Road station

Baratha

Kızılkale? oder Binbir Kilise?

Baratha, a town of Lycaonia first named by the geographer Ptolemy, struck coins showing a river god. Its site is disputed. One view favours the ruins of Binbir Kilise, with their many churches, in a basin of the volcanic Karadağ, and the map does set the name among mountains; if the name comes from the Greek word for an abyss, the huge crater nearby would fit. The other favours Kızılkale, a hill fortified under King Hartapu by the eighth century BC, as Luwian rock inscriptions show, with a spring nearby that might explain the river god.

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