page_title: Malatya
section_title: Aslantepe
hierarchical_section_title: Malatya / History / Aslantepe
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Schwerter aus Arsenbronze aus Arslantepe im Archäologischen Museum Malatya (3000 v. Chr.)
context_page_description: Malatya is a large city in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and the capital of Malatya Province. The city has been a human settlement for thousands of years. The Assyrians called the city Meliddu. Strabo says that the city was known "to the ancients" as Melitene, a name adopted by the Romans following Roman expansion into the east. According to Strabo, the inhabitants of Melitene shared with the nearby Cappadocians and Cataonians the same language and culture.
  The site of ancient Melitene lies a few kilometres from the modern city in what is now the village of Arslantepe and near the dependant district center of Battalgazi. Present-day Battalgazi was the location of the city of Malatya until the 19th century, when a gradual move of the city to the present third location began. Battalgazi's official name was Eskimalatya; until recently, it was a name used locally. In Turkey the city is renowned for its apricots, as up to 80% of the Turkish apricot production is provided by Malatya, giving Malatya the name kayısı diyarı.
context_section_description: Aslantepe has been inhabited since the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, nearly 6,000 years ago. From the Bronze Age, the site became an administrative center of a larger region in the kingdom of Isuwa. The city was heavily fortified, probably due to the Hittite menace from the west. The Hittites conquered the city in the fourteenth century B.C. In Hittite, melid or milit means "honey", offering a possible etymology for the name, which was mentioned in the contemporary sources of the time under several variations (e.g., Hittite: Malidiya and possibly also Midduwa; Akkadian: Meliddu; Urar̩tian: Melitea).
  After the end of the Hittite empire, the city became the center of the Neo-Hittite state of Kammanu. The city continued old Hittite traditions and styles. Researchers have discovered a palace inside the city walls with statues and reliefs that are examples of the artistic works of that age. The people erected a palace, accompanied by monumental stone sculptures of lions and the ruler. Kammanu was vassal state of Urartu between 804 and 743.
  The Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077 B.C.) forced the kingdom of Malidiya to pay tribute to Assyria. Malidiya continued to prosper until the Assyrian king Sargon II (722–705) sacked the city in 712 BC. At the same time, the Cimmerians and Scythians invaded Anatolia and the city declined. Some occupation continued on the site into the Hellenistic and Roman periods—a smithy with four ovens has been excavated from the Roman period. There was a long gap in occupation between the mid-7th century and renewed use of the site in the late 12th or early 13th century.
  Archeologists first began to excavate the site of Aslantepe in the 1930s, led by French archaeologist Louis Delaporte. Since 1961, an Italian team of archaeologists, today led by Marcella Frangipane, has been working at the site.
  From the 6th century BC Melid was ruled by the Armenian Orontid Dynasty, who were subjects of the Achaemenid Empire. After Achaemenid and Macedonian periods Melid (Malatya) was part of Kingdom of Lesser Armenia.
caption: Early Bronzage swords from Arslantepe also known as Melid, presented in Malatya Museum
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:10:12 16:42:57", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6817", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4752", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3116"}