Reasons to love Turkey (3)

[catspaw]

Everywhere you look in this country, there are piles of antiquities lying around. Literally lying around in the edges of fields, where they've been cleared away to make space for growing things. Bits and pieces of fluted columns, odd bits of pediments and architraves, capitals, all beautifully carved.



Doric, with its ram's head design



Corinthian, with the acanthus leaves



and composite, with elements of the two



Ephesus has some amazing carvings. About half way down the main street, there are twin statues of Hercules, about arms' width apart. The detail of the flayed skin of the Nemean lion that he's shown wearing is incredible



Since we were last there, about eight years ago, a lot of mosaic pavements have been uncovered



Stunning.

There's a great wee museum in Hieropolis which is stuffed with artefacts and carved sarcophagi, and some of the carvings on the sarcophagi are sensational



A lot of the statues and friezes were vandalised by the Christians, toppled in the case of statues and with their heads or noses knocked off, or with the genitals smashed in the case of the friezes ::sigh:: There were some remarkable survivals though. This was my favourite out of all the sarcophagus figures



I think he's utterly beautiful.

And this was The Man's favourite thing in the whole museum:



I've no idea who this guy is or why he's so pissed off *g*

Comments

[nicci-mac.livejournal.com]

He's clearly pissed off becuase the Christians knocked off his nose!

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

LOL! Good point, that.

[sharp2799.livejournal.com]

If this is spam, please spam me all you like!!

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

*g* Well you've got stamina, darlin', I'll say that for you! Glad you're enjoying the pics - I *love* sharing Turkey with people :-)

[starting-gate.livejournal.com]

What are the mosaic's made with? Some type of dyed aggregate? Naturally colored stones? Pretty.

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

Naturally coloured stones, I think. I've no idea what they were though. I've actually got some of the tesserae from mosaics in Side, when we were there a few years ago: I didn't feel that much of a conscience about picking them up, seeing as the mosaics in Side were still being walked on daily, and were gradually eroding because of that. The colours there were black, blue and white: the white is limestone, the black looks like basalt to me and the blue -- is a very hard stone, no idea what it is.

If it comes right down to it, I'll give them back if needs be. Conservation rather than greed ;-)

[perclexed.livejournal.com]

These are just amazing. I'd have been in so much trouble because I would've wanted to put my hands on all of these to feel the textures and temperatures, and trace the features with my fingers.

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

Oh well, you'd have been in hog heaven here then. You can touch whatever you like! Wherever you like!

[sid]

That first sarcophagus carving is haunting!

(took me a while to get around to looking at these! I share a network with my nephew and he must have been downloading movies or something... everything slowed to a crawl for days, so I waited for a better time to open up all these marvellous pictures. :-)

[catspaw-sgjd.livejournal.com]

Yep, that first one is something else -- but I love my beautiful boy (the second one). I have a whole back story for him *g*