Telmessos Rock Tombs

The Tomb of Amyntas is the most prominent of the Lycian rock-cut tombs carved into the cliff face above Fethiye, Turkey, in the ancient city of Telmessos. A Greek inscription on its facade dates the tomb to approximately 350 BCE and identifies it as the burial place of Amyntas, son of Hermagios. Its temple-like facade with Ionic columns makes it one of the most impressive Lycian funerary monuments.

The tombs were built by the Lycians, an ancient Anatolian people who inhabited the Teke Peninsula of southwestern Asia Minor. Lycian rock tombs were carved into cliff faces to resemble wooden houses or temples, designed to elevate the dead closer to the sky. The Telmessos tombs are among the finest surviving examples of this distinctive funerary tradition.

The tomb is located in the cliffs above the town of Fethiye on Turkey's Aegean coast. Visitors climb a path with stone steps up the hillside to reach the carved facade, a walk of roughly 15-20 minutes from the town center. The climb provides increasingly dramatic views over Fethiye harbor and the surrounding coastline.

Fethiye, built on the ruins of ancient Telmessos, contains numerous other Lycian sarcophagi and smaller rock-cut tombs scattered throughout the modern town. The broader Lycian region, including sites like Myra, Xanthos, and Kaunos, preserves thousands of similar rock-cut burial monuments. Together these form one of the most distinctive archaeological landscapes of the ancient Mediterranean.