Road station

Arasaxa

Akmesçit, ehemals Zerezek

Arasaxa, now Akmesçit, once called Zerezek, stood at a fork in the road east of Caesarea: from here travellers could reach Melitene either by a northern road, which the map leaves out, or by the southern one it shows, through Comana and over the Kurubel pass. That pass was apparently the oldest crossing of the Antitaurus between the two cities, marked by milestones, but it seems to have lost its importance by AD 626. Ptolemy names the town among those of Lesser Armenia. The map's figures put it thirty-eight miles from Caesarea, against twenty-four in the Roman register of routes.

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