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Published: June 16th 2009
Ephesus
Library of CelcusIf you want a country has nice scenery, diverse cultures and beautiful scenery, and is easy to get around, while not being as expensive as Europe or Australia, you should all go to Turkey. I think I was lucky to be there in May/June, as it’s been nice weather (bordering on the hot) but the more out-of-the-way places have not yet been overrun by German or Russian sun-seekers. It’s not quite the sort of place I wanted to travel, so I’m not totally disappointed to be heading into Syria now (probably there, or left, by the time you get this), but that’s partly my fault for sticking to the tourist trail most of the time.
So in the last blog I’d pretty thorougly explored Istanbul. Here’s a brief overview of the next week (the past week - June 8 - 15). I took trains to Selçuk (in Turkish, “ç” is pronounced “ch” as in “cheese”), which is basically the site of ancient Ephesus. I then took a bus a short distance to Pamukkale, and a few days later an overnight bus to the small touristy town of Göreme in Cappadocia, where I did two day-tours of the surrounding areas, before
Selçuk
storks nesting on a pillar outside my hotel room catching another overnight bus to Antakya (ancient Antioch) in the Hatay. I’m now (Monday morning June 15) in a bus headed for the Syrian border, on the road to Damascus. But that’s for next week’s blog.
By the way, sorry that the captions for the photos are all messed up, and probably some photoso are missing and some are duplicated. Blame Travelblog, it took me nearly two hours already just to upload those photos, their system is awful, especially the way that if your upload fails on the last photo as it does about 50%!o(MISSING)f the time, you have to reload all of them. So I haven't got more time now to tidy the photos up. Sorry.
So to go through it backwards, since, like you, that’s the way I remember things. The landscape here is dry. People are burning their fields - I don’t know why - there’s a lot of smoke in the air. We’ve been driving along for some time now past the border, with small white towers . There’s a double-sided barbed-wire fence, probably two metres high, running along the foot of this range
Selçuk
diarama at the Ephesus Museum in Selçuk of hills. I guess that’s the Turkish side. The Syrian side is nowhere to be seen, I guess on the other side of the hills.
Yesterday I did a day-tour of the Antakya area with a middle-aged local who volunteered at the visitor information centre. He only charged 30 Turkish Lire (about $AUS 25) plus I paid for the local bus fares which added up to about another $15, so it wasn’t too bad. I got to see a fair bit, which I wouldn’t have had time to do otherwise. We took a
dolmuş (a type of local minibus) through the Arabic town of Samandağ and then a few further kilometres on to Çevlik a tiny village on the Mediterranean Sea (which a young Arab a few days earlier on the bus from Pamukkale had been shocked to discover was not called the “White Sea” in English, despite being on the opposite side of Turkey from the “Black Sea”). It looked very sleepy, but my guide (whose name, apparently, was “November”, I don’t know why) said that in July and August it would be full of European holidaymakers camping near the beach, and turtles laying eggs in an area
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Priapos, in Ephesus Museum in Selçuk where the holidaymakers are forbidden.
The main attraction of this area is the Titus tunnels, dating back to early Roman times when the sea level had been higher at least in the Mediterranean, when there had been a port (from which Saints Paul & Barnabas set off for their evangelical tour before Paul got too weird for anyone else to work with). Apparently the Romans had dug a 130-metre tunnel out the side of the harbor to prevent silting. I didn’t pace it out myself but the guidebook says that it’s 130 metres long, so it must be - would a guidebook ever lie to a person? It looks at least that long and is fairly impressive in some parts, forming a large canyon in some places and a massive cave in others, and you can still clearly see where it was picked out of the solid rock. I’m not sure what the ancient Romans’ fascination was with carving through solid rock in Turkey.
From there we took dolmuşes back to a small town called Harbiye, which in ancient times was “Daphne”. This seems to be where people in Antakya go for a pleasant lunch or dinner, as
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"HEAD OF ZEUS Flavian (69-96 A.D.)" in Ephesus Museum in Selçuk the main attraction is a bit of a gorge with numerous waterfalls and any number of restaurants where you can eat with your feet in a river, or in front of a pretty waterfall. At least one of them had somehow managed the redirect the water so that it flowed through a Heath Robinsonian sort of pattern of bamboo spouts and came gushing out of amphorae and suchlike. It’s several hundred metres above Antakya’s altitutde, so I think part of its attraction is that it’s more bearable in summer. There’s a large array of stalls selling the normal touristy paraphernalia - Islamic calligraphy, squeaking little chicks (baby chickens) dyed in bright colours, hand-woven rugs, … all that sort of thing.
From there we went on to St Peter’s cave church, where it is said St Peter himself preached to the community which were the first people in the world to be called “Christians”. This attraction costs 8 Turkish Lire (over $AUS 6) and really isn’t worth it. It’s carved into the rock and you can see where it was extended with rock bricks, and there’s an altar which is clearly modern and a statue of St Peter in a
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Eros on the Dolphin 2nd century A.D. in Ephesus Museum in Selçuk little niche half-way up the wall. This is because the church is still used once a year for special ceremonies. There’s a tiny bit of mosaic left on the floor, and a small room with a caved-in tunnel leading away from it where the priest apparently changed his clothes and which was used to hide in when they were being attacked. It’s a nice walk up, and you get a fairly good view out over the city, so it’s probably worth it from that regard, but if you happen to be in the vicinity and really want to save a few dollars, just walk up to the entrance and then walk back again. I think there’s other tracks leading up the hill, which almost probably qualifies as a mountain. Visible on the top of one of them is the remains of an ancient wall which apparently surrounded Antakya on three sides at one time. It looks like a mini Great Wall of China. There’s also windows carved into the rock, where apparently the early Christians used to hide and were able to survey the valley looking for attackers. I’m not sure if it’s possible to explore them. Apparently the tunnel
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sarcophagus in Ephesus Museum in Selçuk in the church leads through to these windows and ultimately all the way to the other side of the mountain.
The previous day, having arrived in Antakya on the overnight bus without sleeping at all, I spent the morning trying to sleep, and then wandered around the town. I ended up at the local museum, which has a large collection of mosaics, and a few sarcophagi. The town has a different feel from the others I’ve been to in Turkey, perhaps because it’s largely Arabic, perhaps because it’s the first one that’s not really touristy. It’s on the Asi river which used to be known as the Orontes, which despite being famous is quite small and green. They’re clearly trying to beautify it, and the centre of town looks like the river will eventually become quite nice. I stayed at a cheap little hotel, where I had my own room for 15 Turkish Lire (about $AUS 12) with shared showers and (squat) toilets, but clean rooms and solid beds. The only problem was that on both nights I got completely devoured by mosquitoes, to which I think I developed an allergy when I was in SE Asia. At least
Selçuk
the goddess Artemis covered as she normally is, in multiple testicles the Turkish squat toilets are neat and work, like the ones in most of Indonesia, not like the awful messes in China - China’s claim to fame is that they invented the flush toilet, toilet paper, and gunpowder, but they obviously didn’t have a good project controller to make sure that the toilet paper project was talking to the toilet project, and there was no follow-up to make sure any of their inventions were implemented. As I write this, in Syria, I found a toilet which was breeding a swarm of mosquitoes, which is different, I don’t think I’ve seen that before, depending how you define “toilet”.
I like the way that here in Antakya there seem to be guys pushing carts full of watermelons all over the place, and sometimes they even stay still so that people can buy watermelons. I didn’t get a chance to buy watermelons which is a pity because I like watermelons. I like too the way that in the back streets but particularly in the smaller towns you still see plenty of people driving around in simple flat carts pulled by small horses or by donkeys. These might be all sorts of people,
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"The Statue of Proconsul Stephanos 6th Cent. A.D." in Ephesus Museum in Selçuk ... not sure if his sculptor did him any favours really fat old men, skinny middle aged men, women in long clothes with only their faces showing … although not many really young people. The carts seem to be made with four car tyres and a flat tray. Usually the driver sits on a plastic bag, which looks like it might have began life as a 40-kg bag of chaff, and some rags, or an old tyre. Around town, if anything, Ataturk’s image seems more prevalent here than anywhere else - strange, since they only became part of Turkey after his death.
At Çevlik, November happened to meet a man whom he introduced as his “Brother’s son’s son” but who looked at least my age, so only twenty or so years younger than November, so perhaps he was really just his nephew. He was apparently an
imam and a
hoca but apparently he was a “modern imam” who could “very simply” give people advice when they come to him with their problems because he can see what is in within people. They struggled for the English word, I think trying to say that he is psychic - like a “medium” they said, without believing in other spirits, as they tried
Selçuk
Artemision column, with a stork on top, with the Isa Bey Camii in the background. More of the Artemision is off-camera to the left. to explain it in terms of synapses. November told the story in which his brother’s car had been stolen, so they took his daughter, then aged about 12 (it was a long time ago), to this Imam, who I guess would be her cousin, and he hypnotised her. Under hypnosis she saw a vision of the car “in a safe place, all green and leafy”. They looked some more, and found their car in a safe green place. This is why I could never be a psychic, I say the right things but in the wrong way. His way sounds a lot more authoritarian than what I’d say, which is “Well, they probably stole your car so they could drive it. Have you looked in everyone’s driveways?” And, no, I didn’t say that to him, he didn’t speak any English and November wasn’t fluent enough to translate - besides, no doubt he already knew what I was thinking.
Before that, In Cappadocia, I stayed in the tourist town of Göreme, in one of the many “pensions”, guesthouses, hotels, etc., that fill up the town, in a room carved out of rock. Because the attractions in Cappadocia are spread out
Selçuk
I don't remember what these things were. I remember that they were ancient. over a fair geographical area, I did two day-tours. Both were run by young women who’d recently graduated in Tourism from the local university in Nevşehir. The second one spoke English well, the first knew a lot of English but hadn’t yet got the pronunciation thing down pat and had a fairly small voice. Unfortunately the first tour was the one where one might have got more of the historical and cultural information. Also unfortunately, the beginning of the second tour was where my camera battery went flat with very little warning.
Here we got to clamber around an old Greek village carved out of stone. Apparently Ataturk moved them out into real houses because the stone ones were unsafe and they couldn’t get electricity. Then he moved them back to Greece in a population exchange whereby Greeks in Turkey were sent back home to Greece and Turks in Greece were sent back home to Turkey. I don’t know if the people were happy about that or not.
Houses carved out of rock seems to be the prevailing theme of Cappadocia’s tourist attractions. One of the guides said something about this being due to the volcanic tuft, which
Selçuk
Isa Bey Camii (Mosque) is fairly easy to cut through but hardens up when exposed to air. I’m not sure if this is true. It’s certainly true that the rocks are volcanic and form strange shaped “fairy chimneys” which look pretty cool. Apparently a lot of them were used for houses, and I can’t quite work out how many still are, but many were later turned into pigeon houses, apparently pigeons were used for communication. Of course both tours took us to the mandatory tourist traps, on one day a wine-tasting, on the other a pottery factory which hand-produces pottery, some of which are exquisite works of art. These are still done in the traditional Hittite style, and some are very beautiful as well as very expensive, with very intricate hand-drawn patterns. On this day we also saw the rock-cut churches of the Göreme open-air museum still with frescoes, like many others in the area that had been vandalised by Muslims who of course believe that images of Jesus and angels are blasphemous, sometimes scratching at their faces, particularly the eyes.
I opted not to do a balloon ride, not because word on the streets was that they’d had a fatal accident the
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Isa Bey Camii (Mosque) week before with two balloons crashing into each other because there’s so many different balloons in the air all trying to show tourists the same thing, but because balloon rides are so expensive. Besides, having hopped straight off the busses and onto the tour on my first day in Cappadocia, I wanted a good night’s sleep that night! The first day’s tour was also more tiring, with a hike of several kilometres along a pretty little river in a valley in the rocks, surrounded by old buildings carved into the rock, and a visit to the underground city, among other things. Apparently, vast networks of these underground cities existed at one time, with interconnections between them, some with populations of up to thirty thousand people. According to the guidebook, forty such villages existed, but only a few are open to the public. A fair few levels were opened and it was fun to explore them for a bit. There were a few places where there were large disk-shaped rocks that apparently were used as doors in the case of invasion, including one which was just a large room, which seems like a dumb idea to me because while the enemy
Selçuk
Isa Bey Camii (Mosque) could well not get in, you also couldn’t get out and after you’d eaten all your mates you’d die of starvation or suffocation. Or possibly food-poisoning.
I don’t know what it is with Turks and their overnight busses. I would have liked to take busses during the day since I can’t sleep on the overnight busses so it kind of wastes a day anyway, and so that I could see the scenery, but often an overnight bus is the only option. So before taking the overnight bus to Cappadocia, I spent a few lazy days at Pamukkale, a small tourist town near the city of Denizli. This is the world-heritage site of white terraces. The name means “Cotton Castle” because it looks vaguely like one. It’s a couple of hundred metres above the surrounding countryside, and calcites in the water harden into a chalk-like substance, causing all sorts of fancy shapes that almost look like a winter snow scene only a bit duller. The presence of snow caps on some of the far-off mountain peaks helps that illusion. Of course one isn’t allowed to trample all over them, as the water makes fairly delicate wave-like patterns, but one can
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Isa Bey Camii (Mosque) walk up the main path in bare feet. There are a few muddy pools that people swim in, and there’s a swimming pool up the top which catches some of the water, but one has to pay to swim there. Of course the water is supposed to be good for just about any physical ailment you can think of.
At the top of this formation are the ruins of the ancient city of Heirapolis. This is quite well restored and is large in area, which got very hot to walk all around. I think I missed a bit - the bit where St Philip was supposedly martyred. There’s a very large field of sarcophagi strewn around the place, some in bits, some with Greek or Latin (I think, I don’t remember for sure) writing still clearly visible on them. I also took a day trip from here to Aphrodisias, a few hours’ drive away, which in ancient times was the centre of the cult of Aphrodite. After much of the site was unearthed in the 1990s, it’s clear that they’re now focusing on conservation and reconstruction, and much of the site still remains buried. Some of the parts that
Selçuk
The two local kids who showed me around the castle (see text). One likes doing sommersaults. have been unearthed are again covered with thistles, but some of it is well maintained and reconstructed. While there’s a couple of theatres, most impressive thing for me was the Stadium, which must have been a couple of hundred metres long, and according to the guidebook is one of the largest and best-preserved in Anatolia. It was indeed remarkably well-preserved and one could easily imagine chariot races and such-like. By this time (after Ephesus and Heirapolis and all the stuff in Istanbul of course) I was getting a little tired of Roman ruins, so I didn’t go down to Laodicea which was only 20 kilometres or so from Pamukkale, although it would have been nice to go to a place that’s not too hot and not to cold, after the heat at Heirapolis!
Something I find interesting is the way that even the touristy towns haven’t yet been completely taken over by tourists like some in other parts of the world. Pamukkale was a tiny little farming town until it got invaded by tourists a few decades ago, but you only have to wait for a few minutes before you see a tractor driving through the centre of town,
Selçuk
Selçuk city from the top of the castle if you’re lucky driven by a middle-aged man wearing traditional baggy pants and a middle-aged lady with only her face uncovered. Even in Selçuk you’d see this. One time I saw two wiry farmers struggling to drag a ram down the main street. I don’t know why. Both of them have their Turkish coffee shops and cafés where the locals play Okey (like "rummikub") or cards (An interesting side note as I go to publish this - I went to look up rummikub on wikipedia to check my facts, and find that I can read the article but not view the images; I'm in Syria; it appears that they block the images on wikipedia but not the text, isn't that weird?). It’s kind of reassuring. Another random observation about Turkey is that everyone seems to have guns. The cops all have pistols. The Gendarmes have what to me look like sub-machine guns, guards tend to have rifles, and of course the army have whatever it is armies have. Without in any way looking for them I found a couple of gun shops. I didn’t see civilians carrying guns, but clearly the gun-shops weren’t catering for the police or military. I
Ephesus
the stadium don’t know what the figures are and I’m writing this off-line so I can’t google for it, but that’s just my impression. I don’t know why the ATM in the touristy part of sleepy little old Pamukkale needs five armed Gendarmes guarding it, but what would I know?
Anyway, It had been another overnight bus a few days earlier to get from Selçuk to Pamukkale. Selçuk is of course the site of ancient Ephesus, the most-visited tourist attraction in Turkey outside of Istanbul. It’s one of the largest and most well-preserved Roman sites in existence, but was in danger of being destroyed in the early 20th century as local villagers “cannibalised” its marble to build their own houses. So it’s only thanks to the early 20th century classicist Alfred Deissman that we have any of it left today. In ancient times it was situated on the coast, but today it’s about ten kilometres inland. It was a large and wealthy city with perhaps 300,000 people at its heyday. It’s been restored a lot, and there’s clearly work still going on, with a large crane helping to slowly reassemble the jigsaw puzzle that is the outside of the largest theatre.
Ephesus
one of the restored streets, I forget the name This theatre, which is quite complete and gives a very good impression of what it would have been like in those days, seats some massive number of people (I have in my mind 40,000). This is the spot where St Paul stood when he preached his sermon against idolatry, urging Romans to become atheists about all gods except the Jewish god and to stop buying idols, a message which understandably enraged the silversmiths, who started the famous riot which got Paul ran out of town. I stood at the spot where he probably stood when they started chanting “Great is Diana, goddess of the Ephesians”, or “Artemis”, depending on which translation you believe, apparently they're the same god.
There are a number of fairly well restored streets in Ephesus, although these were mainly from the town centre and it’s clear that there’s still lots of the suburbs hidden under the nearby hills. It really gives an idea of how the well-to-do lived in ancient Ephesus, even with a restored public toilet, where from the looks of it people sat thigh-to-thigh without any privacy and which seem to have smelt a bit like the Chinese public toilets. There’s a
Ephesus
a better view of the stadium restored façade of the Library of Celcus, designed to look even bigger than it is, adorned with (now) copies of statues of the four virtues. A sign at the site tells us that it took a total of 14850 person-days to restore (including 360 person-days for “photographers” and still looks slightly precarious to me, making me wonder about the wisdom all of these restorations in such an earthquake-prone area.
Ephesus is an easy three kilometre walk from Selçuk. Much of this is along a green, tree-lined boulevard, thanks to Dr. Sabri Yayla, a Mayor of Selçuk who in the 1936 probably felt that he wouldn’t be remembered after he was gone and so planted all these trees. So I walked along cursing the memory of Dr. Sabri Yayla, wishing that he’d chosen some type of tree other than mulberry trees, whose plentiful fruit dropped all over the place make the walk to Ephesus akin to walking on a giant piece of jam toast (I assume).
This mulberry walk also takes you past the Artemission, the site of part of the temple of Artemis, who in some way that I don’t understand is also Dianna Goddess of the Ephesians.
Ephesus
I think this was a fountain of some sort Gods are able to do all this weird stuff, where they can be different people and have different names, I don’t always understand it. Anyway, the site isn’t well preserved yet. There’s a large column that someone’s stuck together, I’m not sure how well they’ve done it really, some of the pieces really don’t look like they fit, plus a lot of it is plaster, as some of the bottom bits are missing. Other than that there’s a fair bit of stuff lying on the ground, and a duck pond covered in green weeds. As I approached the pond, something disappeared under the surface with a discreet “splash” and never resurfaced. The whole area was underwater when archaeologists finally discovered it late in the 19th century. While it’s not that impressive, at least it’s free.
I did wander around a bit. Where they haven’t been bulldozed over, there’s a rather impressive jungle of thorns. I don’t know what sort they are, they remind me of what in Australia we called “Scotch Thistle” but they’re higher than I am, I’d say about two metres high, and fairly impenetrable for anything even vaguely human-sized, although the feral cats seemed to have
Ephesus
in case anyone reads ancient Greek no problem. However they’ve cleared it, near the main part where the tour busses go it’s OK, but further up the hill it’s still full of thistles, just bulldozed over, and a few standing up. There’s a skill to walking through thistles while wearing sandals, but if you’re incredibly handsome and intelligent you can manage it. They obviously cleared it with something heavy. There lying in the sun with a few ants crawling out of it, was the dead body of a turtle. The big machine had neatly ran over half its body. Or maybe only half its shell had caved in. Anyway one half was OK but one half was flat. It hadn’t even had time to withdraw its head and legs back into the shell and hope for the best. Poor little beggar. Anyway if you walk back this way far enough and climb over a fence you can find yourself at the back of Isa Bey Camii, the large old Mosque.
Isa Bey Camii is the archetypical Selçuk-style mosque, but much of it is not completely restored. The minarets are missing, but a large, nice, courtyward remains, and a much smaller, but still quite large, enclosed
Ephesus
the front of the stadium area where the faithful can go to pray. Storks nest on the top of one of the towers, as storks nest everywhere in Selçuk, but on one spot they appear to be right next to the loudspeakers. I didn’t hang around to check whether these speakers actually broadcast the call to prayer with exceptionally devout and deaf storks, or whether the speakers are somehow disabled during the stork nesting season.
I continued on from Isa Bey Camii, around the large hill, Ayaoluk Hill, coming to the back of it through the old town which is worlds away from the touristy part of Selçuk. The main thing in this hill is an impressive castle which dominates the skyline from most places in the city. The whole area has been closed off for some years after one wall collapsed, with a large fence around it. As I was walking back I passed a couple of teenage boys who couldn’t speak much English but kept trying to get me to do “castle tour” and repeating “come on, it’s OK”. Cautiously I followed them for a bit, up a small track.
They lead me through a large hole in the fence, and
Ephesus
another street, more towards the north ("North Street" ?) sure enough, knew their way around the castle. They turned out to be two brothers, one big, quiet, a bit chubby, and 15, and the other small, wiry, lively, and 14. They were clearly genuinely proud of the castle and of their city, and indeed from the top it was a very impressive view. The younger brother stood at the top of the hill and like a warrior surveying his territory shouted “Selçuk!!! Türkiye!!!” The ruins themselves weren’t that great, but it was still kind of worth it. Going up this way probably doesn’t fall under the rubric of “responsible tourism”, but there were no “keep out” signs on the fence, and it was worth it. After we got down the boys began demanding money and since they had been good guides with even a bit of background information about the castle in a smattering of English, I gave them 5 Lire (a bit over $AUS 4) each.
The other thing I passed on the way back from Ephesus though, was the cave of the seven sleepers. Almost two thousand years ago, seven young Christians refused to compromise their beliefs and hid in the cave, where they were walled
Ephesus
Roman-style public toilets in by the Romans. Naturally the only thing to do when you’re trapped in a cave is to fall asleep, and they all did. Some two hundred years later, an earthquake shattered the wall and woke them from their deep sleep. They ambled down to town, feeling very hungry as you do after sleeping for two hundred years, to find that all of Ephesus had converted to Christianity. After they died of extreme old age, they were buried in this famous cave. The moral of the story is that despite what your parents told you, it is possible to become famous just by lying around in bed. Or maybe the moral of the story is: you can be a person who changes the world, or you can stay in bed and wait for the world to change around you; the first way is preferably only if you have a high degree of tolerance for being a once-off circus performer. There’s also a site which is supposed to have something to do with Mary, apparently she retired there or something, but I didn’t go there. I walked far enough that day.
Getting to Selçuk from Istanbul took me two days,
Ephesus
"Temple to Hadrian, honorary monument AD 117/24-5th cent." one day longer than it should have. Because I was sick of busses and because I didn’t know where the bus stops were but getting to the train station was easy, I opted to go by train. Unfortunately there’s no direct train, so I had to go inland to Eskişehir, almost half-way to Ankara, where I should be able to catch a connecting train. The trains are really nice, the seats are comfortable, there’s (some) power points to plug in your laptop, and there was even a wifi connection which didn’t actually connect out to the Internet, so I’m not sure what the go was with that. I was supposed to have a four-hour stop over or so at Eskişehir in the evening. Apparently it’s a nice University town, according to the young student I met on the train, but I don’t think it gets many tourists. I didn’t see much of it, just the area around the train station, which didn’t look that nice.
Unfortunately the train from Eskişehir down to Izmir (near Selçuk) was very late. They made some announcements about it but all in Turkish, so all I knew was that something announcement-worthy was happening with
the train to Izmir. Eventually it turned up nearly three hours late. On arriving at Izmir it became even more late because of track works. This meant that I arrived mid-morning, too late to catch a connecting train for the 40-minute trip down to Selçuk.
The next train to Selçuk was at like 16:00 that afternoon. There was nowhere to leave my backpack. I discovered that I’d lost my adaptor for plugging my electrical appliances into the European-style power plugs, so that kept me busy much of the day wandering around town with my heavy backpack, trying to find a power adaptor, which I eventually did. If there’s some sort of ratio of actual worth to utility, a power adaptor would win hands-down. I paid $3 for one when I finally found it, but without it my computer was useless and my camera would soon be useless too, not to mention my phone. Still eventually I got into Selçuk and the rest is what you’ve just read.
If you’re on my friends on facebook, you’ve probably seen me say that I won’t have Internet access (much) for the four weeks that I’m on the archaeology dig.
Seven Sleepers Grotto
as far as one could get, with the gate locked It now turns out that we’ll probably be staying in Jordan’s resort city of Aqaba, so I should have Internet access sometimes. Whether I’ll write many blogs during that time though, is something I’m not sure about. One of the guys who did it last year, whom I haven’t met yet, has a blog which he will be writing about the dig, found
here It looks like it will be more interest if you’re after the archaeological details. Of course anything unflattering that he might mention about me will of course be totally untrue. It looks like pretty much everyone else are pretty experienced or even professional archaeologists, so it should be interesting for me.
It seems that not only Lonely Planet employs people who don’t think things through logically. For Turkey, I was only able to get hold of a “Rough Guide”. They tell me that Turkey has a 8333 kilometre coastline. I discussed how ridiculous this is in
this blog. Why do they keep doing it? I wish they’d stop. Considering that Turkey is 1600 kilometres from east to west, and 650 kilometres from (roughly) North to South at its widest point, the 8333-kilometre figure is
Seven Sleepers Grotto
looking down into the "grotto" patently absurd.
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Albrecht
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Thanks, Daniel, for keeping up your blogs. Anatolia ... ah Anatolia, the land of the rising sun (in Greek A. = East). I only wish I could be there with you specially in Ephesus. Speaking of which, I noticed with glee that you referred to the "20th century classicist Alfred Deissman". Well done! However, his name was actually Gustav Adolf Deissmann (1866-1937), and he wasn't a classicist per se, but rather a theologian who in 1895 became the world-leading expert in the postclassical (koine) Greek language streets ahead of all classicists. Regarding his role in Ephesus, you are quite right, had he not championed its cause after WW1, much of what one sees there today would have been lost forever and with it a large chunk of our knowledge of the ancient world and its people. In AD 100 Ephesus had a pop. of some half a million people, no wonder you were awed by its size. You also wrote of the Artemision that in the Apostle Paul’s time "They started changing [!] “Great is Diana ...”, and puzzled over how Diana and Artemis could possibly be the same god. Artemis was the name of the Greek goddess whom the Romans took over and called Diana (talk about plagiarism). Actually, this kind of ‘godnapping’ was nothing unusual in the ancient world. The Christians did the same later with the images and statues of the Roman goddess Isis and her son Horus, by simply renaming them Virgin Mary and her son Jesus. Hey presto the myth is re-cycled, repackaged and sold to millions as sacred reality.