The story of Amorium

Aesop, famed for his fables starring animals, was most likely a son of this city, though his birthplace is disputed. Amorium was founded in Phrygia in the Hellenistic period, flourished under Byzantium and began to decline after an Arab sack in 838. It sat on the Byzantine military road from Constantinople to Cilicia, and Arab sources of the time called it the largest city in Anatolia.

Tempting as it is, its name probably does not come from 'amor', love, but from 'ma', mother, pointing to the Anatolian Mother Goddess cult. The city struck its own coins from the 1st century BC until AD 217. Arab writers knew it as 'Ammūriye; the Ottomans called it Hergen Kale.

Its ruins lie beneath and around the village of Hisar, 13 km east of Emirdağ. Excavations began in 1988 under Prof. R. Martin Harrison of Oxford and, since 1993, have been led by Dr. Chris Lightfoot of the Metropolitan Museum.