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Published: April 24th 2005
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Goreme Caves
Some of the caves were on national park lands, but many were on land owned by private individuals who adapted them to their own use however they pleased. Some caves had modern additions that made them quite useful and even livable. From Istanbul, we left on a three-night excursion into central Turkey, which lies on the Asian side of the Dardanelles. This was foreign territory indeed, as neither Dick nor I knew anything at all about it. I was vaguely aware that it had some interesting archaeological sites and some biblical cities were in it, but that was about it.
We were blessed with an expert Turkish guide named Ahmet, who could easily have passed for a university lecturer. There were about 28 of us on the bus tour, and he set about educating us on Turkey. First, he said, Turkey is 98% Muslim, and until 1923 it was more or less indistinguishable from its Sultanate neighbors Iran, Iraq and Syria. But Kemal Attaturk came to power in 1923 and made sweeping changes to westernize it, so that it became more like its western neighbors Greece and Bulgaria. Turkey now has a secular government instead of one controlled by Islamic beliefs. Women have voting rights, it has a parliamentary government and westernized civil code, and its formerly Arabic alphabet has been modernized to the western alphabet. Now Turkey considers itself the cultural as well as physical bridge between Asia and Europe,
Cave Hotel at Goreme
Mary and Dick at the Cave Hotel. Behind us is the outside wall of gthe office and restaurant, and above, at the base of the peak, can be seen the wooden door to our room. as it lies partly on both continents.
We saw this everywhere. There were quite modern business districts in the towns, with billboards and signs that looked familiar, until you got close enough to see they were all in an unfamiliar language. People on the streets dressed mostly in Western-style clothing. But the call to prayer came five times a day from the minarets and mosques, and the modern airport we went to had a large prayer room that faced toward Mecca, with a separate smaller prayer room for women.
Our choice of tours into the country was “Old Cappadocia,” which refers to an area in central Turkey, which in ancient times was “Anatolia.”
First we went to Goreme, a little town in the Cappadocia area of Turkey in an area famous for some really strange volcanic formations. Mother Nature was really in a Disney mood when she created this wondrous landscape. Some 70 million years ago the submerged volcanoes erupted into lakes, building up little mountains that gradually eroded into the curious structures seen today. Some are called “fairy chimneys,” and others look like giant mushrooms with caps of volcanic rock. The soft volcanic rock is easy
Cave Hotel - Our Room
This was our "cave" room, showing the back wall carved out of the soft whie rock. It had a quite modern bathroom in a little alcove to the left, designed by the architect whose instructions were to design hotel rooms within the existing caves without destroying their original contures. From what we could see, the architect did a super job. to carve, so humans began doing digging out homes for themselves thousands of years ago, resulting today in many hundreds of caves in the little mountains, and also underground. They were actually being used as homes by a few people up till about 1950.
The hotel where we stayed for two nights in Goreme was such a place. It had 18 rooms, all of them caves! Our room was the only one in a little cone-shaped peak, and we reached it by going up a flight of steps from the hotel courtyard. In the top of “our” peak was another little room unused, which had partially crumbled away, exposing the remarkable sight of still-visible frescoes painted on the little vaulted ceiling by early Christians who lived in the caves as early as the first century CE. They fled there after the death of Christ, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Romans, and subsequent flight of Jewish communities. Our guide pointed out that Cappadocia, on the main Silk Road route, sheltered many different religious sects and tended to be tolerant of newcomers such as the Christians. He himself for example was born in a town to the south
Goreme Caves from Hot Air Balloon
We spent an hour drifting over this fantastic landscape in a hot air balloon. Closer inspection showed that many of the caves were used as churches by early Christians. The inside of a typical cave was domed like a miniature cathedral, some even with a nave and transepts on each side. These are standing in an outdoor museum where they are carefully protected and preserved. that was ancient Antioch, “where the followers of Christ were first called Christians.” Paul of Tarsus (also in Turkey) used Antioch as his home base in the area.
(For more pictures of the caves by someone with better lighting equipment than we had, see this website)
http://www.dancechristina.net/Travels/Turkey/Turkeypart3/turkey_part_3.htm
I was absolutely stonkered to find so many ancient cities and peoples from the Old and New Testament in Turkey. Both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where western civilization began, arise in Turkey. Mt. Ararat is there. The Hittites and other OT tribes romped through it. Ancient tradition says the apostle John took Mary the mother of Jesus there after Jesus’ death, and both are buried near Ephesus - another Cappadocia city. Other names I recognized were Caesarea, Sardis, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Laodicea, Thyatira, Pergamum, Nicaea . . . . . and on and on. I ended up agreeing with a guidebook I bought, that said Turkey deserves the name of Holy Land equally as much as Israel, if not more so, as it nourished the small struggling Christian churches that were in grave danger of being extinguished until Constantine recognized Christianity as the Roman Empire’s state religion in the third
Underground Caves
Mary examining a large flat stones with depressions for grinding wheat and spices in this huge network of underground caves. The caves could house as many as 30,000 people who took refuge here when invaders romped along this old Silk Road route. The inhabitants closed off the entrances with huge stones and handily dispatched the few intruders who managed to get by them. century.
After leaving Goreme we went on by bus to nearby Ephesus, which is a bustling town with the ancient ruins of the imperial city on its outskirts. Two thousand years ago it was a harbor city built on a long hill, with the sea lapping its doorstep at the bottom of a long marble street lined with marble columns and buildings, including the famed Library of Celsus at Ephesus, third largest in the world. Today the sea has retreated ten miles and is no longer in view. But it was a hauntingly evocative sight and a fitting end to a truly marvelous excursion through Turkey.
(For more on Ephesus, see)
http://www.abrock.com/Greece-Turkey/ephesus.html
Next, the fabled city of Venice!
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