Turkish Flying Carpet - II

I: Ankara, Hattuşa, and Cappadocia

Thu, 5 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0700

a: Ankara

From Istanbul to Ankara was a 6-hour journey going East on good highways. Since this is the most important highway in Turkey, linking Istanbul with Ankara, the country’s capital, a shortcut is in the planning stage to reduce traveling time by 2 hours. The work involves a new highway, which will be suspended hundreds of feet above the valley floor. It will then go through a 28 km long tunnel.

Our first destination was the cute, new, very nicely appointed Mavi Ocak Motel and Restaurant close to Sungurlu. The people were very nice, but it was cold in the rooms at night. The staff had not realized that we were coddled tourists from the USA, and not the regular hardy Turkish type.

left: The Mavi Ocak Motel. The hotel has just opened and the whole staff came outside to wave us goodbye when we left.

b: The Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzasi and the Hittites.

This museum was not very large, but it was exceedingly well set up, with very nice presentations. They received the 1997 Award for Best European Museum.

right: Entrance to the Anadolu Museum

They have an impressive collection of artifacts from the neolithic era, 7000 - 5500 BC. There are mother goddess figurines from this era symbolizing fertility; the forerunners of Cybele, Artemis, and Diana.

Ankara is in the area where the Hittites came from Anatolia in the 19th century BC and became a powerful kingdom by the 14th century BC. The museum has, as can be expected, many artifacts from their culture. The Hittites have been mentioned many times in the Bible and other ancient documents.

left: Bronze stag from Alacahöyük, 2500 BC. This sculpture is surprisingly similar to sculpture we saw in the Sanxingdui Museum in China. They are from about the same period. Is there a relationship?

right: Libation to the gods by an ancient Hittite king and his wife. The quality of this frieze., chiseled in soft sandstone in the 9-10th century BC, is remarkable. Not the interesting headgear worn by the men. The kings also have curved scimitars in their right hand.

c: Hattuşa and the Battle of Kadesh.

Hattuşa was the ancient capital of the Hittites; it is now located in the Bogazköy National Park to protect the ruins. The city was found to have at least 28 temples and was also known as the “City of a Thousand Gods”. The inhabitants were religiously very tolerant; newcomers were allowed to build their own churches and worship their own gods. The ruins are extensive, but there was not much left standing of the buildings, which were originally constructed from timber and mud bricks. Both these building materials disappear with time. But some of the extensive stone walls from the 7 km long city walls are still there.

At its apex, the city covered some 445 acres. In the inner city was a citadel with many administrative buildings and temples. There are also the ruins of the royal castle, built on a high ridge.

left: Extensive ruins of the area around the center of the city.

right: The King’s Gate in the city walls from the inside looking out.

left: Climbing the steep stairs on the city’s fortifications.

The battle of Kadesh pitted the forces of the Hittites under Muwatallis against the Egyptian army under Ramses II. It is the earliest battle in history where thousands of combatants faced each other and where details of the tactics and formations used have been recorded. The exact date of the battle is not known. It is somewhere around 1299 BC. Ramses II had marched north from Egypt, and Muwatali marched south from Hattuşa; they encountered each other at Kadesh, now in Syria. Ramses had a total of 35,000 men; Muwatali some 27,500.

The Egyptians had some 2000 battle chariots. Each of them was manned by a driver and a warrior, usually someone with a bow and arrow. The Egyptians also had composite bows which gave their arrows more power and range.

Ramses II made the tactical error of spreading his divisions too far from each other under the mistaken assumption that the Hittites were still far away. The first charge of the battle chariots of the Hittites caught him shorthanded out in the open, and his army was overrun and he himself was almost killed. There was a huge chaos in the Egyptian camp. The Hittites, believing they had won the battle, stopped to loot the Egyptian camp.

right: This is a drawing from inside the Temple of Abu Simbel, showing Ramses II (his name is on the cartouches in front if him) on a chariot attacking the Hittites. A Hittite casualty is shown in the bottom of the picture.

All Egyptian chariots had been destroyed by that time; the only surviving chariot was the royal chariot. Ramses II commanded his driver to get going, but the man was too afraid, so Ramses II took the chariot himself to singlehandedly drive around the battlefield to rally his troops and turn the tide of battle. That is why this drawing does not show a driver.

Then Egyptian reinforcements came and the Hittites were swept away. To ensure that history would not forget how heroic he was at the Battle of Kadesh, Ramses II had this episode chiseled in many of his monuments during his reign.

left: And a counter figure is shown here, presumably showing a Hittite war chariot with a fallen enemy below, most likely an Egyptian. This sculpture was recovered from Hattuşa, the capital of the Hittites. Both drawings probably depict the Battle of Kadesh.

The 3500 or so Hittite chariots were each manned by one driver, a warrior, and a shield bearer; they were slower and less maneuverable than those of their opponents. The warrior had a sword and a spear, and the chariots were used as a shock force. However, this carving from the Anadolu museum shows an Egyptian type chariot, with one driver and one warrior with a bow and arrows only. This is not clear to me, since the Hittites would obviously glorify their accomplishments and depict their own battle chariots, instead of showing an Egyptian chariot. Maybe this sculpture is part of a larger sculpture, with this portion actually showing the Egyptian battle chariots. Or maybe the Hittites had both three-man and two-man chariots.

After the Egyptians gained the upper hand, the Hittites then called out 1000 more chariots from Kadesh, where they were stationed, and resumed the attack. But by this time the battleground had shifted and they had to ford a river and Ramses cleverly positioned his men on the opposite bank to force the Hittite chariots to slow down before making contact. With more Egyptian forces coming, the tide of battle turned. After 6 futile charges over the river, the Hittites were almost surrounded and had to flee. The battle on the second day was inconclusive. Ramses tried to attack Kadesh, but failed. Both armies had suffered major casualties, so the battle of Kadesh was considered a draw. The Hittites had failed the gain the almost sure victory; the Egyptians could not break down the defenses of Kadesh.

There were a number of border clashes and battles after this, all of them inconclusive. Fifteen years later a peace treaty was made between Ramses II and Hattusili III, the new king of the Hittites. This is also the earliest international peace treaty known. A 3500-year old clay copy of the treaty is in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

d: The Rock Sanctuary of Yazilikaya.

This was a holy site for the inhabitants of Hattuşa; it was located a few miles northeast of the city. The center of the sanctuary consists of two open-air chambers in the rock. Reliefs cut out in the rocks depict many deities. In chamber A, there is a procession of male deities on the wall on the left, while the wall on the right shows female deities with crowns and long skirts. They meet in the middle. The main characters on the left are Teshub, the weather god, and his retinue. The right wall shows his wife Hepatu, the sun goddess, with her retinue and children. These bas-reliefs are from the 13th century BC. Time has damaged these carvings.

right: 13th century BC carvings in the rocks around Chamber A. The procession of the male gods can be seen in the middle of the picture; the meeting of Teshub, the Weather God holding a mace, and his wife Hepatu, the Sun Goddess, in long skirts, can be seen to the right of the picture. She is partially obscured by the black rock jutting out in the front right. Not shown is the procession to the right of Hepatu, with the female deities.

In chamber B, there is a carving of 12 gods of the Underworld marching to the right. It is possible that these drawings indicate that mortuary rites were held in this chamber. This carving is still in very good condition;

I don’t know for how long, because it seems every visitor touches and rubs their hands over these carvings, trying to bridge the span of 3500 years, but also leaving traces of human sweat and dirt behind.

left: The 12 gods of the Underworld in chamber B.

After this visit our drivers drove us in a South-easterly direction to Cappadocia. It was long drive and we took a lunch break in the small town of Yazgat. There was a market there and although we didn’t buy anything, the merchants were friendly.

right: A greengrocer in the marketplace of Yazgat

left: A cornucopia of spices in the marketplace of Yazgat.

e: Cappadocia.

Our destination was the Kapadokya Inn in the town of Ortahisar, just inside Göreme Park or Göreme Historical Museum. We had lodgings for three nights to allow us time to explore the surrounding sites of interest. This is the area in Cappadocia well-known for its cone-shaped tufa rocks. Here there are 3 volcanoes in a triangle, all of which erupted several millions of years ago, but just a few thousand years one after each other. So the area is covered with thick layers of volcanic tufa. This tufa hardens after exposure to air, but still remains quite easy to work on. And in many places one can easily see the different layers of tufa above each other.

Although the earliest inhabitants of these dwelling were there by the 10th century BC, it were the Christians, who really made a go at it in the 10-12th century AD. Even in recent history people have been cutting chambers and extensive dwellings in the tufa. And because there is no organic carbon in the tufa, and because the air is fairly dry, there is neither moss nor insects in these caves.

right: View of tufa structures with the entrance of many dwellings visible in the rock. I don’t know what plant is in the foreground. It looks pretty, though.

Our first visit the next morning was the Göreme Historical Museum, which is a huge outdoor park, and which has many of these structures carved out in the tufa. There was a dwelling which was probably a monastery; there were churches, kitchens, and granaries. Christians lived in this area in the 10-12th century.

An interesting observation is the presence of many pigeon holes. You can see these square holes in two rows in the middle of the picture above, a little bit to the left. It is not very clear (they look just like dots) and you have to strain a bit. Muslims do not eat pigeon, but they were kept for their droppings for use as fertilizer. The area around the holes are painted white to attract the pigeons, but there is nothing on the smooth rock in front of these holes to allow the pigeons to perch. So the pigeons fly inside where they will find horizontal rods, specially provided for them, on which they can perch. And poop. The people don’t collect the droppings very much anymore; after all, you can get good fertilizer more conveniently from your local garden supply store.

Keeping pigeons goes back to when the prophet Mohammad fled to Medina and was hiding in a cave to escape his pursuers. When these pursuers came to the cave, they saw cobwebs and a pair of pigeons, from which they deduced that there was nobody in the cave. So now Muslims do not eat pigeons or remove cobwebs. In large buildings shells of ostrich eggs are placed to keep spiders away; these shells emanate an odor offensive to spiders.

left: More tufa cones; these ones in the area of Paşa Bagi look like huge mushrooms. The darker top is a harder tufa from a later volcanic eruption. On one of these cones St. Simon of Cappadocia would preach from high up, so he could check everybody in his audience (probably to ensure that nobody fell asleep).

right:: A tufa condo. Nobody lives here anymore but you can walk in and climb steps inside to go to the different levels. Considering that so many people have lived there for hundred of years, it is surprising to see very few traces of soot. The inhabitants found out that by using olive oil and salt in their oil lamps, little soot is produced.

We visited several of these dwellings and especially many of the churches around. We admired the 1000+ year old frescoes on the walls and ceilings of these churches. The colors of the Apple Church, e.g., are still vibrant because they, as well as many of the churches we saw, had remained in the dark most of the time.

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left: Fresco from the Karanlik church dating back to the 12-13th century AD. . Note the vibrant colors, helpfully improved by Photoshop.

Another church we visited was the very large Shod Church (çarikli Kilise), which had 2 columns, 4 cupolas, 3 apses, and a cross vault. All this were inside the tufa. Another church we visited was the Church of St. Onophrius, where the drawings are more primitive, because the drawings were made on the bare walls. So the colors are more flat. The church is also known as the Vipered Church, and it honors St. Onophrius, a woman who wanted to dedicate her life to Christ. But her parents, like most parents, wanted her to get married, so they could have grandkids. And to make it easy for her they even arranged for a wealthy groom. She prayed all night before the wedding and on the day of the wedding, lo and behold: her visage had been transformed into that of a man with a long beard. The groom fled in horror.

right: And for those who always wanted to have a genuine souvenir of all their travels, these are items carved out of the tufa, definitely locally made. (I think)

For lunch we stopped at the Hanedan Caravanserai. The food was good and copious, as usual. Then we drove further to the Soǧanli Valley, to view more churches hewn out in the tufa rocks. There were fewer tourists here; most of them stay around the Göreme area, where the churches are of more recent vintage and the frescoes much clearer. Here things are more primitive; it is sometimes difficult to walk the path to these old churches, because they are basically not maintained.

left: We passed Göre, an village abandoned in the sad 1924 political resettlement, when thousands of Greek-speaking Turks were forcibly moved back to Turkey and thousands of Turkish-speaking Greeks were moved to Greece. Surprisingly, even though these dwellings have been abandoned some 75 years earlier, it had not been thrashed, and the surrounding grounds looks somewhat maintained. It looks like they are still basically ready to welcome their original owners back. The Turkish neighbors who were left behind probably kept maintaining the property.

right: And this is the entrance to the Karabas Church. You have to do some rock climbing to get inside. And take your flashlight along. On the left of the entrance you can see the square holes of the dovecots.

The fresco above this page is from the wall of this Karabas Church (Black Head Church) in the Northern Soǧanli valley; this one probably dates from the 6th century AD. Considering their age; they are still in very good condition. This is partly because the tufa here is a blend with basalt, which makes for a harder and more durable rock.

Here in this valley there is actually also a traditional village of Soǧanli, where the villagers are said to still live in the same manner as their ancestors did centuries ago. I don’t think they do this to be a commercial tourist attraction. How they can go through life without a microwave in the kitchen. Or not watch TV. Maybe they have these items inside; they are just not visible to the casual visitor.

In Soǧanli we also saw huge storage chambers hewed out in the tufa rocks, where fruits are stored. Trucks can just drive in and out these big cavernous rooms.

left: In Soǧanli I made a picture of three siblings of the Ablak family on the street. They are Burcu, Hakan, and Ufuk. Maybe they’ll see this picture one of these days and remember that a tourist took it in 2002.

f: Kaymakli Yeralti Sehri

Our destination today was the amazing underground city of Kaymakli Yeralti Sehri. In the old days, the people in the area tilled the fields and went back to their tufa homes at night. But it is not always safe, and there were times, when they had to hide from invading forces. So they built this huge underground city, which can house and maintain some 7,000 persons for up to 5 month. The entrance to this city is through a small nondescript cave. It is an amazing structure on eight different levels. It has a central kitchen, granaries, storage rooms, churches, wine cellars, cemetery, ventilation shafts, even stables for the animals. There are dead-end corridors and labyrinths to make life of the intruder miserable. There are also hidden escape routes. Nothing is visible from the fields above the city.

The first three floors were dug out by the Hittites, so this would place the start of the city some 4000 years ago. It has only been opened to the public in 1964.

left: The picture shows a part of this underground city. There are entrances, chambers and hallways at different levels, and it is obviously very easy to get lost. At the main entrances they use a millstone-shaped rock, which can be rolled behind the pillar to close off the entrance.

On our way back to our hotel, the Kapadokya Inn, we passed a convoy of a high-ranking politician. Behind the cars, at the end of the convoy, there was his private ambulance, paid for by public funds, obviously. I guess Big Brother just wanted to be sure, when a heart attack or an unpleasant opponent may strike him. Our guide claims that Turkey has 135,000 vehicles for use for the transport of politicians; Great Britain, in comparison, has only around 10,000.

Behül, our guide, illustrates the people’s distate for politicians by telling this popular Turkish story. An ox, a horse, and a donkey meet at the top of mountain and promise each other to come back there after 30 years to tell each other of their experiences. Thirty years passed by and the three animals had a reunion.

The ox said: “Life amongst humans is terrible. They put a yoke around my neck and made me work everyday just for food and water.”
The horse said: “Idem. They put me in front of a cart, which I had to pull all day”
The donkey said: “I came down and it was election day. Everybody was shouting, so I started shouting too. And since I shouted loudest they elected me mayor of the city”
The horse and ox said: “Didn’t they know you were a donkey”
The donkey said: “They did; after a while. But then it was time again for another election.”

That evening we had a dinner/show which, at an additional $40/person, was not cheap. But there was a lot of food, as usual, and all the drinks you can handle. These include alcoholic drinks, such as their raki, which has a very high alcohol contents and is usually drunk diluted with water 1:1. The two liquids are clear, but blended they look milky and taste like anisette. And there were lots of musicians to provide the entertainment, as well as 5 male and 5 female belly dancers who kept dancing almost nonstop for the duration of the dinner and show.

g: The Avanos Sentez carpet weaving factory.

You cannot take a tour through Turkey without getting pulled into a Turkish carpet weaving factory. This one in Avanos was large.

right: Silk threads being recovered from the cocoons of silk worms after these cocoons have been boiled to kill the worms.

They breed their own silk worms and harvest the silk from these worms. They do their own spinning and dying and they make a large variety of carpets, costing a few dollars to several tens of thousands dollars each. The ones made from silk are obviously the most expensive, and the number of threads per cm is also an important indication of quality.

left: This flying carpet was made of very finely woven silk with a very high thread count on a silk backing, and was priced at several thousand dollars. It depicts the Tree of Life.

I did not buy it, because it was too small to go flying on, especially if I wanted to take my wife as passenger along. Also, it showed some damage, because the previous owner wasn’t watching where he landed and he scraped his front bumper.

h: Semâ and the Whirling Dervishes

One evening we went to see a performance of the Whirling Dervishes demonstrating the Semâ, or the Universal Movement. They are a religious order based on the teachings of the poet-mystic Mevlâna. The ceremony depicts man’s mystical journey of spiritual ascent into heaven, and for $35 each, we were allowed to watch them do it. Tourists are patsies.

right: Performance of the Whirling Dervishes in the historical Sarihan Caravanserai, built in 1249.

The Semâ consist of several parts, starting with an eulogy to the Prophet, a drum roll, and then instrumental music. The Dervishes then greet each other, and then start whirling to start a “salute”. There are 4 consecutive “salutes”, each with a different meaning. The Semâ ends with a reading of the Qu’ran, and finally with a prayer for the peace of the souls of all Prophets and believers.

We spent some time talking to the Sheikh, the leader of the group. He said he spends half his time as a woodworker and the other half in the service of his church.

We were now ready to go south, to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From Cappadocia to Antalya is a long drive; large sections of the trip were part of the Silk Road, where in ancient days traders from the West traveled thousands of miles to China to obtain Chinese silks and other exotic products.

i: The Sultanhani Caravanserai

Our trip now goes south-west, as we are slowly going back. We stopped at the Sultanhani caravanserai, about 40 km west of Aksaray, and built in 1229 by the Seljuk sultan Alaatir Keykubat. We were still in Cappadocia, by the way. The complex looks like a fortified medieval monastery with an inner courtyard surrounded by heavy walls.

left: This is the imposing entrance to the fortified Sultanhani caravanserai

You enter the caravanserai through this impressive 40 feet high gate. Inside is a huge, 130 by 180 feet open courtyard.

right The courtyard inside the caravanserai. The building in the middle of the courtyard is a very old temple.

As the name implies, the caravanserai was a place where caravans can safely rest and recuperate on their long journeys. The walls are thick to discourage robbers. The building is constructed of hewn volcanic stone (tufa). Caravans are allowed to stay free for three days, but there is usually a tax on the merchandise.

The large stocky structure in the middle of the picture, in the middle of the courtyard is the mesjid (temple), presumably the oldest in Turkey. This open courtyard which was used in the summer to stable the camels and horses in in the caravan; around it are the roofed areas for the animals in the winter. And adjacent to this area are the bedrooms, kitchens, bath house and bathrooms for the visiting merchants and the caravanserai staff.
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j: Konya and the Mevlana Museum

Our tour took us to Konya, a capital of the sultanate during the Selchuk Empire. It was described by Xenophon as Iconium, the city of icons. As he describes it in “The Persian Expedition”, the 10,000 Greeks, who came along with Cyrus to fight his brother Artaxerxes for the Persian Empire left by their father Darius, stopped in this city on their way to Persia. This happened in around 401 BC

Konya is also the first Turkish capital mentioned in the Bible. The Apostle Paul and Barnabas preached in this city in about 47-48 AD. Over the centuries the city saw many masters, from Persians, Alexander the Great, Romans, the Seljuk Turks, and also the Mongols under Tamerlane.

Now it is the 7th most populous city in Turkey, with a population of well over a million.

Our primary destination was a visit to the tomb of Mevlana, the famous mystic, poet and religious leader, who lived in the 13th century in the Golden Age of the powerful Selchuk Empire. His son founded the Sect of the Whirling Dervishes.

left: The Mosque where the body of Mevlâna rests.

His body is enclosed in an ornately decorated coffin resting above ground with the traditional fez on the top, indicating that it was the final resting place of a male. At the head of the coffin is a jeweled box containing strands of the Beard of the Prophet Muhammed.

right: There are also other nobles in their eternal sleep in this mosque. These are probably of nobles related to Mevlâna.

For more on Mevlana, click here

II: Southern Turkey

Tue, 3 Jul 2012 19:27:52 -0700

a: Antalya

After lunch our bus crossed the Taurus mountains. The main pass was at an elevation of 1800 meters, and it was a long and meandering drive. Most of the rock we saw was sedimentary, heavily layered, and somewhat reminiscent of the Dolomites. Goats dotted the landscape. There were a few old cedar trees, but most of these are now gone. They have been harvested by Romans to build their ships.

left: A view of the Taurus mountains from our bus.

As we descended, we saw in the distance the blue waters of the Mediterranean. We were now in Anatolia as we drove west along the coast to The Festival Hotel in Antalya, our lodgings for the night.

This is the Turkish Riviera; Nirvana for the German tourists, deprived of sun-drenched beaches in their homeland. Signs in German are everywhere. After textiles, tourism brings in the second largest revenue for that area. The area also has an abundance of hothouses to grow tomatoes and other vegetables.

right: On the left is the Mediterranean Sea, and Antalya is in the middle at some distance. Further away in the back is Mt. Olympus, where the gods took residence as they watched the Trojan War, encouraging their favorites, and sometimes surreptitiously taking some actions to advance their cause.

Antalya is actually quite a nice city, well-known in antiquity. In the 2nd century BC, the Pergamon king Attalos II ordered his men to find “Heaven on Earth”. His men came up with the city of Antalya, giving it the name of Attaleia (Ατταλεια). I don’t know how far they went in search of Heaven. If you are interested in more blabber on Antalya, click here.

The Antalya Museum has a large collection of marble statues and other stuff recovered from the ancient city of Perge close by. The museum also has a good collection of more recent Turkish artifacts. It is not a very big museum and it obviously lacked the funds to present their collection in a more professionally and appealing way. The best pieces are also not there anymore, spread out in more affluent museums all over the world

left: The sculpture of the Three Graces in the Antalya Museum dates to the 2nd century AD.

People in those days often carry a container with olive oil with which to rub the bas-reliefs of gods and goddesses as a mark of piety. In this sculpture you can see that over the centuries the buttocks and the crease between the thighs have been lovingly rubbed by generations of men, each and everyone of them brimming with piety; and barely concealed carnal desire.

b: Perge

The extensive ruins of the ancient city of Perge attest to its great history in ancient times. They are located just a few miles from Antalya. It was a rich and beautiful city. At its apex, the city had a population of 120,000. It was destroyed in the 7th-8th century AD.

The founding of Perge dates to around 1000 BC. In 546 BC the Persians came; Alexander the Great was welcomed there by the citizens of the city in 333 BC. They obviously did not want him to capture and loot the city. The famous mathematician Apollonius, a pupil of Archimedes, lived here, where he wrote a series of 8 books on geometry.

The Apostles Paul and Barnabas visited Perge twice to preach, the first time in 46 AD. Three centuries later, under Constantine the Great, Perge became an important center of the Christian faith, in concord with Constantinople.

right: The tourist enters the archeological site of Perge through the Roman Gate, built around 200 AD. The city had expanded considerable since its founding days in the intervening years and the original gate, the Hellenistic city gate, is further down.

left: Ruins of the Hellenistic city gate. This gate dates to the 3rd century BC. You can see the Roman Gate in the distance between its portals. In between these two gates, one finds the ancient Agora, or market place, and a large courtyard with remains of houses and shops.

The walls of the gates used to be covered with marble. Now the marble is gone but you can still see holes in the underlying granite, where metal rods had been inserted to hold the marble coverings in place. No mortar was used but to reinforce walls and pillars, holes were drilled and iron bars were inserted in these tightly fitting holes. The other side of the bar would fit tightly in the adjacent stone bloc.. Grooves are also chiseled in the blocks to pour molten lead to cover the iron bars to protect them from corrosion.

right: After the Hellenistic Gate, a broad double-colonnaded street leads the visitor to the Acropolis, about a quarter of a mile away. This street is some 60 feet wide with a 6 feet wide water channel running down the middle. This water is used to clean the street daily.

Then there are the Roman baths, impressive structures with four adjoining chambers. The first was the changing room; the second was the hot room, heated with underground heating ducts fed from a central fireplace. The third room was lukewarm and the last room was a cold room, usually a pool.

The city was founded inland from the Mediterranean as a defensive measure against pirates, but they had access to the sea through the nearby Kestros river. This was important for trade because it made them a harbor city. However, silting of the river over the centuries cut off the access to the sea and the city had to find other sources of revenue. So they built a huge stadium which could seat 15,000 spectators. By now you have seen enough ruins of stadiums; so I’ll skip on this one, especially since there are many better-looking ruins to be seen.

c: Aspendos and Roman Aqueduct

A few miles from Perge is the beautiful Roman theater of Aspendos. It was designed under the reign of emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-181 AD) by the architect Zeno and built by the brothers Curtius Crispinus and Curtius Auspicates. The acoustics are remarkable and the theater is still very well preserved. It can seat some 7,000 guests.

left: The Roman Theater of Aspendos

right. The backdrop structure of the oval stage facing the stands of the Theater of Aspendos.

left: Close by are also the Roman aqueducts to provide water to Perge. This aqueduct, built 1 - 3 AD, was about 12 kms long, and had a capacity of about 100,000 gallons/hour.

d: Aphrodisias

Aphrodisias in the Meandros Valley was a long, 4+ hours drive from Antalya. We drove past the walled city of Termessos, reputed to be the only city able to withstand the armies of Alexander the Great.

Aphrodisias was a lovely city built around the 2nd century AD over the ruins of earlier settlements, as usual. At the entrance are well-preserved pillars with ionic and corinthian capitals. A bit further down is the beautiful gateway, the Tetrapylon, shown on the top of this page.

Part of this structure has been pulled down and reassembled with steel bars inserted inside for strength. The person who did most in restoring this lovely temple was Kenan Erim, a professor from New York, who came here to spend the rest of his life restoring the site. He is buried here.

right: Close by are the ruins of the Temple of Aphrodite, one of the largest temples dedicated to her. But in 500 AD it was converted into a basilica, and some columns were moved to form a nave.

Here in Aphrodisias is located one of the three only amphitheaters in Turkey. This one seats 30,000.

above: The huge Amphitheater in Aphrodisias. In the oval center of the Amphitheater athletes competed in running, wrestling, discus throwing, the javelin, etc. But inside this oval on the bottom right, is a small circle, a much older arena, close to the Royal Box, where gladiators fought to the death or lions were released to kill Christians. And to give strength to the high walls around the oval, they used a barrel-vault construction.

The Olympic Games were held in this large Amphitheater, once every four years. This was also a very useful time indicator because many manuscripts would quote, e..g., “In the Fourth Olympics ..... “

The floor of the amphitheater oval was flat and lime was used to mark the lines. No women were allowed to view the Games, because the athletes competed in the nude. An exception was made for the chariot races. The Greeks had 78 holidays in year, so they had a lot of opportunity for festivals to make use of the amphitheater.

There are red poppies everywhere. Where did they come from? It is said that on one day the handsome Adonis was hunting, but then he came across an enormous boar. He was no match for the boar, who tore off his genitals in the subsequent encounter and he died. The spattered blood turned into red poppies. Adonis was the lover of both Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who then resuscitated him back to life. But he was also the love of Persephone, the goddess of the underworld. So the two goddesses started to bicker who should have him. To stop the bickering, Zeus decreed that Adonis would spend 6 month each year with Aphrodite (and it was sunlight and summer in the land), and 6 months with Persephone in Hades (and then it was cold and winter reigned in the land).

left. A marble gaming trough to while the time away in the Bath of Hadrian.

There were also a lot of other things to see and to admire. There was the large Agora, once enclosed by Ionic porticoes, and the Baths of Hadrian. Then there is a well-preserved white, marble theater seating 7,000. The patron was Gaius Julius Zoilus, a freed slave, who later became wealthy in life.

e: Hierapolis.

Some 80,000 people used to live in the city of Hierapolis. It was a famous cure center founded around 190 BC by Eumenes II, king of Pergamon.

The picture above shows the main gate of the city with the triumphal arch of Domitian in the middle. The three entrances (from which the tri of triumphal is derived) allows the emperor to enter the city in a triumphal procession.

Many letters from the Apostles were addressed to and from people in this city. The city was abandoned after the great earthquake of 1334.

right: Along the main street of Hierapolis.

Curing was related to the many radioactive hot springs in the area, where sick people from all over would come for its curative properties. Some are cured; others die, so a huge necropolis grew up close to the city to accommodate the dead. The Necropolis of Hierapolis is large.

They were then buried in either an outside sarcophagus or in a sarcophagus stored in a stone building. The face of Medusa is often carved on these sarcophagi to deter evil spirits. Burial is also performed in a tumulus, which is a hill.

left Above-ground sarcophagi in buildings in the Necropolis of Hierapolis. The mountains in the background is the Honas or Babadag mountain range.

Surprisingly, the tops of many of the large tumuli were adorned with a huge stone replica of a tumescent penis, presumably as a symbol of fertility, according to our guide. Which will make for interesting conjectures, because why would one need to be fertile, if one is dead. This Necropolis of Hierapolis was filled extensively in the 1st - 3rd century AD, but was abandoned in the 9th century.

When a person died, coins are placed on the eyes and mouth of the deceased to pay for passage to Charon to cross the Styx to enter the underworld. He/she had to be buried before daybreak of the 4th day after death. The mourners then come back to clean the house thoroughly.

f: Pamukkale

Pamukkale is a major tourist attraction and also a World Heritage Site. There are 17 known hot springs in the area, where water temperatures between 95℉ and 212℉ are observed. This hot calcium-carbonate laden mineral water is channeled to the top of a 200 feet wide cliff and allowed to cascade down to the travertine terraces below. As the water cools down, the carbonate crystallizes out as snow-white travertine deposits. It has been calculated that some 2 grams of calcium carbonate is deposited as travertine for every gallon of water coming over the cliffs.

At one time there were a number of hotels on the top ledge with very nice views of these travertine pools. But their swimming pools were using so much water, it really impacted the health of the travertine pools. The hotels were given a few years to shut down and are now gone. Well, Big Daddy sometimes does something laudable.

right: Travertine deposits in blue pools in Pamukkale

These travertine deposits are now only accessible in a small restricted area where people can walk and take pictures..

III: Ancient Lydia

Sun, 1 Jul 2012 23:48:48 -0700

a: Sardis

Ancient Lydia was a large area in the southwestern part of Turkey in Asia Minor, and Sardis was the ancient capital of the Lydians. Like all cities in the area, it has seen many masters. The most interesting era may well be that of the Lydian Empire from around 700 BC until 546 BC, when Croesus (563-546 BC), was king. He was the last ruler of the Lydians, and he was defeated by the Persians under Cyrus II. In turn, these Persians were later defeated by Alexander the Great. And when Alexander died, Sardis was ruled by Lysimachos, one of Alexander’s generals.

Sardis is mentioned in Revelation 1:10-11 as the location of one of the seven churches of Christianity. “On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.” The ruins of several of these cities we visited and are mentioned in this chapter. By the way, Philadelphia, this city of Brotherly Love, is not the one in Pennsylvania in the USA, but about 26 miles southwest of Sardis. It is now known as Alasehir, but originally it was founded in 189 BC by king Eumenes II from Pergamon for the love for his brother, Attalus II, who also became his successor.

Before he went into war against Cyrus II, Croesus had asked the Oracle in Delphi what the outcome of the war would be and the answer was “that a great empire would tumble”. He thought this portended victory, but in reality the great empire that tumbled was his.

Croesus was a well-known king, because he coined the first gold and silver coins and was a benefactor to many. You may recall the saying: “as rich as Croesus”. Most of the coins are actually minted from “electrum”, which was an alloy of gold and silver. A lot of the gold came from the river Pactolus, which flowed through Sardis.

There is the story of King Midas about the source of all this gold. He was probably king of Phrygia in the late 8th century BC, when Phrygia was at its zenith. Phrygia is not far to the East of Lydia. The capital of Phrygia was Gordium, famous because it was here that Alexander the Great hacked open the Gordian knot. Gordium was sacked in 695 BC and later became a subject of Lydia.

Ovid relates in his Metamorphosus XI that the satyr Silenus, the foster father of the god Dionysus, was roaring drunk one day when he was found by some Phrygian peasants and taken to king Midas. King Midas treated him kindly to get him over his hangover, and a grateful Dionysus then granted him a wish. The greedy Midas said he wanted everything he touched to turn into gold. Dionysus initially demurred, but Midas insisted he knew what he wanted. So he was granted his wish. This made him ecstatic at first, as he applied his new-found powers to a large variety of items. But then he found out that the food he wanted to eat and the wine he wanted to drink all turned into inedible gold at his touch. And then his daughter also turned into a golden statue when he touched her.

He had to beseech Dionysus to undo his powers, and the god relented. So he was ordered to take a bath in the stream Pactolus, to become normal again. In this process a lot of gold was deposited in the river. That is why this stream, which flowed through the market-place in Sardis was said in antiquity to “carry golden sands”, which was in reality gold dust from Mt Timolus upstream. And over the centuries, a lot of gold was mined from this river, and many citizens in Lydia became wealthy. The locals used lamb fleece to collect the gold; and this is probably the source of the legends of the Golden Fleece.

    Then there is the story of Candaulus and Gyges, kings of Lydia. As described in Book I of the Histories by the great chronicler Herodotus, Gyges was not of royal blood, but a member of the Royal Bodyguard to Candaulus, who was then king. Candaulus was so proud of his beautiful wife that he insisted that Gyges see her naked and ordered him to hide behind the door in their bedroom to view her when she undressed for bed. Gyges did his best to decline the king’s invitation, but had no choice but to accept. But when she was naked, the queen saw Gyges when he slipped out. She was so incensed, that the next day she gave Gyges the choice. He would kill her husband and make himself king, or he would be put to death himself. He chose the easiest way out. In those days it was most humiliating to be seen naked.
    But the Lydians were indignant at the murder of Candaulus, so Gyges sought to justify his ascendancy to the throne by petitioning for the approval of the Oracle of Delphi. He didn’t have any Super PACS to plead his case, so he opted for the direct approach. He greased the process by offering expensive gifts to Delphi, including a huge amounts of silver ornaments and vessels of gold of various kinds, the most noteworthy being 6 mixing bowls of gold weighing thirty talents, or nearly 2500 lbs. Money talks, now as well as in ancient times. So the Oracle duly confirmed Gyges as the rightful King. But because there was murder involved, the Priestess of the Shrine foretold that his dynasty would fall in the fifth generation. That was when Croesus was king.
Sardis is also the place where the Persian Expedition started, as described so well by Xenophon. Here, in around 402 BC, 10,000 Greek soldiers joined Cyrus in his expedition to unseat his brother Artaxerxes to win the Persian Empire after the death of their father Darius. But Cyrus was killed in the battle of Cunaxa, which was located well in Persia close to Babylon, (now Syria) So the Greeks were stranded there, thousands of miles from home. They had to fight their way back to Greece.
The main avenue of Sardis was an imposing 55 feet wide and lined with shops.

There were the remains of the largest synagogue is Asia Minor. The timber roof and many columns are all gone, but the altar and many of the mosaics on the floors are still visible. If they were in better shape, they would probably have been carted off to some distant museum.

left: Remains from the largest Jewish synagogue in Asia Minor. In the middle is the altar. Note the mosaics on the floor.

right: Closeup of some of the mosaics on the floor of the Jewish synagogue.

In the same area is a huge bath house - gymnasium complex. Athletics were performed on a grassy lawn in front of this complex. The large, still standing structure is called the Marble Court.

left: The Marble Court with the grassy field in the foreground.

It is interesting to note that the inscription on the entablature (large horizontal beam above the capitals of the fluted column) are still in ancient Greek. These buildings were originally built in the 1st - 3rd century AD, and are Roman structures. Written Greek was derived from the script used in Miletus as early as 600 BC, but still used at that time.

right: In this Roman structure the inscription on the entablature is still in ancient Greek

In the north of Sardis are the remains of the Temple of Artemis, the 4th largest temple dedicated to this important deity. It was started in the 3rd century BC by the Greeks and finished in the 2nd century by the Romans. The columns in this temple were huge, as can be seen from the picture.

left: The massive columns in the ruins of the Temple of Artemis in Sardis.

At one time there were 96 columns in two rows on each side of the temple. These two rows were needed because the size of the temple required a heavy roof.

In the middle of the building was the treasury, and there was an inscription telling the story of a man who borrowed money from the Temple and could not repay the debt. He then became a slave for 20 years.

Ordinary people could not come inside the Temple. Access was only granted to the front antechamber, where they can offer their gifts. And graciously accepted and used by and for the priests, for sure. After all, they were the one-percenters of their time.

b: Kuşadasi and Ephesus.

From Sardis we drove North to Kuşadasi. It was a long but beautiful drive over the Bozdaǧ mountains with marvelous views of the Sardis Valley. We could see the Pactolus River, where King Midas bathed to rid himself from his golden touch. It was a bright, sunny, and cloudless day, reminding us that Herodotus said that “Nowhere does the sun shine more brightly than in Ionia.. “. Finally we saw the “wine-red” Aegean Sea, as Homer describes it, come into view. But the sea was dark-blue, reflecting the color of the skies. The “wine-dark” sea appears many times in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and it is still a matter of conjecture why Homer used this color to describe the water.

Our stay that evening was in the Festival Kuşadasi Resort, on the shores of the sea. The hotel had a large private beach, but the water was still too chilly to swim. Most of the guests in this hotel were young and French. We were expecting the place to be overrun by Germans. Maybe it was just a fluke.

Today, in 2012, Kuşadasi is a very busy cruise ship terminal, disgorging thousands of tourist for day trips visiting neighboring Ephesus. Close by is the Basilica of St. John, built on the site where St. John wrote his scriptures.

On the road to Ephesus, we saw a town where bottle shards have been mounted on the chimneys to prevent storks from nesting. But there were other chimneys where the stork is welcome. A stork can build a nest in 8 days. During the day, the female stork stays on the eggs; during the night, the male stork keeps the egg warm. As the baby chicks grow, they can fall out of their nests. Solicitous homeowners often put a blanket under the nests to cushion the fall. Nevertheless, if more than three chicks hatch, the fourth is left behind, when the storks move away.

Ephesus used to be a harbor, but the sea is now many miles away because the harbor silted over from deposits from the little Macander River. Silting is rapid; the calculated rate is something like 3 1/2 meters/year. After some 2000 years, the town is now some 7 kms from the seashore.

There is a lot to see in Ephesus and I refer to the many guidebooks, where more comprehensive descriptions are available. I will just be covering some random points of interest to me, and I will sometimes digress. The first large section close to the tourist entrance is the Audium, a small amphitheater seating about 1200, which is where the city Parliament convened. Just as in our modern days, they also observe politics and graft. An example is that in front of the leather tanning shops were vessels where passersby could use as urinals. This urine was used to tan leather, but then the neighbors complained of the stench. The leather tanning guild responded by donating leather seats to the Audium for the members of Parliament to sit in comfort during sessions. And the piss pots stayed where they were.

The name Ephesus may have come from the time the legendary woman warriors, the Amazons, established the city and named it after one of their queens, Apassos. Lysimachus, mentioned earlier here as the general of Alexander the Great who became the ruler of this area after his death, had as first wife Nikea, who wanted a city named after her. That was in 320 BC and that was how Nicea was founded. But then his second wife, Arcione, also wanted a city named after her. So Ephesus was renamed Arcione. Even a famed warrior as Lysimachus had to keep the peace in the family. But well after Arcione was safely dead, the city was again renamed Ephesus.

The city was large; it had two agoras, one for political and one for commercial purposes. It was here that Demetrius, a jeweler, rallied against St. Paul, because Christianity was taking away his business of people buying his silver images and statuettes of Artemis. St. Paul worked as a tentmaker in Ephesus, but is of course best known for his preachings in the Great Theater. And he also spent some time incarcerated in a building up on the mountains.

The commercial section was huge; it already had a double piping systems in place; one for clean water, and one for dirty water and waste. Heraclitus lived here. “Panterai, panterai,” he said for immortality, meaning that everything changes. The Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World, was here. It took ten years to built the edifice, in around 560 BC, and bankrolled by the aforementioned Croesus. It was destroyed by arson in 401, and only the foundations and a stump of a pillar now remains. The remaining pillars are now in the Aya Sophia in Istanbul.

Then there is the story the Seven Sleepers, a group of young Christians, who hid in a cave just outside Ephesus to escape persecution during the reign of Emperor Decius. They fell asleep, and only woke up some 300 years later, under the reign of the Christian emperor Theodosius II, without having aged at all. When they woke up, they sent a man to get some food from the village. But the shopkeeper did not recognize the coins proffered, became suspicious and notified the authorities. Interestingly, this story has been reported not only in many Christian sources, including the Roman Martyrology, an exhaustive list of the saints recognized by the Church, but in the Qur’an as well.

“How did they do it?”, a sceptic would say. “Just believe it”, the Church will say. Well, if you can believe that, you should also believe this. Physics tells us that time goes slower in a location of higher gravity. All you need to imagine is that an alien spaceship took them for a short trip to a Black Hole in space, where gravity is immensely larger than on earth. And since time is inversely proportional to gravity, they would age only a few hours, while the world would have gone merrily on in those 300 years. And if you think this is a farfetched idea, then how do you explain what was reported.

left: The main road towards the Library of Celsus, seen in the distance. It was packed with tourists. Well, during its apex, there would be just as many citizens walking this street in Ephesus as tourists do now. Some 250,000 people lived there in the first century BC.

right: Section of a frieze of the Temple of Hadrian, which always elicits a lot of admiration from the onlookers. They are beautiful, but these are actually casts; the original is in the Ephesus Museum.

The high point of Ephesus is also the most photographed site, the Library of Celsus, originally built in 125 AD, in memory of Mr. Celsus, obviously. The facade has been meticulously reconstructed. Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaenus served as Governor of Roman Asia in the Roman Empire. When he died, the 90,000 talents he left behind was used to design this library and which is also his tomb. At one time it had as many as 25,000 volumes.

   Contrary to stories in some guidebooks, Cleopatra did not take any of these volumes from this library to Alexandria. This would have been a miracle, because she lived more than a century earlier.

left: The Gates of Augustus, to the right of the Library of Celsus, very often overlooked by visitors. They were built by 2 persons who were freed slaves.

Then there is the renowned painter Apelles of Kos, of whom it was said that he was the only person who Alexander the Great allowed to paint him. An oft-repeated tale was that when painting one of his concubines, Campaspe, he fell in love with her. And Alexander the Great graciously gave her to him as a mark of appreciation. Alexander obviously had more than one concubine, but it was still a very classy gesture. In the House of the Faun in Pompeii, there is a painting depicting the Battle of Issus, where with a smaller force, Alexander decisively defeated the Persian Army under Darius II. This mosaic was presumably made after a painting by Apelles. But I digress.
One day, in the amphitheater of Ephesus, Apelles was in competition with Kallimakos1, who had made such a life-like looking painting of a nature still-life, that the birds went for the grapes in the painting. Apelles than said that it was easy to fool animals, but that it takes a great artist to fool humans. Then he parted the curtains of his painting for the audience to see.

The canvas was blank.

left: The amphitheater of Ephesus

As you leave the ruins of the city, you walk down Via Mares, the old road to the port. This road was lighted at night by torches made from the narthex plant. This was the first example of street lighting. These torches would burn for 5 - 6 hours.

In the distance you could see, during the day obviously, on a distant mountain, the building where St Paul was said to have been incarcerated.

left: A Narthex plant (Ferula communis), a tall herbaceous perennial, used in antiquity as the material for torches.

Ephesus slowly declined in power because (a) the harbor had silted over, (b) the rise of Christianity made the worship of Artemis redundant, (c) there were earthquakes, and (d) many other bad things in life. Those things happen.

1: The name Kallimakos may be incorrect; it could have been Antiphilos, another painter who was known to be at odds with him..

c: The Virgin Mary’s Tomb.

Some 10 miles away from Ephesus in the mountains is a house attributed to be the Virgin's last house where she lived and where she also died. This is obviously a major Christian site. But there are other places who jealously claim the same honor. After all, one should consider the financial fallout of being able to set up lucrative commercial shops and other tourist services for the great unwashed masses coming here on pilgrimage or just out of curiosity.

right: The Virgin Mary’s Tomb

Just in Jerusalem there are two and in Antioch there is one place claiming to be the final resting place of the Virgin. They contemptuously detract the Ephesus location, because why would Mary travel so far from Jerusalem. “To be near John”, saith the Ephesus crowd.

Ephesus claims this is the real place because:

when Jesus was dying on the Cross, he said to Mary: “Behold Thy Son”. And then he addressed John and said: ”Behold Thy mother”. St. John moved and lived here in Ephesus and Mary came along with him. Here in Ephesus St John wrote his Gospel. And St. John died here. ”Not true”, saith the detractors triumphantly, “Jesus never specifically mentioned the name John to take care of Mary” when he was on the Cross. “Aren’t they getting picky”, would you say.?
The 3rd World Eucharistical Council met here in 431 to proclaim Mary to be the Mother of God.
A German stigmata, Anna Emmerich, described in detail the house, the small spring nearby, and the view of the Aegean Sea in the distance, even though she had never been out of Germany.
The remnants of a 1st century building was found in the indicated place, below the ruins of the 4th century church. And to rub salt in the wounds of the other sites, the local population celebrate, since time immemorial, an “Ascension of Mary” Day on August 15 each year.

Well, are there winners? Yes, all the manufacturers of cheap religious trinkets in Bangladesh and elsewhere, because there is an advantage in having more than one site. The total demand for your products will be larger.

d: Smyrna, now Izmir

It was another beautiful day in Ionia, where the sun shines brightly, as we left Kuşadasi on our way to Pergamon. We drove by Selchuk, a town close to Ephesus. Selchuk is an ancient town. Here was an Ottoman Castle, the foundation of which was laid in the 1st century AD. Close to it is the Basilica of St. John, where St John wrote his scriptures.

We then drove through Izmir, the 3rd largest city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara. In ancient history this city was called Smyrna. Homer was born here around the 8th century BC. St. Polycarp was burned here for heresy. In those days it also had the best university in Asia Minor, called the University of the Aegean.

Smyrna was besieged by the Persians under Xerxes on his march to conquer Greece. The city fathers asked and were granted two days to deliberate the surrender. But the population decided to abandon the city and the city fathers dropped an iron anchor in the harbor and proclaimed: “we will return when this bar floats on the waters”. They left and went further south and eventually settled in Marseille. When Xerxes came back two days later, he found the city deserted.

The Turkish War of Independence started here in Izmir. The war was waged by the Turkish Nationalists against the Allies, after the country was partitioned following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. But then the Allies retreated and left it to the Greeks to control the area. Here, on May 15, 1919, the Turkish journalist Hasan Tahsin fired the first shot for Independence. The city was almost completely destroyed in this war, mostly between the Greek occupational forces and the Turkish nationalists.

On September 9, 1922, Kemal Ataturk and his Turkish forces entered Izmer; that date is still celebrated as Independence Day in the City. This was the beginning of the formation of an independent Turkey with Kemal Ataturk as its first president.

Izmir is a large, industrial city today.

left: Kemal Ataturk and his Turkish forces enter Izmir in triumph. Painting by Ahmet Akbulut (1869 - 1938)

e: Pergamon

In the afternoon we arrived in Pergamon, an ancient Greek City, located to the north and west of the modern city of Bergama. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon during the Hellenistic Period under the Attalid dynasty (281-133 BC). The Book of Revelation notes Pergamon as the location of one of the seven churches of Asia.

At the entrance we passed the monumental Red Basilica dedicated to the Egyptian deities, most probably Isis and/or Serapis. It was constructed from brick by the Romans in the 2nd century AD, but seemed to have been destroyed soon afterwards. It was rebuilt in the 4th century AD. The temple was large, 200 feet long and 85 ft wide. It felt unusual to have a temple here dedicated to an Egyptian deity.

The road went up a steep hill to reach the Acropolis of Pergamon. On the top is the Temple of Trajan, with next to it the Palace of king Eumenes II (197 - 159 BC)

The temple is partly dug into the hill, and partly cantilevered out, supported by a barrel vault construction. From the terrace of the Temple, one can see the smaller Temple of Dionysus some 100’ below on another plateau.

right: Ruins of the Temple of Trajan. In the lower front parts of the barrel vault construction are visible.

left: This is a sketch I made of Ancient Pergamon. The top left shows the general disposition of the buildings. The bottom half shows the barrel vault construction of the Temple of Trajan.

right: Barrel vault construction below Temple of Trajan for structural support

Next to the palace of king Eumenes is the Library, which at one time had as many as 200,000 volumes. It was becoming a threat to the eminent position of the Alexandria library, which had some 700,000 volumes, so the Egyptians prohibited the export of papyrus to Pergamon, to discourage famous scholars from jumping ship from Alexandria to Pergamon.

Eumenes II, not to be outdone, then ordered his people to come up with a substitute. They did, and developed parchment, made from the skin of an unborn sheep and then treated with a variety of chemicals. Many of these documents were taken by Marc Anthony as a gift to Cleopatra.

Halfway down the hill from the Library is now an open field with just a few columns. But here once stood the magnificent Altar of the Temple of Zeus.

At the end of the 19th century, Germans excavated the acropolis and collected thousands of fragments from the site of the Altar. These were then shipped to Berlin, where the Altar was painstakingly reconstructed. You can now see the white marble Altar in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

It is a superb monument and it is also the most famous item in the Museum. The two pictures shown we took several years earlier when we visited Berlin.

left: Here, where now red poppies and other wildflowers bloom, was the site where the magnificent Altar of the Temple of Zeus once stood.

below: The restored Altar of Zeus. Part of the Telephos Frieze of the Altar is shown above. These monuments are now displayed in the Pergamon Museum on the Inseln-Museum in Berlin. One can imagine the superb quality of the original altar.

To the left of the Altar, and constructed in the hillside of the Acropolis, is the Theater. It has a capacity of 10,000, with the Royal Box in the middle and lower part of the Theater.

f: The Asklepion

Across the Acropolis, on another hill, is the Asklepion, a famous healing center. Galen, one of the three most famous physicians of antiquity, worked here. For the record, the other two were Hippocrates in Athens (third century AD), and the Persian Avicena, in Isfahan, a province in current Iran (8th Century AD). As one enters the portal, the sign on the entrance facade reads tauntingly: “Death may not enter here”.

left: On the main street of Asklepion. In the distance, on the hill, is Pergamon.

But since Death is functionally illiterate, he still comes there at the most inconvenient times. The attendants countered this by surreptitiously removing the recently deceased patients away at night and then describing the disappearance of the patients to their family as an act of the Gods.

Treatment of the sick was by psychotherapy, interpretation of dreams, baths in radioactive mineral springs, herbs, and relaxation. Patients were encouraged to walk and to watch plays in the specially constructed theater seating 2000. The Center became especially well-known because of Galen (131 - 210 AD), who was born here, but studied in Alexandria and later in Greece. He became the foremost physician of this times. In 162 AD he moved to Rome to be the personal physician to emperor Marcus Aurelius.

right: The theater in Asklepion for the patients to watch plays and relax. This is obviously not a place for the penurious to find a cure.

left: A pillar in the middle of the town. Does it depict a snake? Or a sperm fertilizing an egg? If so, how did they know that already in 200 BC. Somebody must have good eyes.

Medicine was already quite advanced in those days. Condoms were already being manufactured from sheep’s intestines.

g: Troy

After lunch in Pergamon, we went on the long drive over the Mt. Ida mountain range to Troy. The highest mountain top here is 2300 meters. There were thousands of olive trees on the slopes, some of them centuries old. Their branches a few feet above ground are ever so often lopped off, so the trunk becomes larger and stronger with time. Olive trees are almost never cut down, and many people bury their treasures at the base of a particular tree, because the tree will still be there many years down the road.

It was here on the slopes of Mt. Ida that Paris, son of king Priam of Troy, was herding his sheep when Hermes, on orders of Zeus, came to him. Previous to that, the Goddess of Discord had rolled a golden apple to the assembly of gods with the note that it had to be given to the fairest of them all. And Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite all claimed that honor.

So Paris was given the golden apple and the job of giving it to the fairest of three goddesses. They were Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, who were in order, the wife of Zeus, the Goddess of wisdom, and the Goddess of love and beauty. Zeus, in his infinite wisdom as the head of the family, judiciously decided it was not his job to make the decision. He well knew that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Even goddesses were not askance to using bribes to gain their goals. Hera promised Paris power, Athena promised him wisdom and Aphrodite promised him the most beautiful woman in the world. There was no contest for a young male with raging hormones. And so Paris gave the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.

And the most beautiful woman at that time was the incomparable Helen, wife to the Greek king Menelaus, who Aphrodite later helped Paris to seduce. This was the beginning of the Trojan War, so majestically described by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Because of Homer, Troy is a place full of history, and we were looking forward to see it. But in reality there was not very much to see and photograph. It was just one excavation trench after another; they look very much the same. Troy is actually a multilevel city built on top of each other.

Troy I, 2900 - 2500 BC, destroyed by fire
Troy II, 2500 BC
Troy III 2500 - 2280 BC
Troy IV 2280 - 2100 BC
Troy V 2100 - 1800 BC
Troy VI 1800 - 1250 BC. This is the Troy of Homer’s Iliad
Troy VII 1250 - 1025 BC

You can walk across the sites and the various excavations and they all look the same to the untrained eye.

right: As a sop to the tourist, there is this wooden structure of the Horse. So I climbed inside it, and waved from the top window.

left: This is a view from the ancient ramparts; one can imagine the harbor close by. That was centuries ago, and the land has silted over, moving the sea several miles away. The sea used to be at the road, which you can see as a thin white line between the purple patches in the distance in the picture.

One can imagine Achilles and Hector fighting here, at the base of the city walls. And from the top of these city walls, poor Astyanax, the son of Hector and Andromache, was thrown to his death, so that he could not avenge the death of his father when he grew up.

h: Gallipoli

Troy was a destination steeped in history, the fertile source of blockbuster movies so beloved in Hollywood, but the site itself was disappointing. So, after a few hours we left Troy for our hotel in Çanakkale, only some 25 kms away. From hotel Akol, we had a nice view of the Dardanelles, the harbor, and the ferries plying the waters across the Straits.

The Dardanelles are now called the Àanakkale Bogazi, which is about 1.4 kms wide at its narrowest. In ancient times the Strait was called the Hellespont. It is usually very windy and not that easy to cross, but Xerxes of Persia crossed here with his army on a bridge of pontoons in 481 BC. Alexander the Great duplicated the feat some 150 years later.

right: This is the location where the straits are at its narrowest and where Xerxes of Persia and later Alexander the Great crossed with their armies on a bridge built on pontoons.

Turkey under the Ottoman rule had rather unwillingly joined Germany in WW I. In March 1915 Winston Churchill started the Gallipoli campaign by assembing a large armada to steam up the Dardanelles with the intention of capturing Istanbul, thinking it would be easy. But big guns on shore and floating mines sank several ships and forced the fleet back.

A month later Allied forces landed on the west shores of the Gallipoli peninsula to capture the gun positions. The Gallipoli campaign lasted 9 months, with huge losses on both sides, before the Allied forces retreated. Great Britain suffered 200,000 casualties, with 36,000 dead. French casualties of 47,000 were half their total contingent. Australia lost 8,000 men, a huge number for the sparsely populated country. Turkey threw in 500,000 troops, half of which became casualties with more than 50,000 dead. Turkey lost a whole generation in vain, because many of these were officers and academically trained people.

A simple, moving plaque at the Gallipoli Museum state that “In 1921, no students graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Istanbul University. These students, who would have graduated, joined the 8th division to fight in Gallipoli and they were all killed.” As Ken, the Australian in our group said: "We will never know whether one of these doctors would have found a cure for cancer or some other dreadful disease and save many lives ...."

And all these deaths were in vain. Because two short years later Germany lost the war and so did Turkey by default. Allied warships entered the Dardanelles and occupied Istanbul. And the Allied Forces then chopped up Turkey in parts to be distributed to the victors.

People in England and France seldom talk about the Gallipoli campaign, (the campaign they lost) but hundreds from Australia and New Zealand come back every year for commemorative ceremonies around the well–tended graves.

left: The well-tended graves of the fallen Anzac soldiers in Gallipoli.

Turkey made a big effort in healing between them and the Anzac forces. You see that in the the well–tended graves of Anzac fallen soldiers; the annual ceremonies on Anzac Day, drawings and statues of Turkish soldiers aiding wounded Anzac soldiers, and vv.

right: This is the beach where the Anzac troops landed. A Turkish regiment, under Kemal Pasha, was waiting in the hills above. Kemal Pasha, later known as Kemal Atatürk, later led the fight for independent Turkey and is considered the father of the country. He was the first President of the modern Turkish republic.

On a large wall in Gallipoli, he left the following inscribed message:

“ Those heroes that shed their Blood
and lost their lives,
you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in Peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
and the Mehmets to us, where they lie side by side
here in this country of ours.
You, the Mothers,
who sent their sons away from far away countries,
wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now in our bosom
and are in Peace.
After having lost their lives on this land, they have
become our sons as well “

Atatürk 1934

The folly of war.