Melia (Ionia)

Melia

Μελία, Μελίη

Mount Mycale, or the Samsun Range, seen from Samos across the straits. The north is to the left. The whole thing was part of Melian territory. The main question about the location of Melia is whether it was at Fort Karion on the lower slopes or at Çatallar Tepe on the upper slopes.

Melia (Ancient Greek: Μελία), was a Carian polis of ancient Ionia that was razed by decision of the Ionian League to which it belonged. This was the earliest known explicit action of that League. There are only a few references to it in the literary sources. However, it is mentioned in a long inscription of Priene, which records a land settlement case between Priene and Samos for the possession of lands formerly belonging to Melia but redistributed to some cities of the League on conclusion of the Meliakos polemos ("Meliac War"). A board of Rhodian arbitrators awarded the land, which included Fort Karion (Carium), to Priene, having determined through due diligence that Samos had received lands on the coastline north of Mycale, while the lands around the fort were given to Priene.

Unfortunately the locations of some of the key players of the inscription remain uncertain: Melia, the Panionion, and Old Priene. (The ruins of Priene currently in evidence are of the rebuilt city, as the old had been razed.) Fort Karion is considered fairly certainly identified. Various suggestions have been made as to the locations of the others, and until the 21st century Melia was believed to have been the same as or to have included Fort Karion on the hill Kale Tepe. Early in the 21st century (2004) Hans Lohmann, an archaeologist, after a survey disputed the accepted location and proposed another he considered more likely.