Harnessing Mountain Power in Ancient Anatolia

Summary

For the inhabitants of Bronze and Iron Age Anatolia, nearly every feature in the landscape was a god: rivers and springs, trees and rocks, lakes and mountains—mountains above all. Kings in Hattusas swore oaths by them. Luwian rulers claimed mountains as their own with conspicuous rock-cut reliefs and inscriptions. According to ancient sources, a mountain was among the earliest Lydian kings; that very mountain once acted as judge in a musical duel between Apollo and Pan! But how did people in Greek and Roman Anatolia interpret and manipulate this rich (and sometimes bizarre) legacy? Who cared to harness cultural mountain power in Western Anatolia especially when the great political and financial centers on the peninsula were mainly on the coasts and plains? How did they do so? Why? I use a combination of material and textual evidence to tackle these questions.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Connecting highlands and lowlands – Towards a holistic approach to upland and lowland symbiosis in the past, present and for the future

Keywords

Spatial Coverage