Malatya lies in the west of eastern Anatolia at a crossroads, where the roads running east to west meet those running north to south. Because the trade routes from Central Asia, the Middle East and Mesopotamia cross here, and because the city commands the passage westward, it has been an important settlement in every period of history.
Its history goes back nine thousand years, on the evidence from the excavations at Cafer Höyük — a site now under the waters of the Karakaya dam. Occupation reaches back to the Palaeolithic, and there was settlement through the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages.
The name is old enough to have been through several languages. The Kültepe tablets call the city Melita, and Bedřich Hrozný, who did so much to decipher Hittite, showed that the word means honey in that language. In Assyrian and Urartian records it turns up as Maldiya, Melitea, Melid, Melide, Meliddu and Malita. The Arabs said Malatiyya, and with the coming of the Turks it became Malatya.
