Aphrodisias was a small city in Caria, Asia Minor. It is located near the modern village of Geyre, Turkey, about 230 km from İzmir.

Aphrodisias was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love, who had here her unique cult image, the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias. According to the Suda, before being known as Aphrodisias, the city had three previous names: Lelegon Polis , Megale Polis , and Ninoë ,The city was later renamed Stauropolis  in the Christian era.

The city was built near a marble quarry which was extensively exploited in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and sculptors in marble from Aphrodisias became famous in the Roman world. Many examples of statuary have been unearthed in Aphrodisias, and some representations of the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias also survive from other parts of the Roman world, as far afield as Portugal.

The quality of the marble in Aphrodisias has also resulted in an unusually large number of inscribed items surviving in the city. Upwards of 2000 inscriptions have been recorded by the New York excavators, many of them re-used in the city walls. Most inscriptions are from the Imperial period, with funerary and honorary texts being particularly well-represented, but there are a handful of texts from all periods from the Hellenistic to Byzantine.