Armeniae Pylae
Ἀρμενίων Πύλαι
Armeniae Pylae (Ἀρμενίων Πύλαι), the Armenian gates of Eratosthenes (Strab. ii. p.80), are identified by modern geographers with Gergen Kal'ah-sí, at the foot of the Taurus. The Euphrates, sweeping round through Mount Taurus, a few miles above Driskó, attains at that point its most easterly curve, rolls over rapids immediately above the village so named, and then turning again below the cliff of the castle of Gergen, passes through a very narrow gorge above 400 feet in depth. This is the second repulse the river meets with, as the first is placed at Tomisa (Tokhma-Sú). (Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. x. p. 985.) The beds in the lower valley consist of red sandstone and sandstone conglomerate supporting limestone. (Ainsworth, London Geog. Journal, vol. x. p. 333; Chesney, Exped. Euphrat. vol. i. pp. 70, 71, 293, 350.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.