In the interior of the Pontic Kingdom, some settlements were known less for their political power than for their sanctity. Ancient Zela, today the Zile district of Tokat, is chief among them. Lying roughly eighty kilometres from Amasya, the town housed the great temple of the Iranian-derived goddess Anaitis, and the people of Pontus swore their most important oaths there. Ancient authors describe Zela as a sacred precinct rather than a city: it was governed by a priest, and much of its land was inhabited by temple servants attached to the sanctuary. The history of the town does not end with the temple. Zela is the name of the plain on which Rome settled accounts with Pontus in two decisive battles, and it carries a layered past that runs from the Hittite age to the Ottoman period.

Location and Name

Zile lies in the broad plain of Kazova, which opens eastward between the Deveci Mountains and the Zile Mountains. The area is ringed by ranges of about 1,400 metres to the north and west and about 1,900 metres to the south, while the plain itself stands some 700 metres above sea level. Hills such as Kale, Hüseyin Gazi and Akbaba rise within the town. Turhal is 22 kilometres away, Tokat 70 and Amasya 80. In antiquity this position made the town an important stop on the road network linking Amaseia, Comana Pontica and Neocaesareia.

The name of the town has changed very little over thousands of years. Sedat Alp, who read a tablet from the reign of the Hittite king Tudhaliya III found at Maşat Höyük, argued that the name Anziliya on it refers to the same place as Zile. In the Pontic and Roman periods the town appears in the records as Zela. The forms Sılay and Harkariye occur in the History of Amasya, Kırkıriyye or Gırgıriyye in the Danishmendname, and Zeyli in Evliya Çelebi. Evliya ties the name to the fine carpets and kilims woven there, an explanation that looks like a folk etymology laid over an older root. During the Arab-Byzantine wars the Muslim Arabs called the town Gazale. The ancient name of the Çekerek River, which flows near Zile, appears as Skylax; the name is linked to the Scythians and is taken as a trace of Scythian influence in the region.

The Oldest Layers of Settlement

The oldest settlement on the Zile plain is Maşat Höyük, about twenty kilometres south of the town. Tahsin Özgüç's excavations uncovered there the seat of a frontier lord answerable to the Hittite Empire. Known in the Hittite age as Tapikka, the centre stood on the border between the Black Sea region and the Hittite heartland, on the roads leading east. A two-storey palace built on top of a rocky hill points to a place that served as both administrative and defensive centre; exposed to Kaska raids, the town was destroyed and rebuilt five times. According to Mustafa Şahin, Maşat fell to the Phrygians around 1200 BC, after which Cimmerians and Scythians settled in the area. A direct continuity between ancient Zela and this mound has not been documented, but the plain was a valuable region for administration and trade long before Pontus.

Strabo attributes the foundation of Zela to the Assyrian queen Semiramis and adds that the hill in the middle of the town was built up later. On this account the town is sometimes said to be four thousand years old, but the Semiramis tradition cannot count as a historical record. Firmer ground begins with Persian rule. After the Persians took Anatolia, the Yeşilırmak basin gained importance as a region crossed by the Royal Road, and Zela was governed by Persian governors as a town attached to the satrapy of Cappadocia. It is reported that when Alexander the Great crossed into Anatolia the Persian satraps held a war council at Zile, and the Danishmendname mentions a fountain in the town called the Fountain of Alexander. After Alexander, the Cappadocian satrap Ariarathes proclaimed himself king and made Gaziura (Turhal) his centre; the region was then shared between Cappadocia and the newly founded Pontic Kingdom, and in this division Zela fell within the borders of Pontus.

The Cult of Anaitis and the Founding of the Temple

What gave Zela its fame was the temple dedicated to the goddess Anaitis. Anaitis is the Anatolian name of Anahita, the Zoroastrian goddess of water and fertility. Research drawing on Corsten indicates that the goddess entered Anatolia in the sixth century BC under Persian rule; it is known that Artaxerxes II ordered the official worship of Ahura Mazda and Anahita in Lydia in the middle of the fourth century BC. In western Anatolia Anaitis was mostly identified with Artemis, in Lydia she was confused with Cybele, and around Hierocaesareia, Hypaipa, Philadelphia and Gölmarmara she lived on as Artemis Anaitis or the Persian Artemis. Most of these temples were places of worship near cities, with a limited sacred zone around them. What set Zela apart was that a wholly separate order of government grew up around its temple.

Strabo ties the foundation of the temple to an event. According to him, the Sacae raided as far as Cappadocia, into the region now called Pontus, and while they were feasting on their booty they were destroyed in a night attack by the Persian commanders in the area. The commanders heaped earth over a rock in the plain to form a hill, surrounded it with a wall, and founded on it the temple of Anaitis and of the gods who share her altar, Omanus and Anadatus. A festival called the Sacaea was held in memory of the victory; in Strabo's description, people at this festival dressed in Scythian costume and drank and made merry night and day, together with the women. The fragments of Berossos and Ctesias preserved by Athenaeus add that the Sacaea was also celebrated in Babylon, and that at this festival a slave was dressed as a king and played the master of the house. Scholars debate whether the name of the festival can be tied to the Scythians, and argue that its origin should be sought in a Persian-Babylonian setting. The Sacaea was celebrated wherever a temple of Anaitis stood.

When the temple was built is not known with certainty. Mary Boyce's view is that the structure was founded in the late Persian period, around the fourth century BC, and later developed by the Pontic kings. Because no written document exists, this date remains an estimate; the only account of the foundation that we have is the story Strabo reports. Our knowledge of the temple's architecture is also limited. What survives is a piece of white marble in the Corinthian order and the coins struck at Zela under the Roman Empire. On some coins of Septimius Severus (193-211) and Caracalla (211-217) a crenellated courtyard gate appears with a pediment rising behind it, and on others a porch with four or six columns. Between the columns a flame rises, the symbol of the cult. This flame shows that the fire cult at Zela continued into the third century AD; the same symbol appears on the coins of Hypaipa in Lydia.

On the north-eastern slope of the hill where the temple stood there was a small theatre, made by carving the rock and adding stone and timber elements. Today only the seats cut into the bedrock and a few parts of the orchestra survive. A tomb and some architectural pieces are also known from the town.

The Temple State

In modern scholarship Zela, together with Comana Pontica, is regarded as the leading example of the temple states of Anatolia. The term comes from Mesopotamia, where in Sumerian cities the temple held most of the land and organised production and people. Among those who have applied the concept to Zela are David Magie, D. R. Wilson, Virgilio, McGing and Marek. Emine Sökmen's thesis defines the temple state by three elements: the priest at the head of the temple, the sacred servants who lived around it and worked for it, and the temple territory that supplied it with revenue. The same thesis notes that Zela and Comana do not fit this definition exactly; Strabo uses the word polis for these settlements, and temple state is a modern label.

Strabo's most important observation about Zela is that in the time of the early kings it was governed not as a city but as a sacred precinct of the Persian goddess. A priest stood at the head of the whole area, and many temple servants and priests lived in this sacred district. In Strabo's words Zela was a town that looked like a sanctuary, belonging for the most part to the temple servants. In the time of the kings the number of servants and the standing of the priests were great; but in the age when Strabo wrote, everything was in the hands of Pythodoris, and many people had abused and reduced the number of servants and the rest of the temple's resources. The neighbouring land had also shrunk, having been divided among several domains. Strabo further reports that the people of Pontus swore their oaths on the most important matters at Zela. This indicates that the sanctuary was used as a place of surety and oath.

We have far less detail on the priests of Zela than on those of Comana. At Comana the priest ranked second after the king and often came from the royal family; for Zela no comparable list of names or lineages is known. For this reason our knowledge of how Zela worked as a temple state rests largely on Strabo's brief description and on comparison with Comana. There are no firm figures on how the sanctuary's revenue was collected, how many servants there were, or how large the land was.

Zela in the Pontic and Roman Periods

Under Mithridates VI Eupator (120-63 BC), bronze coins of similar design began to be struck at centres in the interior of the Pontic Kingdom such as Amisos, Amaseia, Comana Pontica, Zela, Gaziura and Taulara. The shared types and weight standard suggest that these towns were less autonomous than under the central control of the kingdom. Zela and Comana were natural parts of this network because they were both religious and commercial centres. The road through Zela ran from Tavium to Comana Pontica and Neocaesareia, and the trade route coming from the direction of Amaseia joined it. The later redirection of the trade route through Tokat in the Roman period led to the revival of Gaziura (Turhal).

Zela was the scene of two critical battles in the struggle between Pontus and Rome. In 67 BC Mithridates VI defeated the Roman commander Triarius near Zela; Şahin places the defeat at a locality called Altıağaç, some five kilometres from the town, near present-day Bayırköy. In Caesar's account of the Alexandrian War, Zela is presented as a well-fortified Pontic town although it lies on a plain. According to Caesar, a natural rise, as though raised by art, supports the walls on every side; the surrounding country has many large mountains cut by valleys. The highest of them is famed for the victory of Mithridates, the defeat of Triarius and the destruction of the Roman army, lies not more than three miles from Zela, and has a ridge that almost extends to the town.

After Pompey drove Mithridates from the region he reorganised the Pontic lands, and in this arrangement raised Zela to the status of a city. According to Sökmen's thesis, Zela's territorial authority was enlarged in the process, scattered temple lands were united, and a priest chosen by the Romans took charge of these lands and their people. Roman administration used the power of religious structures over society deliberately, supporting priests who suited it and governing the local population through them. The same process is seen at other temple centres such as Pessinus and Pisidian Antioch; Strabo writes that the priests of Pessinus were once as powerful as princes and that these prerogatives were later much reduced. Wilson draws attention to one further detail: under Antony, Zela returned to the status of an independent temple. Which lands were lost and regained in these changes cannot be established with certainty from the documents.

In 47 BC the battle between Mithridates' son Pharnaces and Caesar was again fought on the plain of Zela. The Roman side won the engagement, which lasted five hours. Caesar announced the victory to Rome with the words that went down in history, Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered). A tradition told in Zile holds that an altar inscription bearing these words once stood at Zela, but no find confirming it has been reported. With the defeat of Pharnaces the resistance of the age of the Pontic kings ended and the Zela region was attached to Rome. The later administrative history of the town is complicated: Zela first formed part of the Pontus of Polemon, was attached to Galatia under Nero in AD 64, remained within Pontic Cappadocia when Galatia and Cappadocia were merged into a single province after AD 70, and was assigned to the province of Diospontus in Diocletian's reorganisation. After the division of the Roman Empire in AD 395 Zile remained within the borders of the Eastern Empire. Remains of a church of this period survive in the village of Ernebadi in Zile.

Rock Tombs and the Archaeological Record

The Zela area remains a little-studied region archaeologically. Murat Tekin's study of the rock-tomb tradition of interior Pontus stresses that the data for the region on this subject are extremely limited. Apart from the Amasya royal rock tombs (Hellenistic period) and the rock tombs around Ordu, the rock-tomb tradition of the region has not been examined in detail. In Tekin's surface surveys, the Kapıkaya rock tomb at Evrenköy in Zile stands out for its monumental appearance; the tombs at the Göz and Ağılönü localities of İğdir village differ from scattered and isolated examples by their close proximity and their number. Since the tombs carry no inscription or relief that could help dating, the dating rests on architectural features and on comparison with examples in Paphlagonia and at Karabacak in Yozgat. The keywords of the study include the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

The remains of the temple state itself offer no detailed excavation data. Sökmen notes that our knowledge of Anaitis temples rests largely on coins, that architectural evidence is insufficient, and that for the foundation of the Zela temple there is no record other than the legendary account. This is why the history of the town can still be constructed only from written sources, above all the accounts of Strabo and Caesar.

From Zela to Zile

The origin of the Zile Fair is linked to the temple of Anaitis. According to traditions reported by Şahin, at the visits made in early November the chief priest of the temple was crowned in a great ceremony in autumn, crowds sacrificed animals, and a lively trade arose around the sanctuary in the goods they brought. The word the people used for the fair, Deri or Deyri, may be related to the Persian deyr (temple). Another account attributes the fair to Semiramis, and another to the temple of Omanus which the Persians founded against the cult of Ma at Comana. Şahin writes that, whatever its origin, the Zile Fair is today one of the oldest fairs in Anatolia. This link rests on no firm document; the claim that the fair grew out of the temple of Anaitis remains an interpretation.

With the spread of Christianity the cult of Anaitis declined, but its remnants survived for a long time. Şahin records that around the village of Papaklı (Süleymaniye) in Zile, traces of a cult concerned with fertility and abundance lasted in folk customs until recent times, and that the most important remnant of this period is the Bekimiş Stone, which is very probably pre-Christian. In the Roman and Byzantine age the town was one of the fortresses guarding the eastern frontier, and the Roman road to Neocaesareia and the old road to Sebastopolis passed through Zile.

The date of the Islamic-period conquests is disputed. The year in which Zile was taken by the Danishmendid Melik Ahmed Gazi is given as 1067, 1068, 1071 and 1074; Şahin considers 1074 the more plausible. According to the Danishmend Gazi Epic the siege was hard: the notables of the town took refuge in the inner citadel, and while the wealthy went up into the fortress the poor were left outside. Under the Danishmendids Zile was the centre of a wide region; much of Kadışehri, Çekerek, Akdağmadeni and Sulusaray remained attached to Zile until the last years of the Ottoman state. A building thought to date from antiquity was converted into a mosque, a han was built at Zile in 1227 in Seljuk times, and the Great Mosque was built in the reign of Ghiyath al-Din Kaykhusraw III (666/1267). The town later passed under the Ilkhanids, the Eretnids and the state of Kadı Burhaneddin Ahmed, and Bayezid the Thunderbolt brought the region under Ottoman rule in 1392. The survey registers of 1455 and 1485 show that most of the population worked in weaving.

Relations with Amasya

The tie between Zela and Amaseia is geographical and political. Both towns lay in the interior of the Pontic Kingdom, were linked by a common road network, and belonged to the same system of bronze coinage. Amaseia was an important town of the kingdom and the site of its royal tombs, while Zela was a religious and economic focus as a temple state. That Strabo was a native of Amasya adds a further meaning to this relation: the most valuable ancient description of Zela comes from the writer of the neighbouring town.

Chronology

1400s BC: Hittite frontier centre at Maşat Höyük (Tapikka); the name Anziliya on a tablet is linked with Zile.

6th century BC: The cult of Anaitis enters Anatolia under Persian rule.

4th century BC (approximately): The temple of Anaitis at Zela is thought to have been founded in the late Persian period; there is no document.

67 BC: Mithridates VI defeats the Roman commander Triarius near Zela.

47 BC: Caesar defeats Pharnaces on the plain of Zela.

AD 64: Nero attaches Zela to Galatia.

AD 193-217: Coins of Septimius Severus and Caracalla show the Zela temple and the cult flame.

AD 395: With the division of the Roman Empire Zile remains within the borders of the Eastern Empire.

1074 (disputed): The Danishmendid Melik Ahmed Gazi takes Zile.

1267: The Great Mosque of Zile is built.

1392: Bayezid the Thunderbolt brings the region under Ottoman rule.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Strabo. Geographica, XI.8.4-5; XII.3.31-37.

Academic studies

  • Sökmen, Emine. 'Temple States' of Pontus: Comana Pontica and Zela. Master's thesis, Middle East Technical University, 2005.
  • Şahin, Mustafa. "İlk ve Ortaçağlarda Zile." History Studies 5/3 (2013): 207-222. historystudies.net
  • Tekin, Murat. "Pontos Bölgesi'nin İç Kesimindeki Kaya Mezar Geleneği Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme (Gaziura ve Zela Örnekleri Üzerinden)." TÜBA-AR 26 (2020): 131-147. dergipark.org.tr

Other sources

  • Caesar. De Bello Alexandrino, 72-74.

Online sources