Malatya

Malatya (Armenian: Մալաթիա, Malat'ia; Classical Syriac: ܡܠܝܛܝܢܐ, Malīṭīná; Kurdish: Meletî)[2] is a city in the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and the capital of Malatya Province. The city has been a human settlement for thousands of years. In Hittite, melid or milit means "honey", offering a possible etymology for the name, which was mentioned in the contemporary sources of the time under several variations (e.g., Hittite: Malidiya[3] and possibly also Midduwa;[4] Akkadian: Meliddu;[5] Urar̩tian: Meliṭeia[5]). Strabo says that the city was known "to the ancients"[6] as Melitene (Greek: Μελιτηνή, Melitēnḗ), a name adopted by the Romans following Roman expansion into the east. According to Strabo, the inhabitants of Melitene shared with the nearby Cappadocians and Cataonians the same language and culture.