The Site of Derbe; A New Inscription

Abstract

The question of the site of Derbe has for many years exercised the ingenuity of those who have studied the topography of ancient Lycaonia.As long ago as 1824 Leake wrote that “of the cities, which the journey of St. Paul has made so interesting to us, the site of one only (Iconium) is yet certainly known. Perga, Antioch of Pisidia, Lystra, and Derbe, remain to be discovered”.Leake's own conjecture as to the site of Perga was confirmed within thirty years; Antioch was fixed beyond reasonable doubt by Arundell in 1833; and fifty-two years later Sterrett confirmed Leake's suggestion that Lystra lay at Hatunsaray.The following dedication by the council and people of Derbe, found by the writer in 1956 at Kerti Hüyük, twenty-two kilometres north-north-east of Karaman, provides an answer to the last of Leake's problems and shows that his own location of Derbe at Maden Şehir, based though it was on the slenderest of evidence, was probably closer to the truth than any of those proposed by his successors in the field.