Comana, Cappadocia
Encyclopedia
Cappadocia
Cappadocia is a historical region in Central Anatolia, largely in Nevşehir Province.In the time of Herodotus, the Cappadocians were reported as occupying the whole region from Mount Taurus to the vicinity of the Euxine...
and later Cataonia
Cataonia
Cataonia was one of the divisions of ancient Cappadocia.It is described by Strabo, who had visited it, as a level plain surrounded by mountains: on the south by the Amanus, and on the west by the Antitaurus, which branches off from the Cilician Taurus and contains deep narrow valleys Cataonia was...
' onMouseout='HidePop("44616")' href="/topics/Comana,_Pontus">Comana in Pontus
Comana, Pontus
Comana or Pontic Comana was an ancient city of Pontus, said to have been colonized from Comana in Cappadocia.It stood on the river Iris , and from its central position was, according to the ancient historian Strabo, a favorite emporium of Armenian and other merchants...
). The Hittite
Hittite language
Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...
toponym Kummanni
Kummanni
Kummanni was the name of the Anatolian kingdom of Kizzuwatna. Its location is uncertain, but is believed to be near the classical settlement of Comana in Cappadocia.Kummanni was the major cult center of the Hurrian chief deity, Tešup...
is considered likely to refer to Comana, but the identification is not considered proven. Its ruins are at the modern Turkish
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
village of Şar, Tufanbeyli
Tufanbeyli
Tufanbeyli is small city and a district in Adana Province of Turkey, 196 km north-east of the city of Adana, on an uneven, sloping plateau high in the Tahtalı range of the Toros mountains. It has been bounded economically to Kayseri, 178 km far...
district, Adana Province
Adana Province
Adana Province is a province of Turkey located in south-central Anatolia. With a population of 2,085,225, it is the fifth most populous province in Turkey. The administrative seat of the province is the city of Adana, home to 78% of the residents of the province...
.
History
According to ancient geographers, Comana was situated in Cappadocia (and later Cataonia). Another epithet for the city, found in inscriptions, is Hieropolis 'sacred city', owing to a famous temple of the Syrian Moon goddess Enyo or, in the local language: Ma (cf. Men, the moon goddess of CariaCaria
Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...
). Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
and Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
visited it; the former enters into long details about its position in a deep valley on the Sarus
Seyhan River
The Seyhan River is the longest river in Turkey that is flowing into Mediterranean Sea. The river is 560 km and flows southwest from its headwaters in the Tahtalı-Mountains in Anti-Taurus Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea via a broad delta...
(Seihoun) river. The temple and its fame in ancient times as the place where the rites of Ma-Enyo, a variety of the great west Asian nature-goddess, were celebrated with much solemnity. The service was carried on in a sumptuous temple with great magnificence by many thousands of hieroduli (temple slaves). To defray expenses, large estates had been set apart, which yielded a more than royal revenue. The city, a mere apanage of the temple, was governed directly by the chief priest, who was always a member of the reigning Cappadocian family, and took rank next to the king. The number of persons engaged in the service of the temple, even in Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
's time, was upwards of 6000, and among these, to judge by the names common on local tomb-stones, were many Persians. Under the Romans the temple was reassigned to Bellona
Bellona (goddess)
Bellona was an Ancient Roman goddess of war, similar to the Ancient Greek Enyo. Bellona's attribute is a sword and she is depicted wearing a helmet and armed with a spear and a torch....
and Lycomedes
Lycomedes of Comana
Lycomedes of Comana was a Bithynian nobleman of Cappadocian Greek descent who ruled Comana, Cappadocia in the second half of the 1st century BC. In 47 BC Lycomedes was probably about 50 years old, when he was named by Roman Dictator Gaius Julius Caesar the priest of the goddess Bellona in the...
established as high priest. Emperor Caracalla
Caracalla
Caracalla , was Roman emperor from 198 to 217. The eldest son of Septimius Severus, he ruled jointly with his younger brother Geta until he murdered the latter in 211...
, made Comana a Roman colony, and the temple-city received honors from later emperors down to the official recognition of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. Comana Chryse, or the golden, appears from one of the Novellae of Justinian (Nov. 31. c. 1), to distinguish it from the Comana in Pontus. It was in the division which he named the Third Armenia, and which, he observes, contained Melitene, near the Euphrates
Euphrates
The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...
.
There was a tradition that Orestes
Orestes
Orestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , by Euripides*Orestes, the character in Sophocles' tragedy Electra*Orestes, the character in Aeschylus' trilogy of tragedies, Oresteia...
, with his sister, brought from Tauric Scythia the sacred rites of this temple, which were those of Tauropolos Artemis
Artemis
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
. Here Orestes deposited the hair that he cut from his head to commemorate the end of his sufferings , and hence, according to an folk etymology of the Greeks, came the name of the place, Comana. And in later times, to make the name suit the story better, as it was supposed, it was changed to . (Eustath. ad Dionys. v. 694; Procop. Persic. i. 17.)
The city minted coins in antiquity that bear the epigraphs Col. Aug. Comana, and Col. Iul. Aug. Comanenoru or Comainoru.
The site lies at Şarköy or Şar (usually transcribed Shahr), a village in the Anti-Taurus on the upper course of the Sarus
Seyhan River
The Seyhan River is the longest river in Turkey that is flowing into Mediterranean Sea. The river is 560 km and flows southwest from its headwaters in the Tahtalı-Mountains in Anti-Taurus Mountains to the Mediterranean Sea via a broad delta...
(Sihun), mainly Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
, but surrounded by new settlements of Avshar Turkoman
Avshar Turkoman
Avshars are a branch of the Turkic Oghuz groups in Anatolia and Azerbaijan, which are also called Turkmens. These originally nomadic Oghuz tribes moved from Central Asia through Iran, Syria and finally settled in Anatolia....
s and Circassians. The place has derived importance both in antiquity and now from its position at the eastern end of the main pass of the western Anti-Taurus range, the Kuru Chai, through which passed the road from Caesarea-Mazaca (moern. Kayseri
Kayseri
Kayseri is a large and industrialized city in Central Anatolia, Turkey. It is the seat of Kayseri Province. The city of Kayseri, as defined by the boundaries of Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality, is structurally composed of five metropolitan districts, the two core districts of Kocasinan and...
) to Melitene (modern Malatya
Malatya
Malatya ) is a city in southeastern Turkey and the capital of its eponymous province.-Overview:The city site has been occupied for thousands of years. The Assyrians called the city Meliddu. Following Roman expansion into the east, the city was renamed in Latin as Melitene...
), converted by Septimius Severus
Septimius Severus
Septimius Severus , also known as Severus, was Roman Emperor from 193 to 211. Severus was born in Leptis Magna in the province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the customary succession of offices under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus seized power after the death of...
into the chief military road to the eastern frontier of the empire. The extant remains at Şar include a theatre on the left bank of the river, a fine Roman doorway and many inscriptions; but the exact site of the great temple has not been satisfactorily identified. There are many traces of Severus's road, including a bridge at Kemer, and an immense number of milestones, some in their original positions, others reused in cemeteries.
Ecclesiastical history
It remains a Roman Catholic titular seeTitular see
A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular bishop", "titular metropolitan", or "titular archbishop"....
of Asia Minor. St. Basiliscus was put to death at Comana and was buried there; according to Palladius, the historian of St. Chrysostom, he was bishop of the city, but this is very doubtful. Its bishop, Elpidius, was present at the First Council of Nicaea
First Council of Nicaea
The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325...
, in 325. Leontius, a semi-Arian, held the see in the time of the Emperor Jovian. Bishop Heraclius appeared at the Council of Chalcedon
Council of Chalcedon
The Council of Chalcedon was a church council held from 8 October to 1 November, 451 AD, at Chalcedon , on the Asian side of the Bosporus. The council marked a significant turning point in the Christological debates that led to the separation of the church of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 5th...
in 451: Comana was then a suffragan of Melitene, the metropolis of Armenia Secunda; since then it figures as such in most of the Notitiae episcopatuum
Notitiae Episcopatuum
The Notitiae Episcopatuum are official documents that furnish Eastern countries the list and hierarchical rank of the metropolitan and suffragan bishoprics of a church....
to the twelfth century. Two other bishops are known: Hormizes, or Mormisdas, about 458 (letter to the Emperor Leo; see also Photius, Biblioth., Cod. 51) and Theodorus at the Fifth Ecumenical Council, in 553.
The ruins of Comana are visible ten miles north-west of Guksun (Cocussus), in the Ottoman vilayet of Adana (Lequien, I, 447; William Mitchell Ramsay
William Mitchell Ramsay
Sir William Mitchell Ramsay was a Scottish archaeologist and New Testament scholar. By his death in 1939 he had become the foremost authority of his day on the history of Asia Minor and a leading scholar in the study of the New Testament...
, The Historical Geography of Asia Minor).
Homonymous dioceses
- Another episcopal see named Comana, suffragan of NeocaesareaNeocaesarea, Pontus (titular see)Neocaesarea is a Catholic titular see. The original diocese was in Pontus Polemoniacus, at first called Cabira. It corresponds to present-day Niksar, Turkey.-History:...
, was situated in Pontus Polemoniacus; it had also a temple of Ma and was surnamed Hierocaesarea 'Caesar's sacred [city]'. It was captured by Sulla, 83 B.C. Six bishops are mentioned by Lequien (I, 517); the first is St. Alexander the Charcoal-Seller, consecrated by St. Gregory the Wonder-Worker. This town became modern Gomenek, or Gomanak, a village south-west of Neocaesarea (Niksar), in the Ottoman vilayet of SivasVilayet of SivasThe Vilayet of Sivas ; ) was one of the vilayets of the Ottoman Empire. It was also one of the Six vilayets. The vilayet was bordered by Erzurum Vilayet to the east, Mamuretülaziz Vilayet to the south-east, the Trebizond Vilayet to the north and Ankara Vilayet to the west...
. - Lequien (I, 1009) gives another Comana in Pamphylia Prima, suffragan of SideSideSide was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, in the region of Pamphylia, in what is now Antalya province, on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey...
; the true name is Conana. Zoticus, who lived at the time of Montanus, was bishop of Conana in Pamphylia or of Comama in Pontus, not of Comana in Cappadocia. Cosmas of Conana appeared at the Third Council of ConstantinopleThird Council of ConstantinopleThe Third Council of Constantinople, counted as the Sixth Ecumenical Council by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and other Christian groups, met in 680/681 and condemned monoenergism and monothelitism as heretical and defined Jesus Christ as having two energies and two wills...
in 680. Conana became modern Gunen, in the Ottoman vilayet of Adana.