Kyaneai
City in Lycia, 18 km E of Kaş (Antiphellos), 5 km from the coast. It is listed by Pliny and Hierokles, but otherwise unknown except from coins and inscriptions. It was nevertheless the principal city in the region between Antiphellos and Myra and possessed a considerable territory. The coinage is of Lycian League type and of Gordian III. There are also coins of Rhodes countermarked with a lyre and the letters ΚΥ; these belong presumably to the period of Rhodian possession of Lycia, 189-167 B.C., and were intended for circulation in the central area. In Byzantine times the bishop of Kyaneai ranked 36th and last under the metropolitan of Myra.
The ruins are on a high, steep hill directly above the village. Most of the circuit wall is well preserved; it is of irregular ashlar of moderate quality and late date. Many buildings remain in ruined condition and heavily overgrown, including a large bath building, a library, and many wells and cisterns. The theater, on a lower summit to the W, is of medium size, with 25 rows of seats and one diazoma; the retaining wall is of small polygonal blocks, collapsed at either end. Of the stage building only scanty traces remain. There are countless Lycian sarcophagi everywhere, and in the precipitous S face of the hill is a well-preserved temple tomb with a single fluted Ionic column in the porch; farther E in the same face is a pleasing group of two fine sarcophagi and two house tombs.
BIBLIOGRAPHYT.A.B. Spratt & E. Forbes, Travels in Lycia (1847) 112-17; E. Petersen & F. von Luschan, Reisen in Lykien II (1889) 18-22; G. F. Hill, BM Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Lycia, Pamphylia and Pisidia (1897) 1v.
G. E. BEAN