Turkey arrives... or we arrive in Turkey

Friday October 5^th was the travel day Malcolm was most anxious about.  The words of the day are Trust the Process. Our plans for the day included a ferry from Naxos to Piraeus, Athens' port, a bus from the port  to the Athens airport, and a flight on Aegean Airlines from Athens Airport to Izmir Turkey, followed by an hour-long shuttle to our hotel in Selcuk.  All of that coming together successfully was what instilled the worry.  When the ferry was running late, we decided to make a change and take a private shuttle from the port to the airport and arranged that online with Welcome Pickups while on the ferry.  Everything fell into place and we got to Selcuk, Turkey around 9 pm. After checking-in, we found some local food and then went back to the hotel and crashed. So the process of planning with adjustments along the way worked!

Did I say local place for dinner?  It was an old stone building, dirt and stone floors and almost no light.  It was late at night on our first day in Turkey and we weren't sure what to expect.  He offered us mezes which were small plates of appetizers consisting mostly of vegetables.  It was a warm welcome. 

On Saturday we took a late morning start and met our guide Mehmet for our trip to Ephesus.  Mehmet was a fascinating person.  The hotel provided the shuttle to Ephesus and along the way Mehmet started feeding us information.  He didn't stop for over wonderful hours!  We’ve had a lot of guides through the years but Mehmet is up there with the best.

Ephesus was an ancient Hellenic port city on the Aegean built before the Roman Empire as a tribute to the of the time.  In Ephesus case, that was the Temple of Artimus dedicated to Artemis who was the goddess of the hunt, chastity, childbirth, wild animals and the wilderness.

The temple was originally built around 550 BC.  In 356 BC, a crazed man named Herostratus burned it down. It is said that he wanted infamy at any cost. On that same night Alexander the Great was born.  Thanks to Alexander, they rebuilt the temple even bigger and it was estimated to have been four times larger than the Parthenon.  It was one of the seven wonders of the world.  We did not see the Temple as there was very little to see today.  From that community sprang a thriving trade and cultural exchange center.  Ephesus also sprang off of a grid aligned with the original temple and was one of the first cities with a master plan of its layout.  Ephesus grew from 353 BC until its final demise in 262 AD.  There is a lot more about Ephesus history on-line and one good link is https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-greece/ephesus.

Ephesus reached its peak during the Roman era as the building continued and the city of approximately 260,000 evolved.  It was a center of Christian activities, including where the Virgin Mary arrived in Ephesus with St. John.  There is a church in Selcuk that was started by St. John and where St. John is purportedly buried.  Ephesus is mentioned in the New Testament and the biblical book of Ephesians is purportedly a letter from Paul to the Ephesian Christians. There is a house in Ephesus which is claimed to be where the Virgin Mary lived her final years.

At one time, St. Paul was run out of town for preaching Christianity because his preaching was hurting the trade of some local businessmen whose business was selling statues of Artimus, the pagan goddess.  These were busy times, but busier than that were the craftsmen building a city of marble.  It seems to go on forever and yet it is less than 20% excavated. 

Needless to say, there was a lot of Christianity’s work going on here, but the Roman Emperors were busy too. Trying to control the farthest outposts of the empire was always work.  One of the ways that they did it was to build statues of themselves to equate themselves with the gods.  So in any temples, the emperors statues were the same size as the gods. It wasn’t about religion, it was about power.  In the Hellenistic period, the theaters were a place for the governing bodies to meet and practice their democracies.  In the times of the emperors, there was little practiced democracy, but the theaters gave the emperor and his appointed leadership a place to provide leadership to a community that was controlled from Rome. 

Sadly, Ephesus declined as the Romans empire declined and there was no longer the wealth to support the community.  Also the wetlands and marshes that were the bay on the Aegean that made this a port city were filled over the years with silt and became a delta blocking any access to the sea.  Through the years, a lot of the stones were taken by people who lived in the area for building other structures, but none so grand.  Excavations by English and Italians resulted in a lot of the art work going to London and Rome.  But there is still a magnificent museum of Ephesus in Selcuk and the remains that have been restored in place are magnificent. 

Mehmet was the best.  We learned so much, so fast and we were on overload. Here are a few pictures of what we saw in Ephesus.

One of the most majestic restorations was the library that once housed 10's of thousands of manuscripts.  Most were lost in a tragic fire and many were shipped off to Egypt before the fire.  So there were none for us to see.

Mehmet was our so knowledgeable guide.

 

Needless to say, Ephesus was a very moving sight for these lovers of history.  Walking through this part of history with our imaginations on full speed allowed us to be there, 2,000 years ago, walking like royalty!

After the walk through Ephesus, we sat down and had a little lunch.  This is a sandwich similar to a quesadilla.  They were stuffed with cheese and spinach or cheese and beef.  The dough is rolled flat, the goodies inserted and covered with another piece of dough and sealed and then cooked over a wood fire.  Quite tasty!

Seeing the peppers strung up made us New Mexicans feel quite at home!

The next morning, we got up early and headed by car to Aphrodisias, about 2 hours away.  

On the road from Selcuk to Aphrodisias agriculture was plentiful.  We felt like we were in the heartlands.  We saw a lot of oranges, tobacco, cotton and olive orchards.  Some of the towns appeared to be very modern.  

More cotton fields.  How many of you have bought sheets made from Turkish cotton?  This is possibly where it comes from.  I asked our driver via Google Translate and he said it is all picked by hand.  It was still in the fields in early October unlike what we saw in Wharton in the '40s and '50s. But it doesn't rain much here.

The history of Aphrodisias was like that of Ephesus.  There were actually communities in both during the iron age and bronze age and the start of building the cities was in the first millennial BC, mostly around 450 BC.  They both reached their peak in the first and second century AD. Ephesus was a port city and Aphrodisias was an inland city.  The same relationship existed with the emperors and the gods giving both equal status so as to enhance the power of the emperors and city leaders over the people.  The ruins that remained in both were beautiful.  Aphrodisias is not as well excavated as Ephesus and because of its location it has fewer visitors.  There were times when we were all alone at an awesome relic or temple. Aphrodisias was remarkable in its own right.  Here are some pictures from there.

 Aphrodisias is known for its ornate sarcophgi and for the quality of statues and bust.

A stadium, about the size of the one in Athens which was about 182 meters long.

This was the agora or common meeting area.  It looks like it was a large pool with fountains.

A very well preserved theater.

These are the ruins from the original St Johns church in Selcuk.  St. John is purported to be buried right next to this in his church.

After Aphrodisias, we drove to Pamukkale and Hierapolis. Hierapolis was another ancient city where the ruins were obvious partially recovered on the top of a hill.  It was known for the hot springs that flowed from it and the travertine pools that were formed from the calcium carbonate.  We’ve included a few pictures of Pamukkale which is the calcium travertine but it doesn’t do it justice.  For better pictures you should Google Pamukkale and look at some when there was more water flowing over the travertine. 

The food in Selcuk was similar to Greece without as much fish.  The kebab was very common with both beef, lamb and chicken available.  Tomatoes were plentiful and one of the best dishes we had was a marinated tomato salad.  There were small dishes called mezes which might be vegetables, hummus, cheeses, or other small plates.  It was fun to try small portions of a lot of different dishes. This is a picture of the marinated tomatoes.

On the morning before we left Selcuk, we took a walk through the Ephesus Museum which is located in downtown Selcuk.  It contained a lot of the finer art including sculptures and friezes from Ephesus.  It was well worth the visit and since less than 20% had been excavated, we can only imagine what remains under the earth.

A statue of Zeus!

This is a statute of the goddess Artimus.  

This entire leg of our journey was two full days of hurried travel to see all we wanted to see.  The history of the area was awesome.

Whenever I am around Roman ruins I am always reminded of my high school Latin teacher, Mrs. Risenger.  She instilled a curiosity of all things Roman. I still carry that curiosity today thanks to her, but my retention of the Latin she taught me is not so good.

The other thing hard to describe on this leg was the feelings we had.  Sometime we felt like we were thieves stealing a look into someone's personal grave yard.  At other times, we were just in awe of the sheer amount of work that was done by the Roman architects and engineers as well as the builders and stone artists and can only imagine how beautiful the cities must have looked in their prime.  When looking at the travertine in its stunning white glory,  it was hard not to feel the beauty of nature at work, spreading her minerals of calcium carbonate over the surface until it built a brilliant white shine.  Any feelings of concern for being in the remote areas of Turkey vanished in less than a day as the warm and friendly Turks made us feel right at home and many thanked us for visiting their country. As much as anything we were truly very thankful for the opportunity that we have had to visit these sites.

Maybe the Romans were able to build these great cities and manage an empire spread far and wide from Rome because the had a trust in their process.