In the ancient world a city's boundary often began at its cemeteries rather than its walls. Burying the dead outside the settlement, along the roads leading into the city, was the established custom of the Greek and Roman worlds, and it makes it possible to estimate how large a city was from its tombs even when its urban plan is unknown. The famous royal tombs of Amaseia rise on the southern slope of Mount Harşena, within the citadel, and have drawn nearly all attention for centuries. Yet in the valley of the Yeşilırmak, far from the rock-cut façades of the kings, lie other cemeteries in which the ordinary inhabitants of the city were buried.

An Ancient City Lived in Ever Since

What we know about Amaseia in antiquity is less than one would expect, and the reason is simple: the city has been inhabited without interruption since the Hellenistic period. Most of the ancient layers lie beneath the houses, streets and gardens of modern Amasya, which has made planned, large-scale excavation almost impossible. Researchers who want to determine the real size and extent of the city are therefore forced to turn to indirect evidence. The most reliable of it has come from the rescue excavations carried out by the specialists of the Amasya Museum since 1974. The museum documents the tombs that appear when foundations are dug for a new building, and the great majority of these excavations have taken place in necropolis areas. These records were later brought together, the tomb locations were plotted on a scaled topographic map, and for the first time the limits of the city could be estimated in this way.

The conditions of Amaseia's foundation also explain where its cemeteries lie. The city was built where the valley of the Yeşilırmak (the ancient Iris) narrows, on and beneath a steep rocky outcrop. Strabo, writing of this settlement that was his own homeland, describes it as at once a city and a fortress. Arable plains in the immediate surroundings are limited, but the alluvium deposited by the river created broad, fertile lowlands near the city. This narrow valley defines both the space in which the city could spread and the corridor through which roads could pass. The question of where the dead of Amaseia were buried, the capital of the Kingdom of Pontus in the Hellenistic age, a leading city of the region under Rome, and a city that called itself "metropolis" on its coins, has to be considered together with this geography.

The Royal Tombs and the Exception of Burial Within the City

The best-known necropolis of Amaseia is the group of royal tombs on the southern slope of the citadel rock. According to the description in UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list, there are five monumental tombs here belonging to the Pontic kings Mithridates I, Ariobarzanes, Mithridates II and III, and Pharnakes I; they range from 8 to 15 metres in height, and the entrances to the burial chambers are so high that they can be reached only by a staircase. It has been suggested that this high-entrance arrangement may be connected with the purity rules seen at the Achaemenid royal tombs in Iran. The fifth tomb, attributed to Pharnakes I, is the largest, measuring 15 x 8 x 6 metres; it is thought that work on the corridor around it was abandoned when the king moved his capital to Sinope. Nine rock tombs are counted inside the citadel walls and twenty-one in the valley and around the city. A detailed description of these tombs is the subject of a separate article; what matters for the geography of the necropoleis is where they stand in the city's burial order.

The location of the royal tombs inside the citadel is an exception to the general rule of ancient burial practice. In the Greek world and in western Anatolia, burying the dead within settlements was abandoned from the seventh century BC onward, and necropoleis were moved outside the city. Burial inside the city thereafter continued only as a privilege granted to persons of high standing. The royal necropolis within the citadel is the Amaseian equivalent of that privilege. The Aynalı Mağara (Mirrored Cave) on the northern slope of the citadel is known as the rock tomb of the High Priest Tes. All the remaining cemeteries of the city lie, in keeping with the rule, outside the walls.

The Necropoleis around the City

The tombs that museum excavations have uncovered since 1974 in the neighbourhoods of Şamlar, İhsaniye, Bahçeleriçi, Kirazlıdere, Dere, Üçler, Kurşunlu and Gökmedrese, when considered together with the rock tombs, have made it possible to distinguish five broad, separate cemetery zones around the citadel. This naming belongs to a modern researcher; no cemeteries are known by these names in ancient sources, but the scheme offers a useful framework for reading the map of the settlement.

The Northern Necropolis

The neighbourhoods of Şamlar and İhsaniye cover an area stretching from the northern and northeastern slopes of the citadel to the point where the Tersakan stream joins the Yeşilırmak. Today the confluence lies farther east, but until recently it was much farther west, at the locality of Kulistepe. The first rescue excavation was carried out here in 1974 and revealed 28 tombs, all of the cist type, dated to the second and third centuries AD. In 1986 twelve tombs were exposed in the Old Şamlar Cemetery: nine cist tombs, two vaulted tombs and one pit grave. The following year nine more vaulted tombs were found at the same locality, followed by a group of cist tombs. All of these are dated to the Late Roman period. Of the 21 tombs excavated in 1993, only thirteen could be opened because of ground conditions; eleven of them were vaulted and two were cist tombs. Excavations in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2012 in the same neighbourhood also yielded vaulted and cist tombs, which have been placed in a date range from the second to the fourth century AD. The 2009 excavation showed that two cist tombs had been built side by side in an adjoining arrangement.

Read together, these data show that the Northern Necropolis was a Roman-period cemetery, used from the second to the fourth century AD, forming a strip about 900 metres long that runs from the foot of the citadel in the west to the Tersakan line in the east, where the city was entered from the north. According to the researcher, this strip also marks the northern limit of the city in the Roman period.

The Northwestern Necropolis

Rescue excavations in 2000, 2010 and 2017 in the Kurşunlu neighbourhood, northeast of the citadel, showed that a cemetery lay here as well. In 2000 six tombs came to light, four vaulted and two cist, dated to the third and fourth centuries AD. The 2010 excavation yielded two vaulted and five cist tombs, placed in the second and third centuries AD. The four tombs found in 2017 are rectangular in plan; the walls along the long sides were brought gradually closer together toward the top and roofed with stone slabs, producing a section that narrows from the floor to the cover. Museum specialists generally attribute these tombs to the Roman period.

Two rock tombs are also known in the neighbourhood. Both lie at the foot of the citadel walls; one is low, near the point where the citadel meets the Yeşilırmak on the west, and the other is on the same western foot but higher up. The higher tomb was also examined by Franz Cumont, and on the basis of comparable examples and the inscription at its entrance it has been dated to the second century AD. The tombs uncovered in the excavations lie about 250 metres northwest of this rock tomb, and the tombs of 2017 are a further 200 metres to the northwest. The cemetery therefore extends for at least 450 metres from the foot of the citadel; since another rock tomb stands about 1.6 kilometres still farther northwest, the real limit is thought to lie much farther away.

The Southwestern Necropolis

The western entrance to the city lies along the valley line opened by the Yeşilırmak, which the Amasya-Tokat road follows, and along this line the necropolis continues, dense in some places and sparse in others. An excavation carried out in 2013 in the Üçler neighbourhood found seven vaulted tombs, dated to the fourth and fifth centuries AD. About 200 metres west of this parcel stand the Kadılar Türbesi and the Halifet Gazi Kümbeti, facing each other. Both buildings were made by reusing ancient material: a funerary stele is seen in the Kadılar Türbesi, and a Roman sarcophagus used as a cenotaph in the Halifet Gazi Kümbeti. In the park in the same area are cornice blocks from a monumental building and two sarcophagus lids, and the area has been known as the Halifet Cemetery. In the walls of the Kılıçaslan Türbesi, 250 metres west of the Halifet Gazi Kümbeti, a funerary stele considered to belong to a gladiator stands as reused material; in the walls of the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque, 70 metres north of that tomb, funerary stelae again appear among inscribed reused blocks.

The concentration of reused material in this district indicates that monumental funerary structures once stood nearby and shows how far the necropolis extended to the west. In an excavation carried out by the museum in 2013, 1.2 kilometres west of the Kılıçaslan Türbesi, the remains of a monumental building complex with a mosaic floor and eight Roman-period cist tombs were found. Most of the distance between the two sections is filled today by the Memi Dede Cemetery, where, owing to heavy destruction, examples that cannot be dated but resemble the vaulted tombs known in the city since the Roman period can be seen. The total length of the necropolis is estimated at about 1.5 kilometres.

The Southern Necropolis

On the opposite bank of the Yeşilırmak from the citadel, on a rocky outcrop within the boundaries of the Dere neighbourhood, there are three rock tombs. Two of them are adjacent and of twin plan; they lie where the slope begins to rise from the flat land by the river and face northwest, that is, toward the city and the citadel. On the north-facing side of the same outcrop, within the Sofular neighbourhood, there is a third rock tomb, which does not see the city and looks only at the river. A rescue excavation in the Dere neighbourhood in 2006 produced two vaulted and five cist tombs, dated to the second century AD. These tombs, all gathered on or around the same outcrop, show that a necropolis existed here from the Roman period at the latest, and mark the limit of the city's spread to the south.

The Northeastern Necropolis

The Kirazlıdere neighbourhood, about 1.5 kilometres northeast of the citadel, contains the necropolis farthest from it. The first tomb was found in 2006 and dated to the third century AD. The 2010 excavation uncovered seven vaulted tombs, five pit graves and one cist tomb, placed in the fourth and fifth centuries AD. The last excavation, in 2014, found 21 vaulted tombs and one pit grave, which were assigned to the Byzantine period. In addition, about 700 metres from the excavated tombs, on the river line, are two rock tombs. Although the distance seems great, the road sections on Sanayi Caddesi reveal the remains of vaulted tombs at intervals of about 350 metres, and these closely resemble those found in the 2010 and 2014 excavations. It is therefore possible that the rock tombs, too, belong to the same cemetery.

Why the Cemeteries Lie along the Roads and the Valley

The five necropoleis share a common feature: they lie on the lines by which the city was approached, formed by the Yeşilırmak and the Tersakan stream that joins it. The cemeteries occupy both banks of the river and climb from the point where the flat land beside the watercourse ends and a gentle slope begins to the rocky heights behind. As a result all of them command a view of the valley and the river. The Northern, Northeastern and Southwestern necropoleis form broad strips along the river, extending to the entrance of the city. Lining tombs along roads is a well-known ancient custom; everyone who passed saw the name of the deceased, and the dead were remembered in this way. Because all the roads of Amaseia converge on a narrow strip at the valley floor, parallel to the river, the road leading into the city and the road leading from the city to the necropoleis must be assumed to have been almost the same line.

The placement of the rock tombs follows the same logic. About 570 metres north of the Northern Necropolis, on the line of the Tersakan stream near its confluence with the Yeşilırmak, are two rock tombs. About a kilometre beyond them, on the riverbank, rises the rock tomb of the High Priest Tes known as the Aynalı Mağara, and 470 metres to its northeast is another tomb called the Küçük Mağara (Small Cave). These tombs may be an extension of the Northern Necropolis, but they can also be thought of as separate monuments. What matters is that each stands at a point commanding the river and the road to the city. The family that commissioned a rock tomb wanted it to be seen by travellers.

The area between these cemeteries shows the real extent of the city in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. According to the research, the city consists of four main parts: the acropolis at the summit of the citadel, the terraced area where the royal palace (basileion) stood and which also contains the royal tombs, the settlement within the citadel, and the "suburbs" on the southern bank of the Yeşilırmak. Strabo writes that there were two bridges over the river, one from the city to the suburbs and the other from the suburbs outward; the first of these is thought possibly to be the Alçak Köprü (Low Bridge), still standing today. The Ferhat Water Channel, the highest-capacity water channel identified in the city, which dates to the Roman period, points to a dense population on the southern bank. The area enclosed by the necropoleis includes the southern region bounded by the rock mass known as Yassıkaya, Mount Ferhat and the Yeşilırmak.

Tomb Types and What They Tell

The tombs documented so far in the necropoleis of Amaseia are distributed as follows: 77 cist tombs, 76 vaulted tombs, 24 rock tombs and 7 pit graves. Cist and vaulted tombs make up about 42 and 41 per cent of the total. Each type has a different course through time in the city, and this difference shows how the city's burial practice evolved over the centuries.

The cist tomb is among the most widespread types in Anatolia; examples are known in many cities, from Troy to Pergamon, Phokaia, Laodikeia and Kyme. At Amaseia it was also the most frequent type, but it was used mainly in the Roman period and declined from the Early Byzantine period onward. The vaulted tomb is a type built in an adjoining arrangement and covered with a barrel vault. Seen in Phrygia, Lydia and Cilicia from the Roman imperial period until the seventh century AD, this type appears at Amaseia from the first century AD, became widespread in the third and fourth centuries, and was the most preferred type in the Early Byzantine period, until the fifth and sixth centuries. In other words, the vaulted tomb gradually replaced the cist tomb. Pit graves, that is, simple earth burials, are few in number and concentrated in late cemeteries such as the Northeastern Necropolis. Rock tombs are the most visible but least numerous type in the city, and plainly the choice of wealthy families.

This variety also reflects social stratification. Carving a chamber out of rock meant hiring craftsmen and financing years of labour; such a tomb was a course taken not only by kings but also by the leading families of the city. A cist or vaulted tomb could be built with far more modest means, and the pit grave was the simplest choice. Even so, every type is found side by side in the same necropoleis, which shows that the cemeteries did not belong to the rich alone.

Funerary Stelae, Inscriptions and Sarcophagi

The most personal documents of ancient tombs are gravestones with inscriptions. The inscriptions gathered from Amaseia and its surroundings were collected a century ago by the Belgian scholars Anderson, Cumont and Grégoire in their corpus of the inscriptions of Pontus and Armenia (Studia Pontica III, 1910), in which a large number of texts recorded from rock tombs and reused stones were published. Such funerary inscriptions generally record the name of the deceased, sometimes the occupation and relatives, and the person who had the tomb made. On the face of a stele there may also be a portrait of the dead, tools symbolising the occupation, or religious symbols; gravestones and inscriptions gathered from these necropoleis are displayed in the garden and halls of the Amasya Museum.

It is striking that many of these stones at Amaseia are found not where they originally stood but as reused material in the buildings of later periods. A funerary stele appears in the Kadılar Türbesi, a gladiator's stele in the Kılıçaslan Türbesi, and funerary stelae among inscribed reused blocks in the walls of the Yörgüç Paşa Mosque. In the Halifet Gazi Kümbeti a Roman sarcophagus has been reused as a cenotaph. That a sarcophagus should become the cenotaph of a tomb in the Seljuk or Ottoman period shows how the stones of the ancient necropolis were turned into new tombs and new meanings. These reused stones also indicate the limits of the necropoleis: while reused material is common across most of the city, the absence of ancient remains in the buildings of areas where the Roman necropoleis lie supports the view that these areas were used only as cemeteries and never settled. The cornice blocks in the Halifet Cemetery are the only known exception to this rule, and they are thought to have been brought later for the construction of the madrasa; the presence of sarcophagi, sarcophagus lids and stelae does not change the view that the area was a necropolis.

The gladiator's stele is a rare piece of information on the social range of Roman-period Amaseia. Gladiatorial games were widespread in Anatolian cities in the imperial period, and the commemoration of a dead fighter's name on a gravestone sheds light on the entertainment culture of this city. Since no detailed publication of the inscription or the name of the stone's owner is known, this interpretation rests only on the assessment that the stone may belong to a gladiator.

Burial Customs and Changing Belief

No detailed inventory of grave goods found in the necropoleis of Amaseia has been published; but it is known that across ancient Anatolia it was common to leave vessels, jewellery and coins with the dead. These gifts were things the deceased was believed to need on the journey to the other world, and they are concrete evidence of belief in life after death. With the spread of Christianity these customs changed, grave goods diminished, and symbols of the new faith began to appear on gravestones. The transition from the Roman necropoleis of Amaseia to the cemeteries of the Byzantine period, with the spread of the vaulted tomb and the growing visibility of pit graves, is the architectural counterpart of this change, but establishing in detail the relation of this transition to belief on the basis of the tombs is not possible with the present data.

Vaulted tombs were mostly built side by side in an adjoining arrangement; the two adjoining cist tombs found in 2009 in the Northern Necropolis and the group of twenty-one vaulted tombs in the Northeastern Necropolis are examples. This arrangement, which allowed the successive burial of members of the same family or the same community, suggests a tradition of using a shared burial ground. However, no inscribed evidence directly supporting this interpretation is known.

What the Necropoleis Show of the City's History

The great majority of the tombs in the necropoleis belong to the second century AD and later; only the tombs of the Northeastern Necropolis are dated predominantly to the fourth and fifth centuries AD. This distribution points to rapid population growth after the first century AD, when the city was taken from the vassal kings and attached to the Roman provincial system. Noteworthy is the marked increase in datable inscriptions at Amaseia from the second century AD onward, noted by David French, who surveyed Anatolian inscriptions; this increase agrees with the necropolis data. That the Northeastern Necropolis is among the cemeteries farthest from the centre of the citadel and contains mostly tombs of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods, together with the presence of a Byzantine-period monastery near the Southwestern Necropolis, shows that the city continued to expand in these centuries as well.

This suggests that Amaseia, although it is often remembered only for the age of the Pontic kings, experienced its main demographic and urban growth in the Roman imperial age. The location of the cemeteries, the sequence of tomb types and the reused stones are the principal documents that give information about the size, roads and society of the city where written sources fall silent.

Chronology

7th century BC: Burial within settlements is abandoned in the Greek world and western Anatolia; necropoleis are moved outside the settlement.

301 BC: Mithridates I Ktistes chooses Amaseia as capital and founds the Kingdom of Pontus.

1st century AD: The vaulted tomb begins to appear at Amaseia; the city is attached to the Roman provincial system.

2nd-4th century AD: The main period of use of the Northern, Northwestern and Southern necropoleis; the age in which cist tombs predominate.

4th-6th century AD: The vaulted tomb becomes the most preferred type; the Northeastern and Southwestern necropoleis are in use.

1974: The first necropolis rescue excavation of the Amasya Museum is carried out at Kulistepe.

1986-2017: Rescue excavations continue in the neighbourhoods of Şamlar, Kurşunlu, Dere, Üçler, Kirazlıdere and Gökmedrese.

2024: The study that maps the necropolis data onto the city plan is published in Arkeoloji Dergisi.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • J. G. C. Anderson, F. Cumont, H. Grégoire, Studia Pontica III: Recueil des inscriptions grecques et latines du Pont et de l'Arménie, Brussels, 1910.
  • Strabo, Geographika XII.

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

  • Rolf Fleischer, Die Felsgräber der Könige von Pontos in Amasya, Kempten, 2017.

Online sources