Northern Lykaonia (MAMA XI 275-293)

Under the heading of ‘Northern Lykaonia’ I have grouped nineteen monuments (all copied by Ballance in the summer of 1956) from the villages immediately to the north and north-east of the shallow range of hills known as the Ballık Dağı (the northern extension of the Boz Dağ). It is not possible to assign these villages to ancient city-territories with any confidence; some may well have belonged to the territory of Perta, on the east flank of the Ballık Dağı.

A single monument derives from the modern village of Oğuzeli (formerly Akören), the ancient village of Anzoulada, deep in the steppe south-west of Lake Tatta, bringing the total number of inscriptions from the village to eleven (MAMA XI 275).1 West of Oğuzeli, just to the north of the Ballık Dağı range, the village of Zıvarık (today Altınekin) has produced three new inscriptions (MAMA XI 276-278). Zıvarık has been identified, on very fragile grounds, with a road-station Congusso/Kongoustos listed by Ptolemy and the Peutinger Table on the road from Amorion to Perta.2 On the basis of a single bilingual Greek/Neo-Phrygian inscription, Calder argued that Zıvarık was ‘Phrygian, and therefore Laodicean’; however, the votive monument MAMA XI 276 links Zıvarık with the ancient village of Senzousa, in the steppe 19km NNE of Zıvarık, and the existence of funerary inscriptions for a brother and sister at Zıvarık and Perta (MAMA XI 278 [Zıvarık], MAMA XI 335 [Koçaş]) provides some support for the notion that Zıvarık lay on the territory of Perta.3

To the south of Zıvarık, at the neighbouring villages of Akçaşar and Zengicek (now Koçyaka), Ballance copied two inscriptions (MAMA XI 279-280) and nine inscriptions (MAMA XI 281-289) respectively. Two small Byzantine forts are known in the region, Akçaşar Kalesi, just to the south-west of the village, and Zengicek Kalesi, 2km west of Zengicek.4 Three inscriptions derive from small villages in the steppe north of Zıvarık, Hoydus (now Akıncılar), Tekir Yaylası, and Maydos (MAMA XI 290-292). Finally, Ballance copied a single Byzantine-period inscription at the village of Tutup (now Yazıbelen), south-west of Zıvarık on the main Konya-Ankara highway, on the north flank of the ridge which marked the northern limit of the territory of ancient Ikonion (MAMA XI 293).

List of monuments from Northern Lykaonia

Notes

1. Calder 1923a: 353; MAMA I, p. xix; MAMA VIII 288-95; TIB Galatien 131, s.v. Anzulada; I.Konya 46 (corrected in the commentary to MAMA XI 275).

2. Ramsay 1906: 247-9; Calder 1932: 463; MAMA VII, pp. xxiii-xxiv; TIB Galatien 153, s.v. Congusso. Inscriptions: Callander 1906: 172-5, nos. 57-67; MAMA I 2, 4, 7b, 17, 20, 157, 204-5, 235, 237-8, 285; Calder 1922: 120-1, no. 4; MAMA VII 5, 104a-d; I.Konya 133, 213.

3. Calder 1911: 194-5, no. 51; MAMA I, p. xv; also attributed to Laodikeia by Drew-Bear 1987: 606 (cf. 614, nn.59-60). Senzousa: MAMA I, p. xix; MAMA VIII 296; TIB Galatien 223, s.v. Senzusa.

4. TIB Galatien 118-9, s.v. Akçaşar; 245, s.v. Zengicek Kalesi. Inscriptions from Akçaşar: Laminger-Pascher 1984: 17-20, nos. 1-2 (the first corrected by Drew-Bear 1987: 612-4 [SEG 37, 1239]); from Zengicek: Calder 1924: 30-2 (SEG 6, 400).