South-west of the district centre of Merzifon, between the villages of Çaybaşı and Balgöze, Kız Kayası Canyon winds for about three kilometres as a narrow valley. Sources give its distance from the district centre as anywhere between seventeen and twenty-five kilometres; part of the difference depends on which village road is used for the measurement. The valley lies away from large tourist facilities. For that reason its name rarely appears among Amasya's better-known sites, yet locals know it for its cold spring water, old trees, an ancient bridge and the legends that circulate around it. The same name also appears in the published lists of archaeological surface surveys; this second trace shows that the stories told about the valley are not wholly without ground, but also that far less is known than is often assumed.

Location and Access

The canyon lies within the boundaries of Çaybaşı village in Merzifon. The village is recorded as having once been called Löşdüğün, and walks usually begin there. In the 2021 population records Çaybaşı had 362 inhabitants and Balgöze, at the other end of the valley, 178. Both villages lie to the south and south-west of the district centre, some twenty kilometres away as the crow flies. Some travel pieces place the canyon only ten or twelve kilometres from central Merzifon, on the village road between Ayba and Balgöze. This shorter figure does not agree with the other records and probably rests on a measurement taken from another point on the road; the exact distance would need to be measured on the ground.

Access is by the Samsun-Çorum highway; the final approach runs through the village on what visitors describe as a rough country road with puddles in places. It is said to be passable by an ordinary car, but not every route a navigation app suggests suits a vehicle, and going through the village is advised. There is no public transport. There are no facilities or businesses around the canyon. Since there are no tables, benches or toilets, visitors need to bring whatever they require; as the ground is rocky, proper walking shoes are essential as well.

The valley's position is easier to grasp within the wider geography of Merzifon. The town stands in the central Black Sea region at the southern foot of Tavşan Dağı, on the edge of the Merzifon plain. Hüsameddin writes that this mountain, formerly called Taşan, is the largest in the sanjak of Amasya after Akdağ, that it runs from the Tersakan stream westward for some forty-five kilometres as far as the Kızılırmak at Osmancık, and that Merzifon and Hacıköy lie on its southern slopes while Havza and Köprü lie on its northern ones. He adds that the name comes from Taşan Bey, a man of Seljuk descent who held the mountain as his estate, and that in time it came to be called Tavşan Dağı. Kız Kayası, by contrast, lies on the opposite side, along the southern edge of the plain, in the broken country facing towards Amasya.

The old administrative divisions Hüsameddin records also shed light on this area. According to him the kaza of Merzifon was divided into four nahiyes. The Alıcak nahiye, covering the south-west of the kaza, took its name from Alıcak Noyin, the Tatar commander and overseer of Anatolia who had held these lands as his estate since 670 (1271-72). The Gelgiras nahiye, covering the whole southern part, appears in older registers as Gelingiras and was named after the estate that Kiras Hatun, daughter of Alıcak Noyin and wife of Pervane Bey, held when she came as a bride; he notes that this lady had a bathhouse in the nahiye centre, that Hayreddin Hızır Pasha, who rose to prominence in the reign of Mehmed II, built a mosque there and his son Hasan Pasha a madrasa and a school, and that in his own day only ruins could be seen. No document was found showing which of these two nahiyes Çaybaşı and Balgöze were registered under. Judging by their position, the valley probably lay in the border zone between Alıcak and Gelgiras; this is an inference.

The Valley's Natural Setting

The stream running through the valley is fed by springs that emerge from the rocks. The water is clear and holds small fish and freshwater crabs. The flat ground along the stream is used for barbecues and picnics, and the area is counted among Amasya's picnic spots, though visitors are reminded that lighting fires may be prohibited. Caves and passages of various sizes open in the valley walls. Among the canyon's very old trees there is, according to visitors' guesses, a mahaleb cherry tree; since this identification is not backed by any scientific inventory, it cannot be taken as certain. Local stories also say that the place was once known as a crossing point for bandits. It would not be surprising for such a reputation to arise where a narrow gorge, dense trees and caves come together, but no written record tying the story to a specific event or person was found.

The Rock That Gave the Name

Kız Kayası, the "Maiden's Rock" that gives the valley its name, is a large rock rising at the beginning of the canyon. It is said that in the middle of the valley a hidden tunnel beside this rock leads up to the top. Because the path is narrow and steep, it is said to call for care. No written source could be found on who the maiden was or why the rock bears this name. Anatolia is full of rocks, castles and towers named after a maiden, and in most cases the name is tied to a tale born of a love affair or an escape. A similar story may well have circulated about Kız Kayası, but since no documented account exists, none can be given. That surface survey publications write the name as a single word, Kızkayası, shows that researchers recorded the local name of the place just as it is spoken. The Amazon legend, for its part, looks less like an explanation of the name than an association built on it at a later date.

The Structures at the Entrance

At the entrance to the canyon stands a structure or ruin referred to as an ancient temple. Most sources present it as the temple where the Amazons offered sacrifices. Some texts that carry this description write it as established fact, others frame it as a claim; it has been stated plainly that historians and archaeologists have not confirmed it. Which period the structure belongs to, and whether it really was a cult building, cannot be regarded as settled by any excavation or surface survey published to date.

To the south of the temple there are rock tombs. They are referred to as tombs thought to date from the Scythian period. Here too caution is needed. Most of the well-known rock tombs in and around the city of Amasya are attributed to the Kingdom of Pontus, that is, to the Hellenistic age, and the tradition of rock-cut tombs lasted a long time in the region. Assigning the tombs at Kız Kayası to the Scythians is a guess for which the sources give no basis. Since no study gives the plans and measurements of the tombs, the question of which tradition they belong to remains open for now.

The Bridge, Mills and Lime Kiln at the Exit

At the exit of the canyon stands a stone bridge. Sources attribute it to the Eastern Roman period, in some places simply to the Roman period, and mention its cut-stone masonry. Here again the dating rests on guesswork; no published registration or architectural study of the bridge could be found. Even so, the fact that a bridge was built at the valley's exit suggests that the passage was in use for a long time. Merzifon is a junction on the route between the port of Samsun and inner Anatolia, and this fits the canyon's reputation as a crossing point.

Next to the bridge stand the remains of two old stone mills and a lime kiln. The mills are no longer in use; sources generally attribute them to the Ottoman period or mention them without giving a date. These water-powered structures show that the stream also had a place in the livelihoods of the local villages. The lime kiln likewise points to villages drawing their building materials from the immediate surroundings. For none of the three structures is there a published document giving a construction date.

Kızkayası in the Surface Surveys

The most concrete clue to the valley's antiquity comes not from travel writing but from the archaeological surface surveys carried out in the central Black Sea region. Mehmet Özsait of Istanbul University, in surveys he began in 1986 and continued with his wife Nesrin Özsait, covered the provinces of Amasya, Samsun, Ordu and Tokat. By their own account, in sixteen seasons between 1986 and 2001 they identified more than 325 previously unknown sites dating from the Chalcolithic to the Roman period; 150 of these lay in Amasya province, and 40 of them yielded Iron Age material. Part of the survey work was carried out directly in Merzifon district.

The find that most caught the Özsaits' attention was a group of pottery with thickened, flattened rims, faceted surfaces and red-painted decoration. The researchers noted that this group is concentrated especially around Merzifon and Gümüşhacıköy, compared it with the Early Iron Age material from the Büyükkaya soundings at Boğazköy, and dated it to the so-called "dark age" after the fall of the Hittite Empire. According to Şevket Dönmez's study of the Iron Age settlements of Amasya, published in 2005, the settlements where the Özsaits found such sherds include, from Merzifon district, Oymağaç-Kalebaşı, Karatepe, Büyük and Küçük Küllük Tepe, Akkaya, Elma Tepesi, Körceviz, Alacapınar Tepe, Dericik I, Civektepe, Onhoroz Tepe and Aliağa Pınarı, together with Kızkayası.

Whether the Kızkayası in the list is the canyon itself or a nearby locality of the same name is not stated clearly in the publications that could be read. The fact that the valley mentioned in travel sources and the settlement in the list lie in the same district and bear the same name strongly suggests that they are the same place or the same area; this, however, is an inference, and it is not known at which point of the valley the settlement lies, or whether it is on a hilltop or a slope. Unlike the "2000-1500 BC" range repeated without basis in travel writing, this record is the only dating clue resting on published research, and it points to the Iron Age rather than the Bronze Age.

This dating too is open to debate. The Özsaits suggested that the pottery might belong to local peoples under Hittite cultural influence, and above all to the Kaska known from Hittite documents. According to Hittite written sources, the Kaska were a people living to the north of central Anatolia, in the western and central Black Sea region. Dönmez, however, writes that these sherds show no difference in technique, form or decoration from Middle and Late Iron Age examples of the central Black Sea region and central Anatolia, and points out that no find belonging to the Kaska, known to have lived in the Black Sea region, has been recovered to date. In his view, the painted Early Iron Age pottery of Büyükkaya should also be linked less with the Kaska than with groups who came from the east, from the Sivas area. In that case the sherds collected at Kızkayası belong either to the Early Iron Age, that is, to around 1190-850 BC by the range Dönmez gives, or to a later phase of the Iron Age; which of the two cannot be resolved without a detailed publication of the material or an excavation.

As Dönmez wrote in 2009 when presenting the first results of the Oluz Höyük excavation, Amasya is one of the most archaeologically neglected provinces. Its famous royal rock tombs have drawn visitors since the middle of the nineteenth century, while the study of its settlements began very late. The case of Kız Kayası is a small example of this general picture: the tombs, the bridge and the structure at the entrance visible in the valley have not been measured or drawn in any publication, and its name survives only in a surface survey list.

The Antiquity of Settlement

Travel sources state that there was life around the canyon between 2000 and 1500 BC. This range coincides with the period stretching from the Middle Bronze Age in Anatolia to the beginning of the Old Hittite period. No excavation report or surface find is cited in support of the figure; in one place it is given as an estimate, in another as plain fact. The Özsaits are known to have devoted a separate publication to the second-millennium BC settlements of Amasya; whether Kızkayası appears in that list could not be checked for this study. According to another account, the valley may have been used as a dam in the Hattian or Hittite period and continued in that role in Roman times. Although the rock walls on either side of the narrow gorge look suited to holding back water, this view rests on no document; it is a line of reasoning drawn from the landscape.

A firmer context comes from the general history of Merzifon. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the Merzifon area has a history of settlement reaching back to the Chalcolithic. The core of the town is said to have been a small fort of frontier-post character built in the Hittite period, and this fort is recorded as having been destroyed in the eighth century BC by the Phrygian, Cimmerian and Scythian raids that dominated the area. Merzifon's emergence as a settlement on the stage of history, however, falls after the Kingdom of Pontus, in the period of Roman rule in the first century BC. In other words, the Scythian name appears in the written history of the district quite apart from the legends attached to Kız Kayası. The attribution of the canyon's rock tombs to the Scythians may partly draw on this general knowledge, but Scythian raids destroying a fort and a rock tomb fitting Scythian burial tradition cannot be counted as the same thing.

Phazemonitis in Antiquity

The name of Merzifon also offers a clue to the area's antiquity. The town was founded on the site of a settlement called Phazemon or Fazemonid at around the time Pompey defeated Mithridates, King of Pontus, in 64 BC. Pompey declared it a city and named it Neapolis, and in time it came to be called Phazemon Neapolis. Stephen of Byzantium records the name as Phamidzon; the name later became Famezon, Mazifon, Marsovan and Mersivan, and was written Bâzimûn in Seljuk sources, Merzubân in Persian sources and Merzifon in Ottoman documents. According to the TDV entry, the claim that the name derives from Barsevinç of the Hunnic Turks has no basis, and the view that it arose from a combination of the Persian words merz and pont is also doubtful. The same Barsevinç story appears in the history text published by the Merzifon District Governorship in the form that in the eighth century BC a regional governor named Barsevinç founded a town bearing his own name on the site of Marınca village. The two approaches do not agree, and the second is not supported by written evidence.

The geographer Strabo, a native of Amasya, briefly describes the ancient appearance of this country. According to him, the region stretching after the territory of Amisos as far as the Halys, that is the Kızılırmak, is Phazemonitis, which Pompey named Neapolitis. To the north of Phazemonitis lie Gazelonitis and the territory of Amisos, to the west the Halys, to the east Phanaroea, and on the remaining side the land of Amaseia, Strabo's own homeland, which he calls "by far the largest and best of all." The part towards Phanaroea is covered by Lake Stephane, which is like a sea in size, abounds in fish and is surrounded by pastures; on its shore stood the fortress of Ikizari, deserted by then, and a ruined royal palace. Strabo describes the rest of the country as generally bare of trees and productive of grain, and above the land of the Amaseians he mentions the hot springs of the Phazemonitae, extremely good for the health, and the stronghold of Sagylium on the summit of a sharp-peaked mountain.

The broken country south of the plain, where Kız Kayası lies, falls within the border zone between Phazemonitis as Strabo describes it and the land of Amaseia. That a densely wooded valley fed by springs should lie in this border belt, set against the treeless grain fields of the plain, is understandable in geographical terms. Yet no ancient text mentions the valley itself, its bridge or any settlement near it. No milestone or inscription has been published showing that the valley was linked to the Roman or Eastern Roman road network; the attribution of the bridge to the Roman period therefore rests for now only on the impression given by its masonry.

The Amazon Legend

The best known of the stories about Kız Kayası holds that the area was inhabited first by the Scythians and then by the Amazons. The legend comes from local tradition, and the sources pass it on with this caveat: it is believed that the Scythians and later the Amazons lived in the area, but detailed information is not yet available. It has not been shown that the legend rests on any written document or archaeological find.

The Amazons are the best-known community of women warriors in Greek mythology and the classical sources. Herodotus, Diodorus, Pausanias and other ancient authors point to Themiscyra on the Black Sea coast, that is, the area around today's Terme district of Samsun, as the homeland of the Amazons. Strabo writes that Themiscyra lay in the territory of the people of Amisos and that this land belonged to the White Syrians; he adds that the Amazons were later driven out of these places. A line he quotes from Pindar also says that the Amazons commanded a Syrian army in this region. In the same chapters Strabo also discusses views that link the Amazons to Aegean coastal cities such as Ephesus, Smyrna, Cyme and Myrina, and rejects most of them; that is, even in the ancient world there was no agreement about where the Amazons lived. Appian is cited for the account that during the Third Mithridatic War, when Lucullus besieged Themiscyra and the walls were being undermined, the townspeople released bears, wild animals and swarms of bees against the workers.

This information makes sense when Themiscyra is sought at Terme. Kız Kayası, however, lies more than a hundred kilometres from Terme and is mentioned in none of the classical sources. Although Strabo was from Amaseia, he does not tie the Amazons to a canyon in the Amasya region; he places Themiscyra in the territory of Amisos. There is no ancient testimony, inscription or find showing that the Amazons lived in this valley. In Anatolia the Amazon tradition spread to many place names and city foundation legends along the Aegean and Black Sea coasts; that a valley in the interior should have been added to this tradition later can easily be explained by the associations of its name as well. The name Kız Kayası lends itself naturally to linking a legend with the Amazons. This is a tentative explanation and cannot be regarded as confirmed by the sources.

Hüsameddin's Amâsît Interpretation

The tendency to link the Amazons with Amasya is far older than the Kız Kayası story and took a distinctive form in local historiography. Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar, in the second volume of his Amasya Tarihi, drawing on European historians such as Sayce, Lenormant, Maspero and Morgan, treats Amasya and its surroundings as the centre of a country called "Mâzît" or "Amâsît", and writes that in Western sources this country was known by names such as Amazît, Mâzît, Amazon, Mâzû and Miziyen. In his view, the name of Amasya appears in some Arabic works as "Mâse" and that of the Amazons in Western histories as "Mâze" and "Mâzon"; the two names therefore share the same root.

Hüsameddin also draws an explanation from this resemblance. He writes that the Amâsîts living in the sanjak of Amasya were extremely warlike, that even their women were skilled in the use of arms, that the whole people counted as soldiers, and that for this reason they became known in history as "the Amazons, the Amasons". In the same section he claims that the Amâsîts set up a government bound to the Hittites, that their country shrank over time and took the name Harşenûn, and that the name "Karsânûn took the place of Amazon"; he also mentions a clan called Bermît or Barumît that had split off from the Amazons.

This interpretation is a product of the approach common in Turkish historiography in the early twentieth century, which linked the ancient peoples of Anatolia to a Turanian origin through similarities of sound, and it is not accepted by current scholarship. The earliest known name of the city appears on coins as Amaseia, and no etymological link with the name of the Amazons can be regarded as demonstrated. Hüsameddin, moreover, does not speak of a valley south of Merzifon; his interpretation covers the whole Amasya region. Even so, this background matters for understanding the Amazon legend attached to Kız Kayası. The idea that the Amazons belong to a local past in Amasya has been circulating in writing for at least a hundred years, and the ground is prepared for a lonely valley bearing a maiden's name to become joined to it. That the legend arose in this way is a guess; there is no record showing a direct link.

The Historical Core of the Legend

Whether the Amazon tradition has a historical core is also debated. Herodotus relates that among the Sarmatians women went hunting with the men and took part in war, and that a girl who had not killed a man in battle could not marry. Archaeological excavations are reported to have found weapons in about a quarter of Sarmatian women's graves, and the same is said to be true of the Scythians. These data support the idea that the Amazon legend may have drawn on women warriors among the steppe peoples. The Zemo Avchala burial near Tbilisi in Georgia is referred to as the oldest Amazon woman's grave found to date. None of this establishes a direct link with Kız Kayası; it merely shows that the legend is not entirely without ground.

The order within the legend also deserves attention. In the story the Scythians come first, then the Amazons. In the classical tradition, however, the Amazons are placed in the age of the Trojan War, a heroic era much older than the Scythians, whereas the Scythians appear in history from the eighth century BC onwards. According to Herodotus, the Sarmatians were the descendants of the Amazons and the Scythians. The fact that the order in the local story does not match these sources suggests that it derives less from ancient texts than from a combination put together in recent times. This is an interpretation; there is no document at hand that either confirms or refutes it.

The Scythians and Their Traces in Amasya

The Scythians were a nomadic people who lived on the steppes north of the Black Sea and in Central Asia between the eighth century BC and the third century AD. The view that they were of Eastern Iranian origin is widely held. The name of this people, who mastered cavalry warfare and the use of the bow, is derived from an Indo-European root meaning to throw or to shoot and is traced to a word meaning archer. The Scythians, who replaced the Cimmerians on the Pontic steppe, also raided Anatolia, and their name is mentioned in connection with the destruction of the Hittite fort in the Merzifon area.

Genuine traces of these mounted nomads do exist in Amasya province, and they offer a good yardstick for testing the label applied at Kız Kayası. As Dönmez reports, some Cimmerian tribes are thought to have advanced through Paphlagonia into the central Black Sea region and from there as far as the eastern Black Sea. A horse burial and Scythian-type arrowheads uncovered at Maşat Höyük near Zile in Tokat point to the presence of Eurasian mounted warriors in the region. In Amasya, at the Yedi Pelitler locality of İmirler village in Gümüşhacıköy, a kurgan-type grave damaged by illicit digging has been understood to belong to a commander of the Eurasian mounted nomads, buried together with his horse. The 250 Scythian-type bronze arrowheads bought by the Amasya Museum in 1978 also came, according to the seller, from a looted grave in a valley between the Ladik district of Samsun and the Taşova district of Amasya.

What these examples have in common is that the burial was placed beneath a mound raised by piling up earth or stone, that is, beneath a kurgan; a chamber cut into the rock is foreign to this tradition. Dönmez notes that small artificial mounds in Taşova, such as Çallı Evliya and Geyik Baba, in which local people believe holy men lie buried, may also be kurgans, and that excavation is needed for a definite conclusion. For this reason, calling the rock-cut tombs at Kız Kayası Scythian is an archaeologically doubtful label; the documented Scythian-type finds in Amasya, rather than supporting this label, point to a separate burial tradition.

Nature Walk

The walk begins at Çaybaşı village and passes through the canyon to the exit where the bridge stands. Visitors follow the stream; along the way the spring waters, old trees and caves, then the temple and rock tombs at the entrance, and the bridge and mills at the exit, are the stops met in turn. For those who wish to combine it with the Clock Tower and Taşhan in central Merzifon, setting aside two days for a programme that includes the valley is recommended. Since the valley is a natural area, no litter should be left behind and no damage should be done to the rock faces, the tombs or the structures. The sources particularly stress the need for care in places such as the hidden tunnel and the cave entrances. Because the rock tombs and the structure at the entrance have not yet been documented, any digging or treasure hunting is both against the law and destroys the only context needed to unravel the history of this place.

The Present State of Research

The concrete data available on Kız Kayası Canyon are few: a valley, a stream, a bridge, two mills, a lime kiln, rock tombs, the rock that gave the place its name, and the name Kızkayası appearing in a surface survey list. For most of these there is no scientific dating. The only published clue is the pottery collected from the Kızkayası settlement in Merzifon and dated to the Early or a later Iron Age. The stories that the canyon has been in use since the Hittite age, or that the Scythians or the Amazons lived here, are guesses. What would confirm them is a detailed publication of the surface finds, measured drawings of the tombs and of the structure at the entrance, and if necessary a limited excavation. Until such a study is published, the most honest sentence that can be written is what the sources themselves say: detailed information is not yet available.

The Merzifon area is a transit region through which many periods have passed, from the Hittites to Pontus, from Rome to the Danishmendids and the Ottomans, and Kız Kayası stands at the edge of this long line, in the broken belt between the Phazemonitis plain and the land of Amaseia. Because rock-cut tombs in a narrow valley, a Roman-style bridge, water-powered mills and an Iron Age find spot lie close to one another, this is a suitable route for those who wish to see the traces of different periods on a single walk.

Chronology

2000-1500 BC: Period in which life is thought to have existed around the canyon (travel sources cite no evidence).

1190-850 BC: Early Iron Age, to which the Özsaits dated the painted pottery they collected from Merzifon settlements including Kızkayası (according to Dönmez, the sherds cannot be distinguished from later Iron Age examples).

8th century BC: The Hittite-period frontier fort in the Merzifon area is recorded as destroyed by Phrygian, Cimmerian and Scythian raids.

64 BC: Pompey defeats Mithridates, King of Pontus; the settlement of Phazemon is declared a city and named Neapolis.

5th century: Stephen of Byzantium records the town as Phamidzon.

After 1071: Merzifon is conquered by İltegin Gazi, one of the Danishmendid emirs.

1393: Kadı Burhaneddin comes to Merzifon and sets up camp, after which Bayezid I takes the town.

15th-17th centuries: The period when pious endowment works such as madrasas, an imaret, mosques and the Kara Mustafa Pasha mosque complex (külliye) were built in Merzifon.

1986-2001: Surface surveys by Mehmet and Nesrin Özsait in Amasya and the surrounding provinces; the settlement named Kızkayası in Merzifon is recorded.

1997-1999: Şevket Dönmez's surface surveys of the Iron Age settlements of Amasya province (published 2005).

Bibliography

Primary sources

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