Turkey: Roman and Greek ruins...
2:00 AM
So in my first post about Turkey, I did mention that Turkey has the largest number of Roman and Greek archaeological sites in the world. Our second week in Turkey consisted mainly of visiting these sites... and we learnt some interesting facts about these places. I've been quite busy lately and it's been almost 3 weeks since I visited these places and listened to Atakan talk about these places, so Ill try my best to re-cap what he said. I wish that I had one of those books which dad bought about Turkey which gives very interesting and detailed descriptions about the places... But these places are very beautiful and well preserved. There are many more sites waiting to be excavated in Turkey, and many of the sites that we saw were only partially excavated, so maybe in 10 years time when we go back, who knows, there may be more wondorous sites to see :)
So we saw many sites, and they were:
1.Aspendos:
2.Hellenistic Roman city of Perge
3.Roman city Hierapolis: The roman city on the terraces
4.Aphrodisias: stadium, theatre and temple of Aphrodite
5.Esphesus
6.Pergamon: Acropolis, temple of Trajan, temple of Athena
7.Asclepion, ancient centre of healing,
8.Troy
For Practicalities sake, this post shall have two parts so as to prevent an overwhelmingly overload of pictures...
1. Aspendos was the first archaeological site we visited in Turkey... so you can imagine that everyone was quite excited about it. It is known for having one of the best preserved Greek-Roman theatres in the world, such that even today, concerts are held in this theatre during the summer season.... I'm not sure that if I remembered it correctly, but in order to tell whether it is a Greek or Roman theatre, Greeks usually built their theatres against the hill which provided the natural support for the theatre. Roman empires were ones who added arches to the theatres.... This theatre even had a mock gladiator with whom we could take pictures with so that was quite fun. These theatres often provided entertainment for the Roman citizens living in the city. It is said that in order to know the population of the city at the time, one has to take the seating capacity of the theatre and times 10. This is because back then, only Roman citizens were allowed to partake in these entertainments and they usually comprised of about 10% of the city's population. These were centres of decadence whereby people would sit here all day and eat and drink. So much so, there were actually vommiting rooms at the sides of the theatre... pple would drink, go to the room to throw up and come back down to continue...
2. Perge was one of the 4 great cities of Antalya during the Greek/Roman empires. Aspendos was one of them as well. Currently, only the lower city of Perge has been excavated. Due to limited funds, the upper city of Perge is still buried in the hills and waiting to be excavated. The lower city is usually where most of the population lived and daily routines such as trade took place. The upper city is where the important temples and buildings are usually found... It was in this region whereby the heat really began to hit alot of people as it got really hot and humid up to 35 degrees and as you can see from the pictures, little or no cloud cover at all. So sunglasses, sunscreen and umbrellas/hats became almost an necessity in this part of the trip. My parents were really conscious of the sun, so many a time, they opted to stay in the shade, while me (and my sister sometimes) would venture out further to explore other parts of the ruins...
Apollo shrine right at the end of the lower city gates.... was pretty cool, you could still see the channels that were built to accomodate the water fountains in those days! The carvings on the stone were pretty spectacular, considering that they were all done by hand.
In the town centre below, many well preserved statues were found in the alcoves and were taken to the Antalya museum (more about that later). Anyhow, I should probably add that for christian addicts, St Paul (the apostle) visited Perge twice during his first missionary journey. It was easy for Paul to travel around for his missionary journey as he was a Roman citizen which made travel passage much easier for him in the Roman empire.
Perge museum in Antalya.
I was the only one in my family who bothered to come to this museum. Everyone decided to stay in the coolness of the hotel room/swimming pool while I walked over to the museum. So I'm glad I went, because the statues taken from Perge were like OMG, very well preserved and there were heaps!!! It was very easy to be confused by the names of the gods/goddesses as they had different names in the Greek Roman empires. For example,
Arthemis (Greek name for Goddess of the Moon) is also known as Diana (Roman name)
Other examples include:
Aphrodite (Greek: Goddess of Love) -> Venus (Roman name)
Ares (Greek: God of War) -> Mars (Roman name)
Zeus (Greek: God of Gods) -> Jupiter (Roman name).
So most of the places we visited in this trip were called by their Greek name...
One thing to note about the Sacarphogus (s) below is that many people like to engraved Medusa on them. Medusa's eye was believe to be a good luck charm against robbers and evil spirits. When we started on our trip, we even got a good luck charm (medusa's eye) from our guide. So many of the souveniors that one sees in Turkey, especially with the eye, you would know that it is derived from Medusa's eye as a good luck charm.
This was an interesting article that I came across while in the museum. The article reads:
During the scientific excavations administered by Dr Jale Iman in Perge in the 1980s, the lower half of the status of Heracles was discovered. In the same year, the upper half of the statue, which was illegally taken by smugglers was found to have been smuggled abroad. As a result of the research, it was shown that the upper half of the statue was being exhibited in the NY Metropolitan Museum of Arts and that it was in the posession of the Boston museum of Fine arts and of the collectors Shelby White and Leon Levy of the USA. A study carried out by Dr Iman of Turkey and the USA showed that the two pieces belonged to one another. Negotiations are still being continued by the Turkish ministry of culture to obtain the return of this illegally smuggled part of the statue
Ancient versions of the bible and the Koran... Also, paintings of Santa Claus (St Nicholas) could be found in the museum as well.
3. Hierapolis was the famous ancient city on top of the famous Pamukkale hot springs. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and very very popular with tourists. In the ancient days, the hot springs were used as a spa as they were believed to be good for one's health. Today, the "tradition" is still carried out by the hordes of the Russian and German tourists who come here to sunbathe and lounge in the natural white limestone terraces.
Stepping in the pools was ultra crazy... so many people, and the floor was so jagged that it was so hard to walk and I refused to venture any further than a few steps coz it was so hard to walk... One couldn't wear their shoes into the pools so as to keep it clean, so it was barefoot all the way. However, I was camera woman and was FORCED to wander over so that I could take pictures of my family... incidentally that was the day I resigned from my camera position... and finally, I got myself into more pictures from then on... :P
That was like probably the hottest day in our trip, so while the rest of my family took refuge in one of the cafes (full of bikini clad russian girls and loud trance music), I took like the 3km walk over to the South/Northern gates of the city. It was super hot!!!! On my way back, I bumped into other people from our bus who decided to cheat by taking the 2 Lira shuttle back to the bus.... I just walked slowly back... and I was just dead when I got back to the bus... Luckily the driver saw me and waved me over, so I didn't have to walk all over the parking lot looking for the bus (there were like heaps of buses there), and all I could say to him was Jok Sicak!!!! (So hot!!)
4. Aphrodisias named after Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who had like a cult image/following during those days. The city was built near a marble quary which was extensive exploited during the Greek/Roman periods. They loved marble for its sparking white colour and for the coolness of the stone. Before excavations started, Turkish villages would take marble stone from these places to built their houses, so it is said that in most Turkish villages surrounding the sites, there is a piece of history of each of their homes... The modern city of Geyre was actually partly built on this site. It wasn't till an earthquake that revealed that ancient city beneath some of the homes that this city was found... since then, Geyre has been shifted to another site and the former village has been devoted to excavations.
The monumental gate below is of the striking features of the site, which was reconstructed using the pieces that were found. The grave you see below is of the archaeologist who contributed mainly to the excavations of the site and requested to be buried here in his death. Sorry but I can't remember his name yet while I am writing this post.
We also got to see the games stadium in the city. It was a very long stadium, almost the size of a football field, and we knew it was Greek immediately, because it was built back against a hill..
I can't remember that proper name for this smaller "stadium" but it served as a council house for the important members of the city, so it was much smaller in size...
Statues from the site's museum... check out my sister standing in front of the statue called the "3 graces"
So we saw many sites, and they were:
1.Aspendos:
2.Hellenistic Roman city of Perge
3.Roman city Hierapolis: The roman city on the terraces
4.Aphrodisias: stadium, theatre and temple of Aphrodite
5.Esphesus
6.Pergamon: Acropolis, temple of Trajan, temple of Athena
7.Asclepion, ancient centre of healing,
8.Troy
For Practicalities sake, this post shall have two parts so as to prevent an overwhelmingly overload of pictures...
1. Aspendos was the first archaeological site we visited in Turkey... so you can imagine that everyone was quite excited about it. It is known for having one of the best preserved Greek-Roman theatres in the world, such that even today, concerts are held in this theatre during the summer season.... I'm not sure that if I remembered it correctly, but in order to tell whether it is a Greek or Roman theatre, Greeks usually built their theatres against the hill which provided the natural support for the theatre. Roman empires were ones who added arches to the theatres.... This theatre even had a mock gladiator with whom we could take pictures with so that was quite fun. These theatres often provided entertainment for the Roman citizens living in the city. It is said that in order to know the population of the city at the time, one has to take the seating capacity of the theatre and times 10. This is because back then, only Roman citizens were allowed to partake in these entertainments and they usually comprised of about 10% of the city's population. These were centres of decadence whereby people would sit here all day and eat and drink. So much so, there were actually vommiting rooms at the sides of the theatre... pple would drink, go to the room to throw up and come back down to continue...
2. Perge was one of the 4 great cities of Antalya during the Greek/Roman empires. Aspendos was one of them as well. Currently, only the lower city of Perge has been excavated. Due to limited funds, the upper city of Perge is still buried in the hills and waiting to be excavated. The lower city is usually where most of the population lived and daily routines such as trade took place. The upper city is where the important temples and buildings are usually found... It was in this region whereby the heat really began to hit alot of people as it got really hot and humid up to 35 degrees and as you can see from the pictures, little or no cloud cover at all. So sunglasses, sunscreen and umbrellas/hats became almost an necessity in this part of the trip. My parents were really conscious of the sun, so many a time, they opted to stay in the shade, while me (and my sister sometimes) would venture out further to explore other parts of the ruins...
Apollo shrine right at the end of the lower city gates.... was pretty cool, you could still see the channels that were built to accomodate the water fountains in those days! The carvings on the stone were pretty spectacular, considering that they were all done by hand.
In the town centre below, many well preserved statues were found in the alcoves and were taken to the Antalya museum (more about that later). Anyhow, I should probably add that for christian addicts, St Paul (the apostle) visited Perge twice during his first missionary journey. It was easy for Paul to travel around for his missionary journey as he was a Roman citizen which made travel passage much easier for him in the Roman empire.
Perge museum in Antalya.
I was the only one in my family who bothered to come to this museum. Everyone decided to stay in the coolness of the hotel room/swimming pool while I walked over to the museum. So I'm glad I went, because the statues taken from Perge were like OMG, very well preserved and there were heaps!!! It was very easy to be confused by the names of the gods/goddesses as they had different names in the Greek Roman empires. For example,
Arthemis (Greek name for Goddess of the Moon) is also known as Diana (Roman name)
Other examples include:
Aphrodite (Greek: Goddess of Love) -> Venus (Roman name)
Ares (Greek: God of War) -> Mars (Roman name)
Zeus (Greek: God of Gods) -> Jupiter (Roman name).
So most of the places we visited in this trip were called by their Greek name...
One thing to note about the Sacarphogus (s) below is that many people like to engraved Medusa on them. Medusa's eye was believe to be a good luck charm against robbers and evil spirits. When we started on our trip, we even got a good luck charm (medusa's eye) from our guide. So many of the souveniors that one sees in Turkey, especially with the eye, you would know that it is derived from Medusa's eye as a good luck charm.
This was an interesting article that I came across while in the museum. The article reads:
During the scientific excavations administered by Dr Jale Iman in Perge in the 1980s, the lower half of the status of Heracles was discovered. In the same year, the upper half of the statue, which was illegally taken by smugglers was found to have been smuggled abroad. As a result of the research, it was shown that the upper half of the statue was being exhibited in the NY Metropolitan Museum of Arts and that it was in the posession of the Boston museum of Fine arts and of the collectors Shelby White and Leon Levy of the USA. A study carried out by Dr Iman of Turkey and the USA showed that the two pieces belonged to one another. Negotiations are still being continued by the Turkish ministry of culture to obtain the return of this illegally smuggled part of the statue
Ancient versions of the bible and the Koran... Also, paintings of Santa Claus (St Nicholas) could be found in the museum as well.
3. Hierapolis was the famous ancient city on top of the famous Pamukkale hot springs. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and very very popular with tourists. In the ancient days, the hot springs were used as a spa as they were believed to be good for one's health. Today, the "tradition" is still carried out by the hordes of the Russian and German tourists who come here to sunbathe and lounge in the natural white limestone terraces.
Stepping in the pools was ultra crazy... so many people, and the floor was so jagged that it was so hard to walk and I refused to venture any further than a few steps coz it was so hard to walk... One couldn't wear their shoes into the pools so as to keep it clean, so it was barefoot all the way. However, I was camera woman and was FORCED to wander over so that I could take pictures of my family... incidentally that was the day I resigned from my camera position... and finally, I got myself into more pictures from then on... :P
That was like probably the hottest day in our trip, so while the rest of my family took refuge in one of the cafes (full of bikini clad russian girls and loud trance music), I took like the 3km walk over to the South/Northern gates of the city. It was super hot!!!! On my way back, I bumped into other people from our bus who decided to cheat by taking the 2 Lira shuttle back to the bus.... I just walked slowly back... and I was just dead when I got back to the bus... Luckily the driver saw me and waved me over, so I didn't have to walk all over the parking lot looking for the bus (there were like heaps of buses there), and all I could say to him was Jok Sicak!!!! (So hot!!)
4. Aphrodisias named after Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who had like a cult image/following during those days. The city was built near a marble quary which was extensive exploited during the Greek/Roman periods. They loved marble for its sparking white colour and for the coolness of the stone. Before excavations started, Turkish villages would take marble stone from these places to built their houses, so it is said that in most Turkish villages surrounding the sites, there is a piece of history of each of their homes... The modern city of Geyre was actually partly built on this site. It wasn't till an earthquake that revealed that ancient city beneath some of the homes that this city was found... since then, Geyre has been shifted to another site and the former village has been devoted to excavations.
The monumental gate below is of the striking features of the site, which was reconstructed using the pieces that were found. The grave you see below is of the archaeologist who contributed mainly to the excavations of the site and requested to be buried here in his death. Sorry but I can't remember his name yet while I am writing this post.
We also got to see the games stadium in the city. It was a very long stadium, almost the size of a football field, and we knew it was Greek immediately, because it was built back against a hill..
I can't remember that proper name for this smaller "stadium" but it served as a council house for the important members of the city, so it was much smaller in size...
Statues from the site's museum... check out my sister standing in front of the statue called the "3 graces"
