1. Introduction

Hypaepa was a city of Lydia, at the foot of Tmolos, in Mount Aepos in the plain of Kaikos, near the village of Günlüce (former Datbey, Tapaı, and Hypaepa in Greek), 4 km to the NW of the city of Ödemış. The site was identified by the French travellers Cousinéry and Texier and was confirmed by excavations carried out there on behalf of the Ottoman administration in 1892 by Demosthenes Mpaltatzes. The city was situated in a strategic position, on the road connecting Sardis with Ephesus, along the former Achaemenid royal road of the ancient and classical years. The territory of Hypaepa included some towns or katoikies (settlements), such as Dideifytinon Katoikia (or Dideifyta, Idefytinon or Τiteifytinon katoikia), Kinamoura, Postais and a[l]keanon Katoikia. The name is Greek, derived from the position of the city at the foot of Mount Aepos.¹

2. Historical Background

The sole mythological evidence of the city is the privilege granted by Aphrodite of having beautiful women. Most historical evidence is related to the worship of Artemis Anaitis, a privilege of the Persian Lydians. However, there is no evidence proving that Hypaepa was an Achaemenid colony. An Iranian-Greek stele of that period representing a banquet is the sole evidence of Achaemenid presence in the city. In the Imperial period the priests of the goddess had Greek names.²

In 88 BC the city, together with Tralleis and Mesopolis, rebelled against Mithradates VI,but after it was besieged it was occupied and suffered harsh reprisals. The city was in its heyday in the early Imperial years, when its mint was active. It belonged to the conventus of Ephesus, where inscriptions found report a large number of inhabitants of Hypaepa. Although the city stood as a candidate for neokoria, the privilege of building a temple dedicated to Emperor Tiberius (14-37 AD) with the permission of the emperor, it was rejected, as were the candidacies of Tralleis, Laodicea and Magnesia ad Sipylum because they were considered unimportant. Indeed, Ovid calls Hypaepa a humble city.³

3. Economy – Society – Institutions

Significant information about the social and economic structure of the city is derived from an inscription of the Imperial years stating that a benefactor, whose name is unknown, donated vineyards and reed thickets to the city and the union of the six systems (guilds of the city), two of which were those of wool vendors and manufacturers of clothes from flax. The donation also included two winepresses and a number of big vessels (pithoi) apportioned between the city and the guilds, and defined the obligations of superintendents responsible for preserving and improving the vineyards as well as supervising the operation of the winepresses. Another part of the inscription states that the specific benefactor has mortgaged a plot of land in the town of Kinamoura and has donated the amount of the mortgage to the city, in order to secure free operation of the baths. Finally, the inscription states that a heroon intended for the entombment of the benefactor’s son should be built, with two statues made of marble from Aphrodisias surrounding its gate, and that burial rites should be performed in memory of him. The benefactor states that the steles should be hanged up on the seats of the systems and the archons should make sure that the name of some unknown goddess appears in her temple, in the Herakleion and in the gymnasium of the Olympieum.

According to other sources, the wines from the region of Tmolos were greatly appreciated. Another inscription from the city provides a part of the land register of the countryside around the city mentioning mainly vineyards. Apart form the economic interest the inscription of the donation has, it is also a source of information about administration: the city had its own institutions, a boule, whose members were appointed as supervisors of the donation, a boularchos (president of the senate) and archons. Other inscriptions mention the strategoi (chief magistrates)of the city. Finally, evidence from coins mentions the names of various officials, such as the stephanephoroi (certain magistrates, who have the right to wear a wreath), the clerk (grammateus) and the asiarch.

The dependent towns were to some extent self-governed. There is evidence that the town of Dideifyta saw to the restoration of abath building. The works are financed by the comarchus, who must have had considerable power and financial standing in his community, as evidenced by the fact that he spent the amount of 1000 denarii on the occasion of his election.

The presence of Jews in the city is of particular interest, as indicated by an inscription from the Synagogue of Sardis, which was benefited by a citizen and member of the boule of Hypaepa. The Jewish community of Hypaepa is also known from other epigraphic sources.⁴

4. Religion

Hypaepa must have been the centre for the worship of Artemis Anaitis because the high priest of the goddess in Asia is honoured after his death on an inscription found in the city. A different inscription mentions archimagus (the chief of the magi) of the worship. According to Pausanias, the magician performed the rite before an altar from ashes and while he was reading a hymn in an unknown language he set the timber on fire without spark. The worship, apart form the exotic rites, also included festival games, the Great Artemisia, performed in the area of Artemisias – probably the quarter where the temple of Artemis Anaitis was. The goddess appears on coins minted in the city, according to the iconographic type of Artemis of Ephesus, with the addition of a veil ornamented with representations of torrents and rivers. Numismatic, epigraphic and literary sources provide information about the worships of Artemis in her Greek version, Cybele, Aphrodite, Heracles, Zeus, Asclepius, Apollo and the Lydian Dionysus Vassareus. There are epigraphs providing evidence about the temples of Heracles and Zeus in Hypaepa.⁵

5. Buildings and Excavations

There are few remains preserved in the city of Hypaepa because the buildings were used as building material by the inhabitants of the city of Ödemış. The 19^th century the scholars that visited Hypaepa talk about three ancient single-arched bridges across the Kaustros River, traces of a big aqueduct and a theatre in the western part of the acropolis, whose foundations were preserved and must have been about 65 m in diameter. The marble steps of the theatre were used in the church of Ödemış. In the plain one could see the remains of a temple on raised podium, while near the second bridge across River Kaustros there was a large underground portico, built from sizable rough stones of granite and plaster and consisting of two passages divided by a colonnade, with a wall connecting the columns. The foundation of a portico above the underground room, probably a part of the temple, has also been preserved. The traces of a 5-metre high and 2.4-metre wide fortification wall were still preserved towards the late 19^th century in the acropolis, which is 387.5 m above sea level. There were preserved parts of the wall in other parts of the city as well, built of the same masonry as the underground portico, though less carefully.⁶

6. Byzantine Hypaepa

Judging by the remains of Byzantine churches, epigraphs and numismatic evidence reported by early scholars, Hypaepa must have been a relatively thriving city in the Byzantine period. Moreover, the bridges across the Kaustros River have late Roman and Byzantine constructional features.
According to the only available literary sources, Hypaepa was a bishopric dependent on the metropolis of Ephesus. In the years of Emperor Isaac II Angelus (1186-1195 AD) it was promoted to archbishopric.⁷