Nope the exploration is still not over:
6. Acropolis of Pergamon. The problem with seeing Pergamon is that after Ephesus, everything just doesn't compare. Another issue is that the grand pieces of Acropolis were taken (stolen) by the Germans and today they are seen in the Acropolis museum in Berlin... I kid you not... Damn Germans!!! haha... you should have seen the reactions of some of the tourists in our group when our guide told us what happened.
Link to the Pergamon Museum:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Museum

The ancient site where the grand altar was originally on... and the guide showing us a picture of what it looks like in the German museum... In the bottom right hand, you can also see the Hellenistic Theater with a seating capacity of 10,000. This had the steepest seating of any known theater in the ancient world.

Luckily, they did not take away the Temple of Trajan which you can still see today...


The outer walls of Pergamon were quite interesting to look at. As the formation of the walls had spanned over 3 empires... Greek, Roman and Bystantine... and one could tell from the size of the stone that were used to build the walls... small -> Big...


7. Asclepion, the ancient centre of healing... all psychology methods and nothing else... people came here to cure all those wierd illnesses... and believe it or not, it was a very revered place... they even had a theatre for performers to come and calm and provide a peace of mind to the patients.
Since snakes were sacred to Asclepius, they were often used in healing rituals. Non-venomous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept. When patients first came to this healing centre, they had to walk through the tunnels with vents at the top, nurses would be on top whispering motivational thoughts to the patients and sometimes they would drop snakes on the patients for shock therapy... talk about bizzare..

Going into the tunnel...


The greek words on the top right have some thing to do with sickness and health... it was a meaningful phrase but I just can't remember it now..The mossy/algae thing on the bottom right was the "Holy water" fountain...

8. Troy...
If anyone was interested in Troy, it was probably due to Brad Pitt and his movie.... Of course, from the movie we did learn that Troy was in Turkey and not Greece.. so here we are. Troy is actually 9 cities built on top of one another, and historians claim that Troy 6 was probably the famous Troy that everyone talked about with Helen of Troy and all the trouble she caused. However, the Troy that most archaeologists claim is the grandest if Troy 2 as many jewellary/artifacts dating back to Troy 2 have been found.
In the 19th century this crazy German Heinrich Schliemann had a belief that there was a lot of buried treasure in Troy, so obtaining permission from the ottoman empire, he carried out excavations close to the city walls as he believed that that was where King Priam hid his treasure while escaping from the Greeks. Interestingly enough, he and wife did find some jewellary, and while giving only a few measly pieces to the Ottoman empire, took the rest and fled the country. However, while Schliemann believed that he had found Priam's treasure, carbon dating dates the jewellery back to Troy 2 which existed earlier than Troy 6... so food for thought. While Schliemann did help in one of the greatest ancient finds, he is generally not well liked among the archaeological community due to his selfish motives which prevented him from carrying out excavations in a manner which preserved the site's integrity. There were many artifacts destroyed by him which would have been important historically but they were not kept because they were not the treasure...
I think overrall that Troy was my least favourite site... probably the most overrated though... but nothing much to see actually...


A tribute to the Trojan horse...I couldn't be bothered to go up... i just stayed below and resumned the position of photographer..

This ends the end of my summary of my trip to Turkey. There are bits and pieces which I missed out, but this ultimately is what I saw and covered. Coming to Turkey has been a wonderful experience for me. Surprisingly in some ways (but in a good way). So should you go to Turkey? I would say yes... don't be put off by swine flu/terrorism rumours really... As said in my previous posts, Turks are muslim, don't eat pork, they live in a secular country and are very friendly people. I really hope that Turkey can continue to preserve their democratic state as this could go a long way in repairing relations between the east and the west. And isn't Turkey a great example, since it is probably the only country in world spanning 2 continents. With this, I say Tesekkur Ederim and Iyi Gunler...

5. Ephesus... I guess most people would call Ephesus the mother of archaeological sites as it is the largest Roman ruin in the world and one of the world's finest sites. Most tours to Turkey would bring their groups to this site and like the situation in Pamukkale, the place was CROWDED.

The city was famed for the temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BCE), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Temple was destroyed in 401 CE, but Emperor Constantine I rebuilt much of the city and erected new public baths. Ephesus was one of the seven churches of Asia that are cited in the Book of revelations. Ephesus was one of the seven cities addressed in Revelation (2:1–7), indicating that the church at Ephesus was still strong. Remember gospel readings at church: A reading from the letter of Ephesus....The gospel of John may have been written here, or so they say.. Incidentally, I should mention that the House of Mary is located near Ephesus ( I talked about this in my previous post). The picture below (If I remember correctly) was the secret sign to show that this was a catholic centre of worship. During the Roman empire, Christians were heavily persecuted, by the emperor Nero, and so secret signs were needed so that people could continue to practise their faith.

Now is probably a good time to talk about the different columns styles... There were mainly 3 styles we saw in these ancient cities... the first was the corinthian style, a highly decorative kind, the next one was the ionic style as those seen in the pictures below, with the shape like a ram's horn... the combination of the 2 styles was known as the composite style. I remember seeing those architectural styles during my trip to Chicago, and there had been a play on the styles in relation to the buildings that the style was on... so I guess that the styles are still quite popular today.

The city area is quite big, and very well preserved as we walked further on. The mosiac floor that you see in the bottom left corner was once part of the street area and has been very well preserved till now...

In this picture, you can see the crowds of people following behind us. Our guide did a good job of trying to push us in front so that we could see the site properly with as little hindrance as possible, but it was quite funny sometimes when he had continually remind pple to leave the picture taking till later so that he could quickly explain to us the significance of the area... :P However, the more interesting part is the left hand corner in which you see those holes, and my mother pretending to eh.. conduct some business. Yep, guessed right, these were public toliets for IMPORTANT CITIZENS... aka officials who would just use these public toliets to chit chat and network..... well.. you got to hand it to them for the ability to multi task,,

The pathway leading down to the highlight of the site: the library of celsus. It was a very big library and believed to be one of the most important and most grand of the time. The reason why I took a picture of the marbled walkway in the bottom right hand picture was the holes were made for a purpose: to prevent people from slipping on the marble stone. In ancient times, there was actually a fountain whereby water flowed down the pathways so as to the keep the marble cool in the heat.

Bottom right: Augustus gate, which was originally the Harbour gate... which gives us a sense of how far the sea has shifted outwards since ancient times..

This is believed to be the tomb of cleopatra's half sister, whom she ordered Mark Anthony to kill. Autopsies conducted on the body have found her to be half greek.

The stone carving of the Goddess of Victory... guess her name -> NIKE! The iconic tick of the NIKE logo is based on the wings of the goddess of victory. Now.... anyone know the origins of addias...

Me fooling around...

This used to be a brothel... right opposite the library. Excavations have revealed secret tunnels linking the library to the brothel... so you know what all those husbands were actually doing when they told their wives that they were going to the library.... Mom pretending to be a mamasan with her hands out for money...

The Theater - At an estimated 44,000 seating capacity, it is believed to be the largest outdoor theater in the ancient world

Inside the museum: things to note:
a. The glass bottles- people used to fill them with tears. During funerals, professional mourners were actually hired to provide the tears and these were buried with the dead.
b. The glass covered is a representation of how big and grand the temple of Artemis was in the ancient times. Today, there is nothing much to see, but the size of land gives one an idea of how grand it was in the days.
c. Bottom right: the goddess Artemis who was passionately venerated in an cult manner. She was believe to have 24 breasts or "eggs" — denoting her fertility (others interpret the objects to represent the testicles of sacrificed bulls that would have been strung on the image, with similar meaning).
d. Top left: Emperor Nero. Evil roman emperor who persecuted the christians

See that stone figure with the huge penis: that is the God of Fertility... I kid you not...

Ancient site of the temple of Artemis

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"