that the Greeks called “gates”. The Kilikian country possesses valuable resources, such as mines of silver and iron ore in the Taurus Mountains. The Hittite King Hatussili III, sent a message to his Assyrian counterpart informing him that the iron ore of good quality was not available at that time in Kizzuwatna. They would produce some, soon. As a token of friendship an iron sword was sent to him!
Along with the metal resources of the mountains beyond Karatepe there was a resource in Kilikia that left no archaeological footprint: horses! In the book of Kings, King Solomon of Jerusalem received horses for his chariots from “Que”, the Kilikian plain. Shipping horses is a practice well attested in Greek history and probably used early on in the area around Kilikia and further down the coast.
Three rivers come down from the mountains and grant the plain its exceptional fertility. The plains at the lower course of the Ceyhan River provided especially rich cultivated fields. Furthermore, annual winter rains make agriculture possible in the area at a very early date. Dioscurides noted the presence of many medicinal and scented plants. Rosa Phoenicia, an exquisite variety of the white rose, also blooms here, twice a year too! Wild life abounded with even buffaloes making their home in the plain.
The People, Society and Government
Several ethnic groups coexisted in Kilikia in the Bronze Age. Luwians, Hittites and Hurrians shared the land and formed its culture. Luwians were probably the first inhabitants at the start of the 2nd millennium BC. Hittites likely came in significant numbers to southeastern Anatolia following the Hittite conquest in the early Old Kingdom period, under Kings Hattusili I and Mursili I, but Hurrians too inhabited this area at least since the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. After the weakening of the Hittite Old Kingdom in the 15th century BC, Hittites and Luwians contributed to the formation of a short-lived independent kingdom of Kizzuwatna. The toponym Kizzuwatna is possibly a Luwian adaptation of Hittite kezudne meaning “country on this side (of the mountains)”. Hurrian culture became prominent in Kilikia, once it entered the sphere of influence of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, at the peak of the latter’s power. A volatile area, socially, culturally and politically, Kilikia incorporated cultural and linguistic elements from all three distinct ethnic constituents.
Temple-cities were a noteworthy feature of Kilikia, defining governmental and social organization. Such a city was Kummani, the capital of Kizzuwatna, situated in the highlands. Strabo indicates classical Komana was a temple city from ancient times by his reckoning, relying on the temple for any social structure, where the head priest was also the local political leader. Kummanni, whose Hittite name was Kummiya, was the political, cultural and religious center of the Anatolian kingdom of Kizzuwatna. Its location is uncertain, but is believed to be near the classical settlement of Comana in Cappadocia. Kummanni was the major cult center of the Hurrian chief deity, Tešup. Its Hurrian name Kummeni simply translates as "The Shrine."
Puduhepa, queen of the Hittite king Hattusili III, came from Kizzuwatna, where she had been a priestess, the daughter of the head-priest. Their pantheon was also integrated into the Hittite one, and the goddess Hebat of Kizzuwatna became very important in Hittite religion towards the end of the 13th century BC. Hurrian goddess Hebat was almost just as important as her husband Tešup, the Weather God. Both were worshipped at Kummani, where it is even possible that she had preeminence. A corpus of religious texts called the Kizzuwatna rituals was discovered at Hattusa. Despite this fact, it seems the King did have to visit Kummani to fulfill religious duties. Queen Puduheba was of Hurrian descent and after her marriage to the Hittite King Hatusili, correspondence from her time identifies Hebat as the Sun Godhess of Arinna, a major cult center near Hattusa in the Hittite heartland. This is another clear piece of evidence of the syncretism that was present in all layers of life in Kilikia from the Bronze Age.
The city persisted into the Early Iron Age, and appears as Kumme in Assyrian records. It was located on the edge of Assyrian influence, separating Assyria from Urartu and the highlands of southeastern Anatolia. Kumme was still considered a holy city in Assyrian times, both in Assyria and in Urartu. Adadnirari II of Assyria, after re-conquering the city, made sacrifices to "Adad of Kumme" and the three chief deities in the Urartian pantheon were "the god of Ardini, the god of Kumenu, and the god of Tushpa." This testifies to the importance of Kummani and of the culture that flourished in Kilikia fot the wider region.
History
The first mention of Kilikia in historical record informs us that King Sargon of Akkad reached the Taurus Mountains in the 23rd century BC, during a campaign from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean, but left no lasting influence. The trade routes from Assyria to the “karum” in the Anatolian highlands went through Kizzuwatna by the early 2nd millennium BC. The kings of Kizzuwatna of the 2nd millennium BC had frequent contact with the Hittites to the north. The earliest Hittite records seem to refer to Kizzuwatna and Arzawa in Western Anatolia collectively as Luwia. Kilikia was conquered by the Hittite Kings of the old kingdom Hattusili I and Mursili I. Fortifications similar to those at the Hittite capital have been found in Kilikia. The Hittite hieroglyphs themselves probably originated in Kilikia, since the oldest example is the seal of Isputachsus, king of Kizzuwatna. Telipinu was the last Hittite king of the old kingdom at the turn of the 15th century BC and probably had to recognize the ruler of Kizzuwatna as a king in his own right, perhaps even as an equal. Isputahsu made a treaty with the Hittite king Telepinu. Later, Kizzuwatna shifted its allegiance, perhaps due to a new ruling dynasty. The Hurrians formed the Mitani state in Syria, but were also dominant over Kizzuwatna in the dark ages of the Hittite Middle Kingdom. The Mittani formulated a policy of containment for the Hittites. Kizzuwatna was an important buffer state and was supported by the Mittani to keep the weakened Hittites in their Anatolian plateau. This close relationship came about when the city state of Alalakh to the south of Kilikia expanded under its new vigorous leader Idrimi, himself a subject of the Mitanni King Barattarna. King Pilliya of Kizzuwatna had to sign a treaty with Idrimi. It was then only natural for Kizzuwatna to become a Mitanni ally. This alliance persisted from the reign of Shunashura I, until the Hittite king Arnuwanda I overran the country and made it a vassal kingdom. Kizuwatna was “liberated” from the Mittani, but was subdued and became a client kingdom to the Hittites. And while the agreement appears to have been a mutual aggressive and defensive alliance, it was the Kizuwatnnan ruler that had to visit Hatousa on a yearly basis to pay homage to the King and was prohibited from having any connection to the king of Hurri. As the New Hittite Kingdom became stronger, Kizzuwatna was incorporated to the empire yet again and the Hittites pushed deeper into Mittani territory. Kizzuwatna rebelled during the reign of Suppiluliuma I, but remained within the Hittite empire for two hundred years. In the famous Battle of Kadesh (c. 1274 BC), Kizzuwadna supplied troops to the Hittite king. This was the status quo until the collapse of the Bronze age near the turn of the 12th century BC, when smaller Neo-Hittite kingdoms such as Tabal, Kammanu and Quwe seem to have emerged in Kilikia and were relatively spared from the devastation that the Sea Peoples wrought in the wider Near East.
The events that took place in Kizzuwatna are as vague as they are in many other places during this extremely volatile time. Evidence found in Egypt provides us with some information, though, as in other cases, the authors were perhaps more interested in impression than accuracy: “No land could stand before their arms from Hatti, Kode, Kargamish, Yereth, Alashia on.” Kargamish, for example, seems to have suffered no such fate as nearby Ugarit did. Yet Kode (i.e. Kizzuwatna) was probably not spared. The Tursha of the Sea peoples that joined the Libyans against the Egyptian Pharaoh Mernepta were perhaps from Tarsos according to one interpretation of the information available. People from nearby Adana may have been involved in the attack a generation later. But Tarsos had been burned almost to the ground around that time. Archaeology remains inconclusive on the matter.
Kilikia after the sea peoples was a dark spot in history until the Karatepe inscriptions were found. The author was Azativatas, himself probably not a king or ruler, but a subject of the King of Adana. In the Phoenician version of the inscriptions the king is not of Adana, but of the Dnnym. A connection with the Homeric Danaoi has been attempted, but is somewhat problematic.
Enter Mopsos! This mythical seer makes a spectacular entry in the stories of post-Trojan adventures. His extraordinary divinatory skill and his achievement are truly remarkable though not all that well known. Mopsos and Calchas, the great Greek seer, had a divining contest after the Trojan War, when Mycenaean veterans went down the Anatolian coast and landed in Claros near Colophon. Mopsus was the local seer. Calchas lost and died of shame on the spot according to one version of the myth. After the contest, he took the group of veterans and went through Pamphylia to Kilikia establishing settlements all along his route. The sites of Mopsion, Mopsou Krene and Mopsou Hestia attest to the trace of truth in the myth. In Perge, inscriptions that include both Calchas and Mopsos as founding fathers have come to light. In 800-700BC, Azitawadda, a local ruler, set a bilingual inscription in Luwian and Phoenician, claiming descent from Mopsos. The name is mentioned in Hittite texts, in Knossos tablets and the Phoenician version as well, retaining the linguistic characteristics of each language (Moxos, Mo-ko-so and Mopsus respectively). The importance of the Mopsos story is that it describes a mix of Greeks (Mycenaean) and Anatolians – possibly the Sea Peoples - from the west into Kilikia and then farther south into Canaan.
Back to history then: The House of Muksas was based in Adana in Kilikia before the Assyrians conquered the area in 830BC. This is another rare instance of a probably independent kingdom in Kilikia. Texts were inscribed in a hieroglyphic neo-Hittite script to render the Luwian language. Later big bilingual inscriptions were set up including the Phoenician language. It is assumed that Phoenician sea-men reached Kilikia perhaps sailing up the Pyramus River to where the bilingual inscription stood. On the coast of the rough part of Kilikia the one the Assyrians called Hilakku, Greeks from Samos and Rhodes settled in Soloi, Nagidosa and Celenderis. The city of Mallos traced its origin to the hero Amphilochos of Argos, but that might be later attempt at Hellenization of some sort. It was not uncommon for cities to fabricate claims of Hellenic origin during the Hellenistic Era. Still, a text from Assyrian King Sargon’s court (721-705BC) refers to Ionian Greeks from “Que” raiding the Levantine coast as far as Tyre, so there may well be more to the legends than political calculation.
A rebellion broke out in Kilikia in 696bc. According to Assyrian texts, Kirua, the leader of the rebellion and probably an Assyrian client, gathered troops from his base in Illubru in the mountains to the North. Assyrian troops including chariots, cavalry and infantry were sent against him and defeated him after heavy fighting. Tarsos and Ingira, that the Greeks called Anchiale, were captured during the campaign for assisting the rebellion, as was Kirua himself. He was sent to the capital in Nineveh to be skinned alive, in a typically, for ancient middle-eastern kingdoms, cruel fashion of punishment meant to make an example of the rebel. But from later Greek sources we learn of two battles between Assyrians and Greeks, one on land and one at sea.
The land battle was against Ionian Greeks that marched against Kilikia. The Assyrians won but “lost many men”. The Assyrian King Sennacherib was not present in the battle yet he set up a statue, an image of himself towering over the battlefield. Alexander the Great was able to see this statue when he crossed into Kilikia and his historians recorded its presence in Ingira, which would otherwise have been lost to us.
The sea battle was fought separately in a different location and Sennacherib caused another monument to be built at the location, a temple dedicated to the Athenians, according to one translation, raising bronze pillars, a trademark of his building activity in other locations too. Lost in the translation, the actual meaning rendered as Athenians (which is highly unlikely) could perhaps be of Athena. At the mouth of the river Pyramos such a temple was situated near the town of Magarsos, yet it had an eastern air about it and many a characteristic that could be traced to Eastern styles. This serves our understanding of the story quite well. The temple was originally commissioned by Sennacherib in honor of the war goddess Anat (Ishtar) for her help in dealing with (winning?) over the Greek naval invaders of his territory. This however was not the only Greek misunderstanding related to Sennacherib’s monuments. When Alexander passed through this same stretch of land in 333BC and saw the statue of Sennacherib, his advisors misread the inscription on the statue into an exhortation to fornication as the meaning of life! No comment on that…
Assyrians were not seafarers and their skill in naval combat, even in the relative confines of a river’s mouth, has never been celebrated. Still, even if the claims of “truthful” celebration of his victory mentioned in the inscriptions found at the monuments are more akin to those of the Egyptian Pharaoh after the battle of Qadesh (now considered a near save for him and a far cry from victory), than his other claims of victory during his brilliant campaigning career, the fact remains that Sennacherib himself was not present at the battle. So “truthful” reporting of the facts has already taken a hit. Coupled with the heavy fighting and many losses taken by the Assyrians mentioned in the Assyrian texts there is a real possibility that this was a form of royal propaganda so common both at the time and in previous eras. Yet it really makes little difference. Regardless of the outcome, after the battles the Greeks either left or were chased out of Kilikia and Sennacherib reclaimed it as his own, undisputed. Some claim that after this part of the Mediterranean was made inaccessible to the Greeks they turned to the West and relied more heavily in trade with the West and Graecia Magna. Ironically the Hittites forbidding the Greeks to trade with Assyrians at a time long past may have caused great conflict that spilled all over the eastern Mediterranean. Now the Assyrians were pushing the Greeks out of trade colonies in what was once Hittite territory.
According to Herodotus after a major battle between the expanding Medes and Lydian kingdom a treaty was agreed upon by the two kingdoms, under the auspices of the kings of Babylonia and Kilikia, which leads us to believe that Kilikia was independent around the 600s BC. Neriglissar of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom annexed Kilikia later on (559-556BC). After Babylon was taken by Cyrus the Great, Kilikia was incorporated to the great Persian Empire of the Achaemenids. It was conquered again by Alexander the Great, after his spectacular victory at the battle of Issos. Following Alexander’s death and until the end of the end of the 4th century BC Kilikia was under Antigonos Monophthalmos’s rule and a treasury was set at Cyinda. After his demise, Kilikia came under the Ptolemies, but for the next decades changed hands a number of times during the Diadochi Wars. It was contested during the First Syrian War (274-271BC), but Ptolemy retained it and added to it other parts of southern Asia Minor. In the Second Syrian War (260-253BC) these conquests were largely unmade and the territory became part of the Seleucid Empire. In the Third Syrian War (246-241BC) the Ptolemies enjoyed great success and retook Kilikia among other more spectacular achievements, such as reaching Babylon and occupying Antiocheia. In the Fourth Syrian War (219-217BC) Antiochos III Megas reclaimed large swathes of land from Ptolemaic control, including most of Kilikia. The rest of it he would bring to the fold toward the end of the Fifth Syrian War (202-195BC) after his undisputed success in solidifying Coele Syria as Seleucid territory, following the battle of Panion. After 187BC, as a result of the Battle of Magnesia, Kilikia became Seleucid borderland with a number of “independent” buffer states, between the Romans and the Seleucids. It remained virtually uncontested, until the death of Antiochos VII Sidetes, after which the Empire began to disintegrate under the pressure of Parthian conquest, Roman intervention and civil war. Kilikia Pedias as it was called became Roman territory in 103 BC after being conquered first by Marcus Antonius Orator in his campaign against pirates. Sulla acted as its first governor and foiled an attempt at invasion by Mithridates the Great of Parthia, denying him pretext and forcing him to execute his diplomat in charge of bilateral negotiations. Kilikia was organized into a province by Pompey in 64 BC which, for a short time included part of Phrygia. This happened only after Pompey Magnus had dealt with what was perhaps the largest pirate enterprise in the history of the Mediterranean, which was mounted from bases in Kilikia. From Kilikia pirates radiated to secondary bases and threatened the grain supply to Rome, among other things. Anything that threatened Rome's grain supply was cause for panic. Still the threat was very real and wide-spread. Ever Julius Caesar was captured at some point and held for ransom. However, the remarkable energy and talent for organization that characterized Rome at the time, found in Pompey the perfect agent for the job. An extensive, well-coordinated land and sea campaign was mounted, that eliminated the secondary bases and forced the pirates back to Kilikia where they were thoroughly destroyed… or so the story went. Some form of treaty or payoff is likely, with Pompey as chief negotiator. This was standard practice, but not as dignified and seldom acknowledged; Rome's generals were supposed to wage and win wars, not buy their enemies off.
Kilikia was reorganized by Julius Caesar, in 47 BC and in 27 BC became part of the province Syria-Kilikia Phoenice. At first the western district was left independent under native kings or priest-dynasts as it had been since ancient times, and a small kingdom, under Tarcondimotus I, was left in the east. These were finally incorporated to the province by Vespasian in 72 AD.
Kilikia would eventually conquer Rome… after a fashion; when men from Isauria, an area between Rough Kilikia and Eastern Pisidia (which could be claimed by both regions), sat on the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople, long after Rome had repeatedly been burned and plundered by barbarians, lost its preeminence, its relevance and glamour.
Strategy
Kilikia has always been coveted by the powers ascendant in the region, as it grants access to northern Syria and includes a geopolitical drawbridge for the Taurus mountain-fortress in the Kilikian Gates.
Re: Regional Descriptions: Help the EBII Team
donated by ARCHIPPOS for being friendly to new people.
donated by Tellos Athenaios as a welcome to Campus Martius
Originally Posted by Arjos
-Silentium... mandata captate; non vos turbatis; ordinem servate; bando sequute; memo demittat bandum et inimicos seque;
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