Arykanda
Ruins of an ancient city near the village of Arif, midway on the Elmali-Finike road. Its name seems to indicate Anatolian origin of the second millennium, and documents from nearby Karataş-Semahülyük support this conjecture. The name appears in the inscriptions of the monument erected in Rhodiapolis to Opramoas, a wealthy man from Lycia who provided many cities with financial help.
The city was built on terraces which still survive on sloping land at the S foot of Akdağ. The walls that surround the city to the E and W are well preserved and characteristic of Hellenistic masonry. On the W side of the torrent bed that divides the city N-S are the private and public buildings. The stadium, probably Hellenistic with Roman additions, is on the highest level of the terraces. The theater, which is well preserved, has a horseshoe-shaped orchestra, and the cavea is built against the slope of the hill. The scaena, built separately, is trapezoidal; it opens through three doors into the lowest part of the proscaena, now completely ruined. The remains of a triglyph-metope decoration confirm its origin in the 2d c. B.C. The necropolis is on the E side of the torrent bed.
In the necropolis there are more than a dozen tomb buildings, one completely excavated. Usually each tomb rests on a podium, and the grave chamber is generally vaulted. One tomb is in the shape of a temple in antis. The sarcophagi appear to date to the end of the 2d c. A.D. or the beginning of the 3d to judge from their inscriptions and architectural elements. The many rock-cut tombs, probably built in the 4th c. B.C. and still in use in the Christian era, have nearly all been robbed. To the S of the necropolis a great building stands intact to the level of the second floor. It consists of three large rooms, and the water pipes indicate a bath or gymnasium. BIBLIOGRAPHY. RE II, 2 (1896) 1497.
C. BAYBURTLUOĞLU