Whichever way one enters Amasya, the first thing to catch the eye above the town is the row of great tomb façades cut into the southern face of Mount Harşena. Opened in the sheer rock just behind the Yalıboyu houses and below the citadel, these hollows look down on the town by day in the sunlight and by night under floodlights. Built as the resting places of the kings of Pontus, the Royal Rock Tombs rank, in the language of archaeology and of the ancient authors, among the most monumental Hellenistic tombs in Anatolia. To the people of Amasya, however, they have been something else for centuries: the palace of forgotten rulers, burial hoards full of gold, secret passages winding through the mountain down to the river, doorways in which a light flickers on certain nights. Some of these tales are pure invention; others draw on tunnels and cisterns that the rock really does conceal, and on the uses to which the tombs were put over the course of history.

Folk legend does not rest on documents, yet neither does it arise from nothing. The beliefs surrounding the Royal Rock Tombs have come down to us by joining together pieces taken from the sieges the town endured, the wealth hidden in the citadel, the monks and dervishes who withdrew into its caves, the water channels hewn into the rock, and the common stock of Anatolian storytelling. The date of the tombs, their owners and their architecture are the subject of a separate article; this one deals only with the folk tales that have gathered around them, the concrete traces on which those tales rest, and the meanings that local memory has attached to the rock.

The Ground Left by History

The historical ground on which the legends stand is firm enough. Amaseia was the first capital of the Kingdom of Pontus, and the tombs of its first five kings, from the founder Mithridates I Ktistes to Pharnaces I, were carved into the limestone of Harşena above the area known as Kızlar Sarayı (the Maidens' Palace). Describing his native town, the Amaseian geographer Strabo writes that within the walled enclosure on the rock stood "the palace and the tombs of the kings." This short sentence is a kind of seed for all the later tales: the fact that palace and tomb stood side by side on the same rock, inside the same walls, made it easier for people centuries later to imagine these hollows as the chambers of a palace. After the kingdom took Sinop in 183 BC, its centre gradually shifted to the coast and the series of tombs at Amasya stopped at five monuments; along the valley as a whole, some twenty-one rock tombs of various sizes are known.

The English traveller William Hamilton, who came to the town in the spring of 1836, recorded that the tombs were five in number, three to the west and two to the east, and that the steep face of the rock had been artificially smoothed to heighten the effect. He adds that the western tombs could be reached only by a narrow path through a small grotto and along an open gallery cut into the vertical cliff and protected by a low parapet of rock, that the farthest tomb was entirely detached from the surrounding rock by a narrow passage, and that it appeared never to have been finished. These galleries running through the rock, the corridors circling behind the tombs and the paths that end abruptly have prompted the same questions in travellers and townspeople alike: where do these passages lead, and what did these chambers once hold. Most of the folk tales are answers to those questions.

Both the name now given to the tombs, "Kral Kaya Mezarları" (the Royal Rock Tombs), and the name "Valley of the Kings" sometimes applied to the valley reflect the way people have seen these monuments. Once the kings of Pontus had been forgotten, the owners of the tombs long remained unknown, but their size and their commanding position kept alive the feeling that they could not belong to ordinary dead. So strong is this feeling that rock tombs outside the town have also come to be attached to kings. The medical historian Süheyl Ünver, in the notes he kept while touring Amasya in 1962, records the Aynalı Mağara on the road to Ziyaret as "built in the name of the Pontic ruler Rahib Tusi," adding that the name meant "the Great Priest Tusi," that there were eighteen such rock tombs, and that they dated from seven hundred to four hundred years before Christ. That the owner should be called a "ruler" although the inscription on the pediment names a priest, and that the dates should be pushed far earlier than they are, is a small but instructive example of how the information circulating in the town in those years blended with popular imagination.

The name of the terrace just below the tombs is also tied to a tradition. In this area, called Kızlar Sarayı, the Seljuk sultan Mesud I is known to have built a mosque, a madrasa, a bath and a palace in 1146; in the Ottoman period Firuz Ağa, chief gatekeeper of Bayezid II, put up a harem building, and the palace was used by princes, royal ladies and governors for more than a century and a half. Among the people, however, the name is said to come from the wives and daughters of the princes who lived here. The name settled in of its own accord, and today the royal tombs and the palace ruins are spoken of as a single whole that fits into one frame when seen from across the river. A similar attribution exists for the citadel itself: according to local records, Arab historians ascribe it to "the Turkish ruler Karsan Han," while Western writers credit it to the Pontic king Mithridates. These two attributions, standing side by side on the same rock, are an old example of the tendency to tie every great work on Harşena to some great ruler.

The Palace of the Kings and the Giant Rulers

Though their names were forgotten, the tombs themselves were not. In some tales these hollows are not thought of as tombs at all but are pictured as palaces hidden inside the mountain, where the kings still hold court and rule after death in mysterious chambers. Strabo's mention of palace and tomb within the same walls, and the fact that a palace really did stand on the terrace below for centuries, seem to have given this image a historical footing. The large doorways of the chambers, their entrances set high above the ground and the wide spaces around them make them look, to the eye, less like tombs than like the front of a pavilion.

The extraordinary size of the tombs has also led the popular imagination to see them as the work of extraordinary beings. It is said that only rulers of giant stature, or kings endowed with superhuman power, could have had these hollows cut, whose façades reach eight to fifteen metres in height. Exceeding the human scale, these chambers have become in the popular eye the remains of a fabulous age in which heroes and giants lived. The belief that rulers live on after death is not confined in Amasya to the royal tombs. In the same notes of Süheyl Ünver, a popular belief is recorded about a tomb in the town associated with Kılıçarslan: that in the vault where he lies buried his mummy sits upon his horse and blood still drips from his sword. The images of giants and rulers attached to the royal tombs draw on the same vein as such tales in the town's wider repertoire of stories.

The Belief in Buried Treasure

The most widespread belief surrounding these monuments is that of buried treasure. People used to say that the kings had their gold, their jewels and their talismanic possessions buried with them, and that these hoards lay hidden deep in the burial chambers or behind secret passages. For generations, some of the curious followed these rumours and roamed around the rocks. Folk wisdom also holds that such treasure is not easily won: according to tradition the hoards are protected by talismans and have guardians, and all manner of misfortune befalls anyone who approaches without respect or sets out to dig without permission. Within this tale one can also sense the people's instinct to protect their own monuments, dressed in the language of the fairy tale.

Behind the belief in treasure lies a memory that comes from Amasya's real history. Evliya Çelebi, who climbed to the citadel in 1640, describes its forty-one towers on a five-cornered plan, its palaces, arsenals, storehouses and cisterns, and then says that "beneath the citadel it is full of caves." The same traveller also writes that the wealthy of the town kept their valuables in the citadel against the raids of the Celali rebels. The memory of times when wealth really was hidden in chambers inside the rock may, over time, have spread to every hollow and merged with the never-seen gold of the Pontic kings. The emptiness of the burial chambers today feeds this belief as well. According to local records, Melik Ahmed Danişmend Gazi, who took Amasya in 1075, had the Pontic-period burials inside the tombs removed; it is also known that the chambers were plundered over the centuries. An empty burial chamber is proof to anyone who imagines it full: in popular speech, even if the gold inside was never carried off, it has been hidden somewhere.

The façades themselves have supplied material for this idea. The dowel holes seen in the walls of the tombs suggest that the façades were once faced with marble or timber panels. The traces left by stripped cladding, broken columns and damaged façades have always looked to the uninformed eye like the signs of a search, a dig, of something having been taken away. In this way the treasure tale also turns into a folk explanation of real destruction.

Secret Passages and Tunnels

The corridors surrounding the tombs and the stepped paths cut into the rock are what most excite the imagination. Local descriptions also note that what draws attention is less the interior of the tombs than the passages cut behind them, and that the traditions passed from mouth to mouth have made these passages all the more mysterious. People say that the tombs are linked to one another and to the citadel above by secret tunnels through the mountain, and that some passages run under the Yeşilırmak to reach the far side of the town. It has long been said that in times of siege the kings escaped by these routes and that the people of the citadel went down to the water by these hidden stairways. Local records also mention that beside one of the large tombs lies the mouth of a tunnel believed to reach as far as the river.

Some of these tales were fed by water structures that really exist in the citadel. When Hamilton climbed to it, he wrote that little of the ancient architecture remained, but that the object of greatest interest was an underground passage. He compares it to the subterranean flights of stairs he had seen in the castles of Tokat, Turhal, Zile and Ünye, and says that whether it was meant merely for procuring water or as a secret sally-port from the fortress, he had no doubt of its antiquity and Hellenic origin. Evliya Çelebi also mentions water channels running down from the citadel to the Tozanlı Suyu. The structure in the middle of the citadel known as the "Cilanbolu Well" or "Cilanbolu Tunnel" descends by some one hundred and fifty steps cut into the rock; the lower steps have been lost to damage. In clearing work begun in 2009, a depth of 170 metres was reached inside the tunnel. Given that the citadel stands about 300 metres above the river, it is thought that this structure once went down as far as the level of the river.

The idea of a tunnel running down to the river, then, cannot be dismissed as pure fancy. Inside the rock there really were stepped passages reaching the water, of vital importance in time of siege, and their mouths were in time blocked and forgotten. By linking these known structures to the tombs, the tombs to one another, and all of them to the far bank beneath the river, the people have set an entire underground city inside the rock. This is perhaps the tale in which reality and imagination are most tightly joined, for how far some of these tunnels extend is still not exactly known today.

Tales of Imprisonment, Seclusion and Circumambulation

That the tombs were used by the living after the dead is another subject widely told in the town. According to local records, the Royal Rock Tombs served at certain periods as a prison and place of punishment. In the best-known example of this tale, Mithridates VI imprisoned Roman envoys who had made difficulties in peace negotiations with him in the tomb just above the railway passage. No record confirming this event has been found in the ancient authors who wrote about Mithridates, and the story should for now be regarded as a local tradition. Even so, the place the tradition chose is striking: this tomb, whose surroundings were not cut away and which has no stone stair leading up to its chamber, does indeed look like a cell from which someone placed inside could not climb out unaided.

It is also often said that the tombs served as places of seclusion. Local records mention that in the Danishmendid period Christian monks withdrew into these caves. The French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who passed through Amasya in the seventeenth century, writes that a fortress stood on the high mountain to the west of the town, that in the middle of the mountain there was a fine spring, and that around this spring dervishes lived in several chambers cut out of the rock. Which chambers Tavernier meant is not certain, but his account shows that spaces cut into the rock gave shelter to dervishes in the Ottoman period as well. That chambers where kings had once been buried later became a refuge for monks and dervishes gave these places a distinct sanctity in the popular eye.

Interpretations have also grown up around the wide corridors surrounding the tombs. Local descriptions say that these spaces were left so that some of the tombs could be circumambulated, and in others so that water seeping from the rock would meet the air and the burial chamber be protected. The belief that the tombs were also used as temples is likewise common in the town. Given the Hellenistic tradition of deifying kings, these interpretations are not wholly without basis; but there is no firm evidence of regular ceremonies being held around the tombs, and the view remains an interpretation.

Night Lights and the Watch of the Spirits

Another belief handed down among the people of Amasya from generation to generation is that on certain nights flickering lights appear in the openings of the rock tombs. Some take this to mean that the spirits of the rulers of the past still keep watch in their tombs; others used to regard the lights as a sign of the spirits guarding the treasure. Such tales are a reflection of the reverence and the shiver of awe that the tombs inspire. A person standing above a dark valley before those pitch-black doorways, visible from every part of the town, feels more sharply the brevity of his own life and the age of the stone, and this feeling readily opens the door to mysterious stories. Today the tombs are floodlit every night, and the flickering light of the old tale has given way to a steady glow watched from all over the town.

Ferhat and Şirin and the Carved Rocks

Amasya's best-known legend, that of Ferhat and Şirin, is not tied directly to the tombs, yet it unfolds in the same world of rock. According to the tale, Ferhat, a miniaturist, falls in love with Şirin, sister of Mehmene Banu, the sultan of Amasya, and asks for her hand. Unwilling to give up her sister, the sultan demands that he bring water to the town from distant Şahinkayası. Ferhat opens a way for the water by splitting the rocks with his pickaxe; realising that the work will be finished, the sultan sends a witch who tells him that Şirin has died, Ferhat throws his pickaxe into the air and kills himself, and Şirin, on hearing the news, leaps from the cliffs. The two young people are buried side by side. Every spring a rose blooms on each of the two graves, but a blackthorn that springs up between them keeps the two roses from meeting.

The legend's concrete counterpart in Amasya is the old water channel cut through the rock to carry water to the town. The channel is dated to the late Hellenistic or early Roman period and is known among the people as the "Ferhat Water Channel." In the seventeenth century Tavernier also noted that, to bring fresh water to the town, a league had been cut into rocks as hard as marble, and that this had been a prodigious labour. Entering the town in 1962, Süheyl Ünver noted the fountain at the entrance and the old water course, recording it as "the water channel opened by Ferhad." If the hero of the legend were taken as a historical person, he would have had to live centuries earlier to dig this channel; the people do not concern themselves with this inconsistency. The same frame of mind ascribes the tombs of the Pontic kings to giants and the channel to Ferhat: every work wrought in the rock that seems to exceed human strength is told as the work of a great love or a great power.

Güzelce Kız and the Lovers Buried in a Rock Tomb

The best known of the love stories tied to the rock tombs is the legend of Güzelce Kız, "the Beautiful Maiden." It tells of a poor young man who lifted the veil of a king's daughter whose beauty made all who saw her lose their senses, and of how the two died in the light and fire that spread the moment the veil was raised, and were buried in two separate chambers of a rock tomb near the town. The tomb's façade, which shines in the sun like the maiden's face, is also linked to this legend, and the name Aynalı Mağara, "the Mirrored Cave," derives from it. The legend carries the motif of burial side by side found in Ferhat and Şirin directly into a rock tomb, so that the "king" and "king's daughter" associations of the royal tombs merge with a love story. The legend in full, and the Aynalı Mağara itself, are treated in a separate article.

The Legends and the Monuments

All these beliefs are different forms of the relationship the people have formed with an extraordinary heritage on their own soil. The people of Amasya have kept alive for centuries the kings whose names they did not know, through the tales they attached to their tombs. Treasure stories made the monuments an object of curiosity, the belief in talismans and guardians made touching them a fearful business, and the tales of night lights and spirits surrounded the tombs with a kind of sanctity. It should not be forgotten that the same beliefs also drew treasure hunters to the rocks and that part of the damage to the tombs arose from that search; folk tradition has both protected the monument and, at times, led to its harm.

Mount Harşena and the Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2015 and are today a regularly visited archaeological site, floodlit at night. Visitors climb to the tombs through the narrow streets of the Hatuniye quarter and across the railway, up stairs cut into the rock; walking through the corridors behind the tombs, they readily understand why people believed these passages led somewhere. In the stories told by Amasya's elders the tombs are still the palace of the kings, the treasure is still inside the rock and the tunnels still run beneath the river. The Pontic necropolis described in the history books and these tales continue to live side by side on the same face of rock.

Chronology

3rd century BC: Founding of the Kingdom of Pontus; Amaseia becomes the capital and the first royal tombs begin to be cut into Harşena.

183 BC: Pontus takes Sinop; the centre of the kingdom gradually shifts to the coast.

1075: Melik Ahmed Danişmend Gazi takes Amasya; according to local records, the Pontic burials in the tombs are removed.

1146: The Seljuk sultan Mesud I builds a mosque, madrasa, bath and palace in the inner citadel.

1555: Hans Dernschwam visits Amasya and describes the princes' palace at the foot of the mountain.

1640: Evliya Çelebi visits the citadel; he records that "beneath the citadel it is full of caves."

1836: William Hamilton describes the tombs, their galleries and the underground passage in the citadel.

1962: Süheyl Ünver's Amasya notes attribute the Aynalı Mağara to a "Pontic ruler" and mention "the water channel opened by Ferhad."

2009: Clearing work in the Cilanbolu Tunnel reaches a depth of 170 metres.

2015: Mount Harşena and the Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings are added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Strabo, Geography XII.3.39.
  • Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, II, 183-194.

Academic studies

  • Ali Rıza Ayar and Recep Orhan Özel, "Ord. Prof. Dr. Süheyl Ünver'in Amasya Günlükleri'nin Tanıtımı ve Sadeleştirilmesi", Journal of the Faculty of Theology, Amasya University, no. 1. kentrehberi.amasya.bel.tr
  • TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Encyclopaedia of Islam of the Turkish Religious Foundation), article "Amasya". islamansiklopedisi.org.tr

Official sources

  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Kral Kaya Mezarları"; Municipality of Amasya City Guide, "Amasya Kalesi".

Other sources

  • Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, The Six Voyages / Travels through Turkey to Persia (17th century), section on Amasya.
  • William J. Hamilton, Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia, London 1842.
  • Burcu Soykök Ede, "Harşena Dağı ve Pontus Kral Kaya Mezarları"; Süheyla Golcheshmeh, "Harşena Kalesi / Kızlar Sarayı", Online Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi.
  • Türkiye Culture Portal, "Kızlar Sarayı".
  • Erol Şaşmaz, "Kral Kaya Mezarları - Amasya Merkez", Türkiye'nin Tarihi Eserleri. turkiyenintarihieserleri.com
  • Collections of Amasya legends: "Ferhat ile Şirin", "Güzelce Kız (Aynalı Mağara)"; Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Ferhat ile Şirin".
  • Roberto Piperno, "Towns in the valleys of northern Turkey: Amasya" (with extracts from Hamilton, Ainsworth and Tavernier).

Online sources