Reasons to love Turkey (2)
Sep. 29th, 2008 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catspawEphesus, Hieropolis and Tlos. All the ancient sites everywhere, actually - the country is littered with them. Far more certainly than the government can afford to excavate properly, or the archaeologists can keep up with.
Ephesus is just -- amazing. There's no other word for it. It's a very Roman city, overlaid over the Greek, and some of the architecture is just astounding. Even more astounding that a city that size (it's *huge*. A census put the numbers of freeborn living in it at its peak at 250,000. I reckon slaves, who weren't counted, would probably have outnumbered the freeborn by about 3:1 so, total population of around 1 million, give or take) could just be abandoned and forgotten about when its harbour silted up and the area became malarial.
This is the main street down from the city gates and the Roman baths, leading down through the commercial area towards the Library and eventually, the harbour.
It's lined with terraced shops and houses
and the archaeologists have been able to identify a lot of the businesses that went on there - food shops and oil shops, the apothecary, moneylenders and so on, from the finds they've made inside.
About half way down the main street is Hadrian's Temple
which has been partially reconstructed. Not totally, because a lot of it is in Berlin (just as the famous Temple of Diana is largely in the British Museum - although we might be giving it back, apparently - and about time too!) Very impressive though nonetheless.
And just down from that (I think it's down anyway, not up *g*) is the public loo:
Very large, *very* communal, and men only. Then, as now, the men would disappear in there for hours, just not with the newspaper *g*. Instead they socialised and discussed politics, apparently. Yeah, right. Nothing really changes, eh?
At the end of the main road into the town is the famous Library
And finally, the jewel in the crown, the theatre:
Totally awesome, brilliant acoustics, and still in use today.
Hierapolis was much more ruined, still, than Ephesus, and much more of it is still underground (about 85% compared to 60% of Ephesus). Some lovely architecture though, and more Greek than Roman although the Roman presence is still visible
and another theatre, smaller than Ephesus
Tlos is the most purely Lycian of the three sites we went to - although yet again, later Roman inluences. Tlos is famous for its rock-cut tombs in the necropolis
and they are pretty impressive. They're carved out of terrain that would make a mountain goat think twice. The city is also associated with the legend of Bellerophon and Pegasus - and that just feels wierd, actually being in a place that you learned about in ancient myth at school. Maybe even wierder than Ephesus with its New Testament connections, because it's so much older - like 6000 years old. Makes Stonehenge look like a child's lego experiment.
Tlos is *very* high up. The view through the windows of the Roman baths will maybe give you an idea just how high
or the view from the acropolis over to the theatre
You could literally see for miles in every direction.
So, that's the end of #2 post. Upward and onward, and congratulations if you're still with me *gg*
Ephesus is just -- amazing. There's no other word for it. It's a very Roman city, overlaid over the Greek, and some of the architecture is just astounding. Even more astounding that a city that size (it's *huge*. A census put the numbers of freeborn living in it at its peak at 250,000. I reckon slaves, who weren't counted, would probably have outnumbered the freeborn by about 3:1 so, total population of around 1 million, give or take) could just be abandoned and forgotten about when its harbour silted up and the area became malarial.
This is the main street down from the city gates and the Roman baths, leading down through the commercial area towards the Library and eventually, the harbour.
It's lined with terraced shops and houses
and the archaeologists have been able to identify a lot of the businesses that went on there - food shops and oil shops, the apothecary, moneylenders and so on, from the finds they've made inside.
About half way down the main street is Hadrian's Temple
which has been partially reconstructed. Not totally, because a lot of it is in Berlin (just as the famous Temple of Diana is largely in the British Museum - although we might be giving it back, apparently - and about time too!) Very impressive though nonetheless.
And just down from that (I think it's down anyway, not up *g*) is the public loo:
Very large, *very* communal, and men only. Then, as now, the men would disappear in there for hours, just not with the newspaper *g*. Instead they socialised and discussed politics, apparently. Yeah, right. Nothing really changes, eh?
At the end of the main road into the town is the famous Library
And finally, the jewel in the crown, the theatre:
Totally awesome, brilliant acoustics, and still in use today.
Hierapolis was much more ruined, still, than Ephesus, and much more of it is still underground (about 85% compared to 60% of Ephesus). Some lovely architecture though, and more Greek than Roman although the Roman presence is still visible
and another theatre, smaller than Ephesus
Tlos is the most purely Lycian of the three sites we went to - although yet again, later Roman inluences. Tlos is famous for its rock-cut tombs in the necropolis
and they are pretty impressive. They're carved out of terrain that would make a mountain goat think twice. The city is also associated with the legend of Bellerophon and Pegasus - and that just feels wierd, actually being in a place that you learned about in ancient myth at school. Maybe even wierder than Ephesus with its New Testament connections, because it's so much older - like 6000 years old. Makes Stonehenge look like a child's lego experiment.
Tlos is *very* high up. The view through the windows of the Roman baths will maybe give you an idea just how high
or the view from the acropolis over to the theatre
You could literally see for miles in every direction.
So, that's the end of #2 post. Upward and onward, and congratulations if you're still with me *gg*
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