According to ancient geographers, Comana was situated in Cappadocia (and later Cataonia). Another epithet for the city, found in inscriptions, is
Hieropolis /ˌhaɪəˈræpəlɪs/ () 'sacred city', owing to a famous temple of the Syrian Moon goddess Enyo or, in the local language:
Ma.
Strabo and
Julius Caesar visited it; the former enters into long details about its position in a deep valley on the
Sarus (Seihoun) river. The temple and its fame in ancient times as the place where the rites of
Ma-Enyo, a variety of the great west Asian nature-goddess, were celebrated with much solemnity. The service was carried on in a sumptuous temple with great magnificence by many thousands of
hierodouloi (temple slaves). To defray expenses, large estates had been set apart, which yielded a more than royal revenue. The city, a mere apanage of the temple, was governed directly by the chief priest, who was always a member of the reigning Cappadocian family, and took rank next to the king. The number of persons engaged in the service of the temple, even in
Strabo's time, was upwards of 6,000, and among these, to judge by the names common on local tomb-stones, were many Persians. Under the Romans the temple was reassigned to
Bellona and
Lycomedes established as high priest. Emperor
Caracalla made Comana a Roman colony, and the temple-city received honors from later emperors down to the official recognition of
Christianity. Comana Chryse, or the golden, appears from one of the
Novellae of
Justinian (
Nov. 31. c. 1), to distinguish it from the Comana in Pontus. It was in the division which he named the
Third Armenia, and which, he observes, contained
Melitene, near the
Euphrates. '',
National Museum in
Warsaw. There was a tradition that
Orestes, with his sister, brought from
Tauric Scythia the sacred rites of this temple, which were those of Tauropolos
Artemis. Here Orestes deposited the hair that he cut from his head to commemorate the end of his sufferings (), and hence, according to a folk etymology of the Greeks, came the name of the place, Comana. And in later times, to make the name suit the story better, as it was supposed, it was changed to . (Eustath.
ad Dionys. v. 694; Procop.
Persic. i. 17.) The city minted coins in antiquity that bear the epigraphs
Col. Aug. Comana, and
Col. Iul. Aug. Comanenoru or
Comainoru. The site lies at Şarköy or Şar (once usually transcribed Shahr), a village in the
Anti-Taurus on the upper course of the
Sarus (
Sihun), mainly
Armenian, but surrounded by later settlements of
Avshar Turkomans and
Circassians. The place has derived importance both in antiquity and now from its position at the eastern end of the main pass of the western Anti-Taurus range, the
Kuru Çay, through which passed the road from
Caesarea-Mazaca (modern
Kayseri) to
Melitene (modern
Malatya), converted by
Septimius Severus into the chief military road to the eastern frontier of the empire. The extant remains at Şar include a theatre on the left bank of the river, a fine Roman doorway and many inscriptions; but the exact site of the great temple has not been satisfactorily identified. There are many traces of Severus's road, including a bridge at Kemer, and an immense number of milestones, some in their original positions, others reused in cemeteries. ==Ecclesiastical history==