MAMA XI 161 (Kidyessos)

Ballance was uncertain whether lines 3-5 had been deliberately erased, naturally worn away, or never inscribed in the first place. At the bottom of the shaft, inverted, Ballance read traces of a very worn inscription (letters 0.035-0.045), καὶ Μαξιμι[άνῳ - - - -].

This is only the second known inscription to carry the name of the city of Kidyessos. The city’s name also appears on a badly worn inscription, copied by Ramsay in 1883 at the village of Bulca on the north-eastern flank of the Büyüksincanlı ovası, a little under 2km SW of Bal Mahmut (Γρατιανόν... ἡ Κιδυησσέων πόλις: see Ramsay 1887: 467-8; Ramsay, Phrygia II 662, no. 625). Ramsay claimed that ‘the actual site is, I think, at a village reported in 1883 by my companion, Mr. Sterrett, as Cutch Eyuk’, the modern village of Küçükhüyük, 3km south of Bulca (Ramsay 1887: 468; cf. Gönçer 1971: 183). More recently, Thomas Drew-Bear has proposed locating the site of Kidyessos in the far south-west of the Büyüksincanlı ovası, at Hisar Tepe, a rocky mound just NNW of Çayhisar, 13km south-west of Bulca (personal communications ap. Aulock 1980: 71 n.199a; TIB Phrygien 301, s.v. Kidyessos). There was certainly a site of some kind at Hisar Tepe: the site was visited by Norbert Mersich in 1985 (TIB Phrygien 301), who saw the remains of ruined walls, large quantities of pottery, some Roman inscriptions and spolia, the remains of an aqueduct and large quantities of early Byzantine architectural fragments.

This milestone furnishes welcome evidence in support of Ramsay’s placement of the site in the north-eastern part of the Büyüksincanlı ovası. Indeed, if the milestone was in situ when it was copied by Ballance, then Kidyessos could well be situated at Bulca itself, which lies almost exactly one Roman mile south-west of Bal Mahmut. At any rate, we may be reasonably confident that Drew-Bear’s identification of the site at Hisar Tepe (a full 15km SE of Bal Mahmut) as Kidyessos is incorrect.

Ballance visited Küçükhüyük in the summer of 1956; a photograph (MHB neg. 5032) shows a group of locals around a decorative column capital of the fifth or sixth century AD. There appears to be no record of the capital in his notebooks.