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The Median Empire reconsidered: a view from Kerkenes Dağ*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Geoffrey D. Summers
Geoffrey D. Summers
Affiliation:
Middle East Technical University, Ankara
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Summary

The city on the Kerkenes Dağ in central Anatolia is the largest pre-Hellenistic urban centre on the plateau (figs 1–2). It has plausibly been identified with a city of the Medes, called Pteria by Herodotus (1.76). If the identification is accepted, the city represents an expansion and imposition of Iranian power over the northern part of the central plateau. Kerkenes might thus provide evidence concerning the first sustained cultural, political and military contact between an Iranian imperial regime and Anatolian powers. Unique circumstances and developing technologies are providing an opportunity to map the city in great detail. The data base will enable analyses of the urban dynamics of an ancient city that, by combining Iranian, Anatolian and east Greek elements in centralised urban planning, were perhaps catalytic in the formation and development of the Achaemenid Empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 50 , December 2000 , pp. 55 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 2000

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