Antiphellos Antik Kenti

About Antiphellos Antik Kenti

Antiphellos, known in the Lycian language as Habesos or Habesa, is the ancient city beneath and around the modern town of Kaş. Its name means the place opposite the rocky place, or opposite Phellos, the city to the north for which it served as the port. A member of the Lycian League, it has been lived in since the 6th century BC. In the Hellenistic period, as trade grew in importance, Antiphellos developed faster than Phellos, and it remained an important harbour town under the Roman Empire. From the middle of the 2nd century BC it was known for the coins it struck both for itself and on behalf of the League. The remains are spread around Kaş and along the peninsula that runs east to west from the town. Hellenistic walls of rectangular masonry can be seen where the peninsula begins and on the side facing the island of Meis. Where the walls overlook the harbour, south-east of a church later converted into a mosque, stand the remains of a temple within its temenos; the deity it served is unknown, and the original building dates to the 1st century BC with later additions from the 3rd century AD. The best-preserved monument is the Hellenistic theatre on the southern slope of the acropolis hill. It faces the sea, has 26 rows of seats divided into three sections by four stairways, and has no diazoma or permanent stone stage building. North-east of the theatre is a 4th century BC tomb chamber cut into the bedrock and carved with reliefs of 24 women. In the town itself, on Uzun Çarşı Caddesi, stands the monolithic Lycian sarcophagus that has become the symbol of Kaş. Locally called the king tomb (kral mezarı), it dates to the 4th century BC, has lion-head motifs on the corners of its Gothic-arched lid and carries an eight-line inscription in Lycian that has not yet been deciphered. Many more rock tombs, some with Lycian inscriptions, line the hill that bounds Kaş to the north-east; one was reused centuries later for a woman named Claudia Recepta and given a Latin inscription. Antiphellos is among the Lycian cities proposed for the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009, and it can be reached on buses to Kaş.