Perga | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

Perga or Perge (Hittite: Parha, Πέργη Perge, Perge) was originally an ancient Lycian settlement that later became a Greek city in Pamphylia. It was the capital of the Roman province of Pamphylia Secunda, now located in Antalya Province on the southwestern Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Today its ruins lie east of Antalya. It was the birthplace of the Greek mathematician Apollonius of Perga, one of the most notable mathematicians of antiquity for his work on conic sections. A unique and prominent feature for a Roman city was the long central water channel in the centre of the main street which contained a series of cascading pools and which would have been remarkable even today in a semi-arid area where summer temperatures reach over 30 degrees Celsius. Perge was situated on the coastal plain between the Rivers Catarrhactes (Düden Nehri) and Cestrus (Aksu), about 11 km from the mouth of the latter. The history of the city dates back to the Late Chalcolitic Era or Early Bronze Age. The Early Bronze Age pottery found in the Perga Acropolis is linked to the Early Bronze Age pottery traditions in Western Anatolia. Excavations in the original settlement on the acropolis date it to the early Bronze Age, 4000-3000 BC. From a bronze tablet discovered in 1986 in Hattusas, a treaty between the Hittite Great King Tudhaliya IV and his vassal, the king of Tarhuntassa, defined the latter's western border at the city "Parha" and the "Kastaraya River". The river is assumed to be the classical Cestrus. West of Parha were the "Lukka Lands". Parha likely spoke a late Luwian dialect like Lycian and that of the neo-Hittite kingdoms. The settlement probably became a Greek colony of Rhodes in the 7th c. BC. Perge was later a Pamphylian Greek city, and came under successive rule by Persians, Athenians, and Persians again. In 540 BC Perga, along with the other cities in Pamphylia was captured by the Achaemenid Empire. During the reign of Darius I, it was a part of the Satrapy of Ionia.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related concepts (8)

Pamphylia

Pamphylia (pæmˈfɪliə; Παμφυλία, Pamphylía) was a region in the south of Asia Minor, between Lycia and Cilicia, extending from the Mediterranean to Mount Taurus (all in modern-day Antalya province, Turkey). It was bounded on the north by Pisidia and was therefore a country of small extent, having a coast-line of only about 120 km (75 miles) with a breadth of about 50 km (30 miles). Under the Roman administration the term Pamphylia was extended so as to include Pisidia and the whole tract up to the frontiers of Phrygia and Lycaonia, and in this wider sense it is employed by Ptolemy.

Antalya

Antalya (anˈtalja) is the fifth-most populous city in Turkey as well as the capital of Antalya Province. It is seen as the "capital of tourism" in Turkey. Located on Anatolia's southwest coast bordered by the Taurus Mountains, Antalya is the largest Turkish city on the Mediterranean coast outside the Aegean region with over 2.6 million people in its metropolitan area. The city that is now Antalya was first settled around 200 BC by the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon, which was soon conquered by the Romans.

Hellenization

Hellenization (also spelled Hellenisation) or Hellenism is the adoption of Greek culture, religion, language, and identity by non-Greeks. In the ancient period, colonization often led to the Hellenization of indigenous peoples; in the Hellenistic period, many of the territories which were conquered by Alexander the Great were Hellenized; The first known use of a verb that means "to Hellenize" was in Greek (ἑλληνίζειν) and by Thucydides (5th century BC), who wrote that the Amphilochian Argives were Hellenized as to their language by the Ambraciots, which shows that the word perhaps already referred to more than language.