Amaseia stood inland from the Black Sea coast, at the point where the Yeşilırmak settles into a narrow, deep valley. Its position did not make it a port, but it was enough for the city to serve as a hub controlling the passage between the coast and the interior in the economic order of ancient Pontus. The geographer Strabo, whom the city produced, describes his homeland as a place rising in a large, deep valley and very well protected by both human foresight and natural conditions, and he counts the territory of the Amaseians as the widest and most fertile land in Pontus. From Mithridates I to Pharnakes I, for roughly a century, the city was the capital of the Kingdom of Pontus; after the capital moved to Sinope it kept its weight as the seat of the royal tombs, of the cult of Zeus Stratios and of the administration of the interior. Its place in the trade network becomes clear when the general pattern of Black Sea exchange, the port cities of the coast and the production of the Pontic interior are considered together.

The Foundations of Trade in the Black Sea Basin

The Greek advance into the Black Sea began toward the end of the 8th century BC. At first small trading posts (emporia) were established for exchange with local peoples, and in time these grew into cities settled mostly by Milesian colonists. The Greek cities on the coast lived for a long time on good terms with the Scythians and other local communities, and trade rested chiefly on the exchange of agricultural produce, grain above all, for metalwork and luxury goods. The northern Black Sea shores, the Crimea and the Dobruja were regarded as the granaries of the ancient world. Herodotus writes that the Scythian farmers sowed their crops to sell, with no thought of their own consumption. Most of this flow was carried through the Straits to the Aegean world.

Seafaring at first followed the coast, along Anatolia in the south and Thrace in the west. Storms, shallows, reefs and pirates were dangerous, yet every shore had suitable anchorages. Hides and furs reached the Straits by this route; honey and beeswax, timber from the forests of the western shore and the charcoal used in iron smelting were also among the known commodities of the basin. The economic importance of the region grew further in the Achaemenid period. From Cyrus onward the southern shore of the Black Sea lay within the Persian Empire, but the sources show that the region's ties with the Greek world were far denser than those with the Persian world. There were routes to the east as well. According to Strabo, one of them ran from the mouth of the Phasis by way of the Cyrus (Kura) River and the Caspian Sea to Hyrcania, Margiana and Bactria, and from there to the Hindu Kush and India.

The Greek cities of the southern shore were active partners of the Greeks of the north in this trade. In the 5th and 4th centuries BC Herakleia Pontike, followed closely by Sinope, was the greatest dealer in wine and olive oil in the region; these two cities acted as intermediaries in the exchange between the northern shore and the Aegean, Athens in particular. The main goods of importance to the Greeks were natural resources such as grain, fish, hides and timber. According to Sergej Saprykin, the share of these cities in Black Sea trade fell markedly in the Hellenistic period, though Sinope kept its facilitating role in the exchange between the northern and eastern shores and Rhodes, Kos and Byzantion.

The Debate over the Fish Trade

Fishing was one of the oldest sources of income in the basin: tuna, mackerel, sturgeon and anchovy were the main catches, and it is generally held that they were salted and sent to Greece and the Near East. This picture, current since the nineteenth century, has been questioned in recent years. John Lund and Vincent Gabrielsen stress that there is very little archaeological evidence that salted Black Sea fish was carried to the Mediterranean in a large and regular flow. Stamped amphorae made in the Black Sea region turn up south of the Bosporus only sporadically: of 1001 amphora stamps published from Athens, only six come from Sinope and one from Chersonesos, and the number of Sinopean stamped amphorae known from the whole Mediterranean is 181. For this reason the two scholars agree, from an archaeological point of view, with T. W. Gallant's view that Black Sea fish was a luxury item aimed at a select clientele.

The same authors add that this conclusion does not mean the trade was insignificant. The written sources show that Pontic salt fish was appreciated in Athens; fish may also have travelled in containers other than amphorae, in vessels not yet recognised by archaeologists, in wooden crates or in baskets. An amphora found off Varna and thought to be of Sinopean make, which held the bones of a large freshwater catfish cut into pieces, olive pits and resin, has added a new example to the debate; it remains unclear, however, whether the jar held the ship's own provisions or part of a commercial cargo. For the people of the Pontic coast fish was in any case an important livelihood, as Strabo's notes on the bonito catch around Sinope and Pharnakeia confirm.

The Harbours of the Southern Shore

Pontus consisted of two distinct zones: a narrow coastal strip and a mountainous interior cut by river valleys. The Pontic Mountains, running parallel to the coast, separated the two and made passes and valley roads decisive. Greek colonies dominated the coast. The most important of them was Sinope; Strabo describes the city as built on the neck of a peninsula, with harbours and anchorages on either side, a place where natural conditions and human foresight combined. Sinope founded colonies of its own, among them Trapezus (Trabzon), Kerasus and Kotyora. The mountains around it were known for their timber, the city had its own coinage, and the red earth pigment named after it, sinopia, was mined in Cappadocia and reached every part of the ancient world. Strabo also reports that in the bonito catch Sinope came second and Byzantium third.

Sinope's political weight was great as well. The city was captured by Pharnakes I in 183 BC and then became the capital of the kingdom. Pharnakes made this choice for military, commercial and political reasons: Sinope had a natural harbour and also opened onto routes running into the interior. Strabo writes that Mithradates VI Eupator was born and raised there and regarded it as the chief city of his kingdom. Amaseia remained the royal centre of the interior. The kingdom thus governed two separate economic spheres from two centres: one stood at the head of the trade of the sea, the other at the head of the trade of the valley.

Amisos (modern Samsun) lay about 900 stadia from Sinope and was a harbour that Strabo mentions as a city of importance. It is said to have been founded by Milesian Greeks in the middle of the 8th century BC; its fertile land and shallow waters are recorded as drawing many merchants. Strabo relates that the territory of Amisos included the plain of Themiskyra, held to be the home of the Amazons, and Sidene. The route linking Amisos to Amaseia ran through the valley of the Yeşilırmak (the ancient Iris). Strabo describes how the Iris, after crossing the plain of Dazimonitis and passing Gaziura, an old royal residence, flows past the very walls of Amaseia, joins the Lykos in Phanaroia, and then crosses the plain of Themiskyra to reach the sea. The river valley was a natural route bringing the produce of the interior down to the coast. Amaseia lay at the valley's first broad stopping point, in terms of both water and road. Another road linking the harbour of Amisos to Amaseia passed through the temple city of Zela to the south.

The Pontic Kings and the Coastal Cities

The Kingdom of Pontus began as an inland state without access to the sea. As Saprykin notes, the chief task of the early kings was to bring the Greek cities of the coast under control, and by the beginning of the 2nd century BC Amisos, Amastris, Trapezus with its colonies, and finally Sinope with hers had been absorbed into the kingdom. According to the same scholar, Amisos was among the first cities, together with Amaseia, to be attached to the kingdom, and it had long been connected with the interior of eastern Anatolia. Pharnakes I founded Pharnakeia, which bore his name, as a new city on the coast; this shows the importance the king attached to the Black Sea. His defeat in the war of 183-179 BC, however, badly shook the kingdom's economy. In Saprykin's view, the clause of Pharnakes' treaty with Chersonesos in the Crimea by which he undertook to defend the city's grain lands in north-western Crimea against the Scythians was a move to protect the area where merchants from Amisos and Sinope bought their wheat.

Under his son Mithridates V Euergetes the ties with the northern shore grew stronger. Gravestones show that emigrants from Amisos and Sinope were living in the Bosporan Kingdom in the second half of the 2nd century BC; the numbers of Amisenians and Sinopeans going to Athens and Delos also seem to have peaked in this period. One of the chief exports of Amisos was terracotta figurines, mostly connected with the cult of Dionysos, and these have been found all around the Black Sea from the late 3rd to the 1st century BC. The city's silver drachms spread over a wide area from the Crimea to western Georgia, and some of the early silver coins of Pantikapaion, Gorgippia and Phanagoria were overstruck on Amisene drachms. Metal analyses show that the last bronze coins of Bosporos were made of yellow Pontic copper. Saprykin concludes from this that the Kingdom of Pontus supplied the northern shore with metal for minting as well as with coins.

When Mithradates VI Eupator came to the throne he surrounded himself with the leading citizens of Amisos and granted the city the privilege of striking coins in far greater numbers and variety than the other cities of Pontus. Grain from the northern Black Sea was vital to the kingdom: every year the Bosporans sent the king 180,000 medimnoi of grain and 200 talents of silver, and before the third war with Rome Mithradates gathered about two million medimnoi of grain from various parts of the Black Sea. Colchis, too, provided timber, hemp, gold and provisions for building the fleet. Saprykin holds that this exchange with the Greek cities of the coast fed both the harbour revenues of the Pontic cities and the royal treasury.

Amaseia's Setting and Territory

Strabo's account of his own city carries clues about how its economy worked. The city lies in a deep valley through which the Iris flows, on top of and at the foot of a high rock that drops steeply toward the river. The rock is arranged to serve as both city and fortress: on one side are the city walls set along the riverbank, on the other walls climbing toward the peaks. The rock's two peaks are joined by a narrow neck, and within the walls are the palaces and monuments of the kings. Inside the rock, two channels cut, one toward the river and one toward the neck, give the city a water supply that cannot be cut off under any circumstances. There are two bridges over the river; one leads from the city to the suburb, the other from the suburb to the land beyond. In other words, the city was not only resilient under siege but also had the character of a passage gathering land traffic at a single point.

Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar discusses the fate of the bridges Strabo mentions in some detail. In his view only the Alçak Köprü (the "Low Bridge") survived of these, and even it had disappeared into the riverbed, with a newer bridge built on top. Hüsâmeddîn writes that the old structure forming the foundation of the bridge opposite the Kızlar Sarayı was built of granite with small arches, had stood without ever needing repair, that its arches were buried as the riverbed silted up, and that thick masonry piers of square section were set upon them. He states that the bridge was a work of the Pontic state, that it came to be called "Alçak Köprü" by the people because it had sunk lower over time, and that it was crossed until the year 1281. Because it was a hazard in floods, the Amasya governor Ziya Paşa had a wooden bridge built using the old bridge as its foundation; when this was carried away in the flood of 1298, it was rebuilt in 1299 with masonry piers and a wooden deck. Yet on the same page Hüsâmeddîn also says that none of the six bridges in the valley survived from antiquity and that all were built after the Islamic conquest; his view that the Alçak Köprü belongs to the Pontic period contradicts this general statement and has not been confirmed by modern research.

According to Hüsâmeddîn, the ground level of the city in the Pontic period lay at least six metres below the present one. Remains uncovered while digging wells showed that the İçeri Şehir (Inner City) was paved with marble, that the riverside was enclosed by a strong wall and that most buildings were of red brick and partly of marble. On the south bank of the river, along the stretch called the Upper and Lower Bazaar in Ottoman times, remains found beneath the Receb, Şamlıca and Sofîzâde quarters likewise showed that this bank had been well paved and filled with fine buildings. Hüsâmeddîn thinks that the construction of the Alçak Köprü and the way it reaches down to the river bottom should be considered together with its alignment with these buried structures. It may be supposed that this crossing, linking the two banks of the ancient city, corresponds to the bridge Strabo describes between the city and the suburb; this is an inference and has not been proven by excavation.

Beyond the bridges the valley at first narrows, then widens and opens onto the plain of Chiliokomon. The northern part of the Amaseians' country is some five hundred stadia long; the rest is much longer and reaches as far as Babanomos and Ximene, while from north to south it takes in Zelitis and Greater Cappadocia as far as the Trocmi. The two ends of such a long strip were connected to the coastal harbours and to the Cappadocian uplands. The plain stretching from south-west to north of the city, between the Iris and the Halys, was called Gazakene in antiquity. The healing hot springs of Phazemonitis and the fortress of Sagylion, built on a high hill, also belonged to this territory; Sagylion's water reservoir served the kings, but by Pompey's order the fortresses had been put out of use so that they could no longer shelter fugitives. The rest of Phazemonitis, according to Strabo, is treeless but fertile in grain. Many fields had been abandoned because of the Mithradatic wars, but most of the land was still wooded, and part of it was suitable as pasture for horses and other animals.

The Production of Pontus

The kingdom had rich natural resources. On the coast, tuna fishing was a valuable industry, and timber for shipbuilding was plentiful. The plain of Themiskyra, east of Amisos, yielded cattle, horses, grain and fruit. The Paryadres mountains south of Pharnakeia held famous mineral deposits. Strabo writes that the Chaldaei who lived opposite Pharnakeia were formerly called Chalybes, that there was bonito fishing at sea and mining on land, and that in his day the mines yielded only iron, though silver had once been extracted as well. Because the mountains came so close to the sea, the coastal strip was narrow and arable land scarce; the people lived by mining and fishing. Strabo adds that dolphins following the shoals toward the shore were hunted and their fat used for every purpose.

In the interior the most fertile land was the plain of Phanaroia, where the Iris and the Lykos meet; Strabo counts it as the best part of Pontus. Vines, olives and various crops grew there. Because the plain through which the Iris flows was always moist and grassy, it fed herds of cattle and horses and was well suited to sowing millet and sorghum. Strabo writes that the abundance of water offset any drought and that famine never came to the people there. On the mountain slopes wild grapes, pears, apples and nuts could be gathered in every season of the year, and game was plentiful. In Amaseia's own territory, according to Strabo, the valley opens first onto the plain of Chiliokomon, followed by the lands of Diakopene and Pimolisene, all of them fertile and extending as far as the Halys River. The name Chiliokomon means "thousand villages" and reflects the dense village settlement of the region; the village was the most common form of social organisation in Pontus and was tied to the old order of Anatolia. To the south-east, Dazimonitis (Kazova) in the territory of Komana was suited to viticulture, fruit growing and grain, and was also rich in iron and copper mines.

The western part of Amaseia's territory, in Ximene, contained rock-salt deposits; Strabo notes that the name of the Halys (Kızılırmak) derives from these salt workings (halae). Sandarake (realgar) was extracted from Mount Sandarakurgion near Pimolisa. Strabo describes this mine in detail. It was worked by the tax farmers (publicani), and the labourers were slaves sold in the market for their crimes. Besides the heaviness of the work, it is recorded that the air in the mine and the smell of the ore were deadly, that the workers died quickly, that although there were more than two hundred of them they were constantly being worn down by disease and death, and that the mine was often left idle because it was unprofitable. This record is one of the rare details showing what a heavy human price mining exacted in the city's surroundings. Some of the other products Strabo describes do not belong to Amaseia but to the Paphlagonian coast further west; the boxwood growing around Amastris and Kytoros is one of them.

Amphorae and the Coinage of the Coastal Cities

Among the finds that trace ancient trade most reliably are stamped amphora handles. These sealed handles, found in the coastal cities of Pontus, show that the cities built wide trade links both with other Black Sea settlements and with the Aegean world. In the Classical and Hellenistic periods the main amphora-producing centres of the Black Sea were Herakleia, Amastris, Sinope, Dioskourias and Chersonesos. What these jars held is debated. Some think Sinopean amphorae mainly carried wine, while others argue that olive oil is more likely; ancient authors record that both vines and olives were cultivated at Sinope. Among the roughly 550 Sinopean stamps that Nicolae Conovici published from Histria, the most frequent symbols, at about 28 per cent, are signs referring to wine, such as grapes, satyrs and drinking vessels; 2 per cent of the stamps bear the emblem of Sinope's coinage, an eagle clutching a dolphin.

Coins also document the economic network. Between 450 and 325 BC Sinope struck coins showing an eagle holding a dolphin or another sea creature in its talons; the same type appears at Istros and Olbia, both Milesian colonies. Coins of the Sinopean type continued to be struck in the 4th century BC by Achaemenid satraps as well. Although the kings of Pontus claimed Persian descent, on their coins they appear as Hellenistic rulers, modelling themselves on Alexander's royal stater. Sinope's relations with the interior, by contrast, developed over time. For a long while the city remained relatively isolated from inland Anatolia, apart from the other communities of the coast. Archaeological finds show that economic activity between the port city and the surrounding interior increased between the 4th and the 1st centuries BC. This span coincides with the period in which Amaseia rose as capital and then remained the royal centre of the interior.

The Coins of Amaseia and the Finds in the Amasya Museum

Amaseia was one of the cities that struck bronze coins in its own name in the Hellenistic period; on these the city's name is written ΑΜΑΣΣΙΑΣ, and the earliest examples are dated to 120-100 BC. One type from the reign of Mithradates VI shows the head of Zeus on the obverse and an eagle standing on a thunderbolt on the reverse; this image is associated with Zeus Stratios, the city's protector and the focus of the royal cult. Another type, carrying a winged head and a cornucopia between stars, is placed between 120 and 100 BC. Although the reverse legend presents these as the city's own issues, the fact that the same types were also struck at Amisos and Sinope suggests that real authority lay with Mithradates VI. While granting the cities of Pontus and Paphlagonia nominal autonomy, the king did not let go of control, and so the bronze coinages of the cities were made uniform in type. Dionysos with the sacred chest (cista mystica) and the head of Ares with a sheathed sword are the best known of these shared types.

The coin collection of the Amasya Museum makes it possible to trace the city's place in this network in concrete terms. The catalogue that Stanley Ireland published in 2000 covers more than 4,500 coins in the museum, ranging from the 5th century BC to the 11th century AD. Most of the coins are finds from the surrounding region; the mints of Amaseia, Amisos, Sinope and Caesarea in Cappadocia are therefore richly represented, but there are also examples from more than fifty other mints of Asia Minor, and some come from as far away as Alexandria in Egypt and Arles in Gaul.

Saprykin draws an important conclusion from this catalogue. The great majority of the Mithridatic bronze coins in the museum come from ancient Amaseia, and among them the products of the Amisos mint, dated to about 100-65 BC, clearly predominate. In the hoards found in Pontus, too, Amisene bronzes outnumber those of centres such as Sinope, Amastris, Gaziura, Komana and Chabakta by more than seven to one: the ratio is 72.12 per cent against 12 per cent, with Sinope in second place. The most common Amisene types in the internal market were Ares with a sword, Athena with Perseus, and the Gorgon's head on an aegis with Nike holding a palm branch. Coins of the Pantikapaion mint on the northern shore, by contrast, are represented in the museum by only two examples; in the hoards of Pontus only one of them appears, in the Merzifon hoard. On this basis Saprykin argues that Amisos was the most active city in trade with the interior in the late 2nd and early 1st centuries BC.

The same picture appears on the other shores of the Black Sea. In the finds from Olbia, Chersonesos, Tyras, Bosporos and Colchis, Pontic coins are most frequent between 111 and 90 BC, and Amisene coins lead these finds. Saprykin suggests that Pontic bronzes functioned as an inter-city currency, that Pontic intermediaries bought goods in Bosporos and sold them in Pontus at a higher price or paid customs duties in Pontic harbours, and that both the royal revenues and the profits of Amisos and Sinope grew as a result. The gold staters and silver tetradrachms struck in the king's name, on the other hand, were not used as a means of payment on the northern shore and were left only as offerings in sanctuaries. After 85 BC Amisene coins become less common on the northern shore, and after the third war with Rome the merchants of Amastris and Sinope come to the fore. That Amaseia was, in this system, an inland market running on the money of the coastal mints can be inferred from the distribution of finds in the museum; we have no detailed count of the share of the city's own bronzes in that market.

Temple States and Fair Centres

The temple states of Anatolian origin held a distinct place in the economic order of Pontus. Komana was a large temple estate founded for the goddess Ma; it had some six thousand temple servants and extensive sacred lands, and it was under the authority of the priest, who wore a diadem at the goddess's "processions," held twice a year, and ranked second after the king. Strabo writes that Komana was a populous city and a notable trading centre (emporion) for those coming from Armenia. People from the cities and the countryside gathered for the festivals, and the inhabitants lived comfortably on estates surrounded by vineyards. Strabo recalls the life of plenty and the way merchants and soldiers flocked to the city to spend their money with a proverb comparing it to Corinth. Komana was one of the few inland settlements that struck coins from the Hellenistic period onward.

At Zela stood the temple of Anaitis, where the people of Pontus swore their most solemn oaths. Zela lay at the centre of a district of farming and stockbreeding in the fertile plain of Zelitis, watered by the Iris and the Skylax, and on the road linking the harbour of Amisos to Amaseia. The temple of Men Pharnakou and Selene at Ameria was likewise an Anatolian sanctuary, very probably founded in the 2nd century under Pharnakes I; hundreds of temple servants worked on its lands, and the kings of Pontus revered the temple so much that they swore the royal oath by "the fortune of the king and the Men of Pharnakes." The economic weight of the servants and the extensive estates of these centres was great; there is, however, no clear record in the sources that the temple institutions performed anything like a banking function.

Amaseia's own territory had a similar gathering place. About 10 km east of the city, near Yassıçal (formerly Ebemi) on the road to Phanaroia (Taşova), lay the sanctuary of Zeus Stratios. Mithradates VI kept a permanent garrison in the city, visited this sanctuary often and had an altar built there in the god's name. In 1984 David French recorded fourteen stones here encircling a structure, each marking a different district. It is thought that representatives of the villages in the city's territory held celebrations here at certain times of the year; whether such gatherings also occasioned trade is not mentioned in the sources.

The Economic Foundations of the Kingdom

Alongside military strength, this economic base played its part in the long survival of the Kingdom of Pontus. The population consisted of three cultural groups: Greeks, predominant on the coast, and Persians and native Anatolian peoples in the interior. The scarcity of Hellenistic Greek inscriptions in the region suggests that Greek culture did not penetrate deeply beyond the coastal cities and the court. Amaseia and its surroundings long remained under Eastern influence; most settlements had been founded in fertile river valleys, and their basic livelihoods were farming and stockbreeding. Mithradates VI Eupator brought almost the entire circuit of the Black Sea under his control and spent the last thirty years of his life in his struggle against Rome. Strabo writes that at Kabeira there were the king's palace, water mills, a zoological park, hunting grounds and mines. Kabeira lay on the main road running from the east toward the west. The treasures kept in the fortress of Kainon Chorion were later dedicated by Pompey on the Capitol.

Roads and Cities in the Roman Period

With Roman rule the order changed. After its capture by Lucullus in 70 BC, Amaseia became the administrative centre of the province of Bithynia and Pontus set up by Pompey, and a free city at the same time. Pompey founded new cities: he turned the village of Phazemon into Neapolis, a site near Pimolisene into Pompeiupolis, and the half-finished Eupatoria near Kabeira into Magnopolis. He also ordered the fortresses to be demolished, so that fugitives and brigands could not make use of them. Seven of the settlements Pompey founded or reorganised in inner Pontus lay around Amaseia, and a wide road network linking the cities was also built in his time. Amisos was freed by Caesar and later by Augustus and is described in Strabo's time as a well-governed city. A Roman colony was settled at Sinope.

Amaseia, in Strabo's words, had for a while been given to kings, but in his own day had become a province. When Mark Antony reorganised the eastern provinces he handed the city, together with other cities of the region, to local rulers, and in 3/2 BC Amaseia was attached to the Roman province of Galatia and became the centre of Pontus Galaticus. In the imperial period it bore on its coins the titles "metropolis and first city of Pontus"; Neocaesarea used the same titles. The city struck coins inscribed ΑΜΑCΙΑC under many emperors from Tiberius to Severus Alexander. Because of the Mithradatic wars there were ruined fortresses and deserted lands in the country, but Strabo notes that it was still suitable as woodland and pasture and good to live in.

Traces of the Roman roads around Amaseia were documented in the surveys David French conducted from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. In 1984 the route of the road between Amaseia and Neocaesarea (Niksar) was substantiated, and in 1987 a road station and a fortification, with a small dam nearby, were identified on a stretch of this road. In 1985 two new Diocletianic milestones were found at Boğa and Çiğemlik, and a milestone fragment found in Amasya itself was taken to the museum. In 1986 milestones were recorded at Bağlıca, Akyazı, Ezinepazar and Toklucak, and in 1989 the two Roman routes from the city to Suluova and from there to Osmancık were explored. In the last season of research the road between Alaca and Amasya was also examined. These findings show that Amaseia, which Strabo described as a passage gathering land traffic at a single point, remained in the Roman period at the junction of roads reaching west to the Halys basin and east to the Lykos valley.

Chronology

Late 8th century BC: The Greek advance into the Black Sea begins and the first trading posts are founded.

7th century BC: Milesian colonists settle at Sinope (some scholars propose the 8th century).

450-325 BC: Coins of the Sinopean type are in circulation.

227/226 BC: The king of Pontus makes donations to Rhodes, devastated by an earthquake.

183 BC: Pharnakes I captures Sinope; the capital of the kingdom moves from Amaseia to Sinope.

179 BC: Pharnakes is defeated by a coalition of his neighbours; in the same year he concludes a treaty with Chersonesos.

120-100 BC: The earliest known bronze coins struck in the name of Amaseia.

111-90 BC: The period in which Pontic bronze coins, above all the issues of Amisos, are most widespread around the Black Sea.

70 BC: Lucullus captures Amaseia.

63 BC: The kingdom ends with the death of Mithradates VI; Rome establishes the province of Pontus.

3/2 BC: Amaseia becomes the centre of Pontus Galaticus, attached to the province of Galatia.

Unverified Points

Accounts that Amisos was famous for its trade in iron, olives and silver and that it handled a significant part of the caravan trade coming from Parthia could not be verified in the primary sources available to us. In Strabo's record, iron and silver mines are associated with the Chalybes district around Pharnakeia; that earlier silver coins of Amisos reached as far as the Parthian city of Nisa in Margiana is, however, known from coin finds. The founding date of Sinope is also disputed: written sources point to an earlier settlement, while archaeological finds show Greek settlement around the Black Sea documented from the late 7th century onward. That the Alçak Köprü dates from the Pontic period is Hüsâmeddîn's view alone and contradicts the general statement in his own work. The contents of the Amasya Museum coin catalogue have been used here through the publisher's description and Saprykin's account.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Books

  • Sergej Ju. Saprykin, "The Unification of Pontos: The Bronze Coins of Mithridates VI Eupator as Evidence for Commerce in the Euxine", in Vincent Gabrielsen - John Lund (eds.), The Black Sea in Antiquity. Regional and Interregional Economic Exchanges, Aarhus University Press, 2007, pp. 195-208.
  • John Lund - Vincent Gabrielsen, "A Fishy Business: Transport Amphorae of the Black Sea Region as a Source for the Trade in Fish and Fish Products in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods", in Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region, Aarhus University Press, 2005.

Other sources

  • Brian McGing, "Pontus", Encyclopaedia Iranica (2004).
  • Rüdiger Schmitt, "Black Sea", Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. IV, fasc. 3 (1989).
  • Stanley Ireland, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Coins in the Museum at Amasya (Ancient Amaseia), Turkey, British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 2000 (publisher's description). amasya.bel.tr
  • Survey of Roman Roads and Milestones (David French), British Institute at Ankara project summary.
  • Künker, eLive Premium Auction 434, lot 8114: Pontus, Amaseia, bronze coin, 120/100 BC (catalogue description).
  • Encyclopaedic entries on Sinope, Amisos, Amasya and the Kingdom of Pontus (supplementary source).

Online sources