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Xanthos-Letoon
| Site number: | 484 |
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| Type of site: | Cultural | |
| Date: | - | |
| Date of Inscription: | 1988 | |
| Location: | Eurasia, Turkey, Provinces of Muğla and Antalya | |
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| Description: | Formerly the capital of Lycia, this site demonstrates the unification of Lycian traditions and Hellenic influence, particularly in its funerary art. The site’s epigraphic inscriptions are critical to our comprehension of the history of the Lycian people and their spoken Indo-European language. --WHMNet paraphrase from the description at WHC Site, where additional information is available. | |
| Xanthos (Lycian: Arñna, Greek: Ξάνθος) was the name of a city in ancient Lycia, the site of present day Kınık, Turkey, and of the river on which the city is situated. In early sources, "Xanthos" is used synonymously for Lycia as a whole. The site has been on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list since 1988. The sanctuary of Leto called the Letoon, sometimes Latinized as Letoum, near Xanthos, was one of the most important religious centers of the Lycian region in Anatolia. The site is located between the towns of Kaş and Fethiye in Antalya province of Turkey, approximately four km south of Xanthos along the Xanthos River. Archaeological finds at the site, which was never a fully-occupied settlement, but remained essentially a religious centre, date back to the late sixth century BCE, before the Greek cultural hegemony in Lycia, which began in the early fourth century. In earlier times, the site was probably already sacred to the cult of an earlier mother goddess— she is Eni Mahanahi in Lycia— which was superseded by the worship of Leto, joined by her twin offspring. --Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. | ||
| Source: | http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/484 | |
| Reference: | 1. UNESCO World Heritage Center, Site Page. | |