KINDYA
(Siğirtmaç) Turkey.
Town in Caria
20 km SW of Milâs. It was of some importance in the
5th c., when it paid one talent in the Delian Confederacy,
but later, apparently in the 3d c., was absorbed into
Bargylia. Herodotos (
5.118) mentions a Pixodaros, son
of Mausolos of Kindya, presumably an ancestor of the
Hekatomnids. Strabo (
658) speaks of it as no longer
existing. The city was chiefly notable for its principal
deity, Artemis Kindyas, whose temple was believed to be
immune from rainfall; she later became a chief deity of
Bargylia.
The ruins are on a steep hill above the village. The
city wall enclosed an area some 450 by 200 m, but large
stretches of it are now destroyed. On the crest is a citadel
ca. 120 m long in dry rubble masonry, with a gate at
the NW end and a smaller fortification at the SE end.
Traces of ancient buildings extend some distance down
the SW slope. Surface pottery includes sherds of 4th c.
date, but nothing recognizably later.
The site of the temple has been determined by inscriptions and architectural fragments at a spot near the village of Kemikler some 2 km to the NE, but virtually
nothing is now to be seen above ground.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. R. Paton & J. Myres,
JHS 16 (1896)
196; A. & T. Akarca,
Milâs (1954) 165-66; G. E. Bean &
J. M. Cook,
BSA 52 (1957) 97-99; G. E. Bean,
Turkey
beyond the Maeander (1971) 82-83.
G. E. BEAN
