Many ancient Anatolian cities had a founding god or hero — a ktistes — and Amasya is one of them. A city coin struck under the emperor Septimius Severus, who reigned from AD 193 to 211, carries the legend ERMHC KTICAC THN POLIN, and on that basis Hermes is taken to be the founding god of Amasya.
The name itself has changed with each ruler. Hittite documents suggest the first known name was Hakmiš, and it probably lasted until the Persian conquest. Under the Pontic kingdom the city was Amasseia: the word appears plainly on city coins struck from the 2nd century BC onwards, and the geographer Strabo, who was born here, uses Amaseia as well.
That name points to a goddess. Amaseia is connected with Ama, meaning mother and referring in particular to the Mother Goddess, and with its variant Mâ — so the word can be read as the city of the Mother Goddess Mâ. Mâ was an eastern goddess whose cult spread after the Persian conquest of Anatolia, and she was also the local goddess of Pontos and Cappadocia. The form Amaseia is the Persian-period pronunciation fitted to a Greek mouth.
