Mancınık Castle ( tr, Mancınık Kale) is a

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

castle ruin in

Mersin Province Mersin Province ( tr, ), formerly İçel Province ( tr, ), is a province in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast between Antalya and Adana. The provincial capital and the biggest city in the province is Mersin, which is composed of fo ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. Its original name is unknown.

Geography

The castle is situated in

Silifke Silifke ( grc-gre, Σελεύκεια, ''Seleukeia'', la, Seleucia ad Calycadnum) is a town and district in south-central Mersin Province, Turkey, west of the city of Mersin, on the west end of Çukurova. Silifke is near the Mediterranean coast ...

district of Mersin Province, at , about bird's flight to

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...

. Visitors to the site follow the road from

Narlıkuyu Narlıkuyu (; in Turkish) is a small coastal town in Mersin Province, Turkey. History A small 4th century building, once part of a bath and baptism complex financed by Poimenios of Corycus, survives to the present in the area (''see'' Narl� ...

and

Cennet In Islam, Jannah ( ar, جَنّة, janna, pl. ''jannāt'',lit. "paradise, garden", is the final abode of the righteous. According to one count, the word appears 147 times in the Quran. Belief in the afterlife is one of the six articles of f ...

to north . The last of the course which detaches from the road to east is actually a rough path. The castle is situated on the clift which overviews the Şeytanderesi canyon to the east.

Adamkayalar Adamkayalar (literally "man-rocks") is a location in Mersin Province, Turkey famous for rock carved figures. Geography Adamkayalar is on the southern slopes of the Toros Mountains only several kilometers north of the Kızkalesi and Mediterrane ...

(which is historically unrelated to the castle) is situated 7 km southeast in the east wall of the canyon.

History

The first archaeological research of the site has been carried out by Levent Zoroğlu in 1987.Cultural research symposium papers
The walls are made of polygonal shaped stones, a characteristics of

Hellenistic architecture Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period generally taken to begin with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and end with the conquest of the Greek world by the Romans, a process well underway by 146 BCE, when the Greek mainlan ...

. Also there are few inscriptions. Although these are mostly erased a few words could be read. Hellenistic origin is also confirmed by a decrypted word ''oikodomos''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mancinik Castle Silifke District Hellenistic architecture Ancient Greek archaeological sites in Turkey Ruined castles in Turkey Castles in Turkey Castles in Mersin Province Archaeological sites in Mersin Province, Turkey