Miletus

A few more miles up the road is the former coastal city of Miletus--the whole valley now silted up but wonderfully fertile--the major port of the Ionian League. Miletus thrived until taken by the Persians in the 6th century BCE and was rebuilt by the Greeks after Alexander and then by the Romans. Most of the remaining ruins are Roman in style and origin. It was the home of the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales. Just FYI.

Set on the hill overlooking the place is its best-preserved feature, its theatre

Interior view, with the Byzantine citadel rising in the background

Nosebleed view

Goodyear blimp view

The two axes, I believe, were a symbol of Carian resistance

to the Romans

The one nice frieze, found by Vicki, apparently over-looked by the British Museum;
apparently they had already reached their loot-limit for that season

Claw-footed bleachers

The south agora and Faustina's Baths (Marcus Aurelius' wife), said to be the 
model for Turkish baths

The Nymphaneum

Me on the Sacred Way, north agora

The Harbor Monument

Sunset at Miletus

Leaving, the next morning; the nice staff at the site had permitted us to over-night 
in the parking lot; note: much of the area is marshy, and there are mosquitoes...

Temple of Apollo, Didyma

Our next stop, on what turned out to be a three-site day, was the Temple of Apollo, in the coastal city of Didyma. Didyma had been an important site from the sixth century BCE, with an oracle second only to the one at Delphi. Didyma was second-fiddle in another way, too. Originally planned to have 122 columns, it was to be the largest temple of the ancient world. But Ephesus, up the road, built its Temple of Artemis with 127 columns, and thus made the Seven Wonders of the World list. Didyma didn't. Nonetheless, a couple millennia later, Didyma's temple ruins are the more impressive. See a later post on the Temple of Artemis, tentatively entitled "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

Although only three of the columns still stand, including the one in the 
foreground that was never completed, you really can get a sense of the 
size of the thing, absolutely colossal

Colossal Medusa, representations of which supposedly scared off the evil spirits

Another view

Toppled columns; earthquakes did most of the damage

Closer-up, including some insight as to how these puppies

were put together

The two remaining, finished columns

Carving at base



The unfinished, that is, un-fluted, column; I conjecture, when 
the  developers heard about the larger temple up in Ephesus, 
and figured out they were not going to make the Guinness 
Book, they just sort of gave up...

View from within the sanctum sanctorum

Nice griffins all around

Sacred spring; kind of a dry hole now, but at least there was no trash at the bottom

Construction markings are all around (although this one probably says "3 slices 
pepperoni, 2 sausage and mushroom, and 3 all the way (hold the anchovies)"

You can see the marks where the flutes were to begin...

Euromos, Turkey

Our search for a campground in Bodrum proved futile, so we spent a second night at the beautiful little turn-out perched above the Aegean, east of Bodrum.  (Though we didn't get a good photo, the highway's retaining walls were decorated with inset amphoras; nice touch). Next morning, hoping to avoid Milas and Mugli, and lots of road construction, we did another "backroads of Turkey" expedition, crossing the fertile Menderes valley (from which we get "meandering"), passing by Lake Bafa--once an arm of the Aegean, now a huge brackish lake--en route to Didyma. This took us past Euromos, a Greek-later-Roman town dating from the 6th century BCE, the town and most of its buildings now well gone, but sporting one of the half dozen best-preserved temples in Asia Minor, its Temple of Zeus.

Temple of Zeus, Euromos; 200m off the road

Another view

Detail

In the necroplis--middle of a plowed field, mostly--a tomb

that reminded us of dolmens, aeons earlier, in northwestern

Europe

Later I wandered up the hill, through the olive groves--the

mountains here are covered with olive trees, more than I

have seen before--in search of Euromos' badly ruined

theatre; and eventually found it



The aisle staircase still in pretty good shape

All that's left of the stage building

  

Bodrum Museum Humor

International "castle without handrail" warning sign



When the Ottomans took over in 1523 or so, they walled-up

the castle's dungeon and Christian torture chamber--which

bore this cute inscription ("no God abides here")



When the museum staff took over, 400 years

later, they un-walled the dungeon and found

various real instruments of torture, several

"solitary" confinement areas, and not a few

bones; here's Vicki descending to where no

God abides

To wit...

Like many museum jobs, you just hang around, keeping an

eye on the visitors...

This one really cracked us up

But best was the "symposium of eastern Mediterranean

amphoras"

Someone had a lot of fun doing this...

What else are you going to do with the rest of the world's

largest collection of amphoras? 



Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology

There are many wrecks and their contents represented in this museum--Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and later--but it is the 14th century BC late Bronze Age wreck, the Uluburun, off the city of Kas, that must take pride of place, anywhere. Most matters of antiquity, especially deeper antiquity, are mostly stone assemblages and occasional grave goods. With the Uluburun shipwreck, there were 18,000 cataloged items, "every-day items," an archaeological treasure-trove that has caused a complete reconsideration of the Bronze Age and especially commerce and transportation at that time. We have seen older things than this--in France and the British Isles--but nothing we have seen compares with Uluburun. And, I should note, most of these archaeological recoveries were directed by the American, George Bass, of Pennsylvania U and Texas A&M, who is recognized at Bodrum and everywhere else as the "father" of marine archaeology.

Mycenaen glass beads and ingot, 14th century BC

Glass ingot

A Bronze Age ship's "eyes"



Entrance to the Uluburun hall; with the anti-"evil eye" one 
sees everywhere in Turkey

Enlarge and READ THIS



Bronze Age shaving kit, mirror and razor; where's the Burma Shave?

Life-size model of ship, cargo, and wreckage below

Metal and glass ingots

Cybele, Earth Mother (later replaced by Artemis, Diana, 
Mary)

Weapons, pottery from Uluburun

Ivory cosmetic boxes

There are only seven tin items known from the Bronze Age
--here are three of them; plus some ostrich eggs

Of ten scarabs found, this gold one bears the  

name of Nefertiti

More gold jewelry and other stuff

Amber; from the Baltic!!!

And, truly, best of all, a wax writing tablet--with reconstruction 

below--sort of a 1500BC etch-a-sketch; incredible...