Lykastia - Chadesia

Other Cities of the Amazons

hemiskyra was the most famous city of the Amazons but beside it there are two other towns which are supposed to be cities of the Amazons: Lykastia and Chadesia.
Apollonius Rhodius gives us following account (Argonautica II, 996 - 1000):
For they dwelt not gathered together in one city, but scattered over the land, parted into three tribes. In one part dwelt the Themiscyreians, over whom at that time Hippolyte reigned, in other the Lycastians, and in another the dart-throwing Chadesians.

On the tracks of these cities

Some finds from Dündartepe The archaeological evidence implies an outstanding unique culture. Some exceptional finds are already presented on the public web-site. See there. Here on the left you see a beautiful needle made of bone with an intriguing eye motive. On the right there are two weapons which were found at Dündartepe.

Dündartepe was the city of Lykastia, the nearby Tekkeköy was the fortress of Lykastia, and there was the cemetery too.
=> The cemetery at Tekkeköy
=> The fortress of Tekkeköy

Chadesia:
The identification of ancient Chadesia is not as easy. The ancient tradition handed down that Chadesia was the name of a river and a city, and that city was the western border of the Themiskyreian land. But there is no definite localization. A very probable suggestion is to identify Chadesia with the mighty ruins of Akalan. Akalan lies about 18 km southwest of Samsun (Amisos). Then the river with this name may be the Kurtun Irmak.

Akalan It represents an impressive building made of large stones. On the left you see the remains of a gateway. On the right you see the huge wall.

There are some arguments for the identification of Chadesia with the ruins of Akalan: Akalan is situated at the western outskirts of the Iris-Thermodon plain which forms a coherent region. Furthermore, there is an ancient account that Chadesia was 150 stadia (about 27 km) off Lykastos, that would roughly tally with theses places.

here are Hittite writings belonging to the second half of the second millennium B.C. which mention a city named Chajasa. This city was the capital of the land Azzi, and this land was localized at the coast of the Black Sea. In fact, it is very probable that the land of the Amazons at the river Thermodon and the country Azzi are geographically identical.
The name Azzi is similar to the term Amazon. A well-known German researcher of Hittite History, named Friedrich Cornelius, has suggested that the term Amazon is formed by the word Am - a popular word for mother or woman (also in Hittite language) - in combination with the name of the land Azzi, so Amazon means Woman of the land Azzi.
Moreover, the name of the capital of the Azzi-land Chajasa is very similar to the name of the Amazon city Chadesia.
In any case, these conformities are rather striking!

here is another, rather bold localization of Chadesia. West of the Iris-Thermodon plain there is a similar fertile plain, the plain of the river Kizilirmak (in antiquity: Halys). In this region there have been excavated very similar finds to those in Dündartepe. There the most important place of discovery is Ikiztepe near Bafra. It has been suggested that these plains formed a coherent culture, thus it seems possible that Chadesia is identical with Ikiztepe.
=> Ikiztepe - Research campaign 1999

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