Backroads of Aegean Turkey

We drove on, looking back to hilltop Assos and its situation

on the sea

From a high point: much more stone fencing here than we

have seen in Turkey; olive groves everywhere, the whole

population out in the groves for the harvest; I love olives;

they're cheap and delicious here; but seeing the labor-

intensiveness, the back-breaking work, will make me value

each one a little more

One of a dozen or more stone round-houses we saw, all

bunched together in one little town

An exceedingly rocky country, but beautiful grasses and

pines and undergrowth everywhere; maybe it was the

Mediterranean/Aegean light, but the greens here were as

verdant and vibrant as any I have seen

Lunch-time view

The seaside fortress at Babakale, the last Ottoman castle

built

View from Babakale



Another



The Temple of Apollo at Gulpinar; those of you familiar

with the Iliad will recognize this as (a much later version of)

the Apollo temple that figures importantly in Homeric

matters; Agamemnon had to return the daughter of the priest

here, after offending Apollo, and then grabbed Achilles'

trophy-girl, thus inflaming Achilles' rage, of which Homer

sang; much less importantly, it is also a temple to mice (yes,

mice), who figure in the founding of the city in ways too

boring to recount; 2nd century BCE

More archaeology going on at Gulpinar

Funded by Efes; never forget that Jack Horner's first funder

was Rainier Beer; cheers for Efes

I am going to guess this is where the archaeology students

hang out in the summer-time; more Efes fans

Assos

After Pergamum we decided to spend a few days doing the coastal backroads of Aegean Turkey, at least up to Troy. Tuesday night found us on a lay-by overlooking Assos (present-day Behramkale), in a bit of a gale. The next morning, as the skies cleared, we visited ancient Assos. It's well off the tour bus circuit, the site was actually closed for the season, but they left the gate open. Assos is important, to me, because Hermias, the 4th century BCE ruler, was a student of Plato, and he invited his schoolmate, Aristotle, to found a school of philosophy at Assos. (Which reminds me: I forgot to mention that the pre-Socratic Heraclitus was a native of Ephesus).

Um, I think this might be a more recent

representation of Aristotle

Part of the city wall, necropolis, and cliff above Assos,

which evidently provided most of the building material

A temple in the agora

Baths

Nice view from the residential section; that's Lesbos in the

distance ('distance' being a couple miles)



Very faint inscription: "Aristotle's

'Peripatetic' School of Philosophy,

Office of Career Placement Services";

actually, all this does not have a happy

ending: the Persians arrived (again) in

348 BCE, Aristotle fled to Lesbos, and

Hermias was tortured to death

Assos theatre



Greek theatres were generally placed on a hillside with a

great view (in case the play was boring); this one is hard

to beat

The seat inscriptions are usually for the stone masons'

guild or the tanners' guild, et al; this one is for the followers

of the Sarapis cult (an Egyptian god)

Pergamum

Pergamum has the usual Hellenistic/Roman pedigree--settled by Aeolians in the 8th century BCE--except that it was a hilltop city, not a port city. The city was quite spread out, including the hilltop main center, the Red Hall and associated structures below it, and the Asclepion on a hillside across the valley. The Asclepion was a sort of Mayo Clinic of later antiquity. The great ancient physician Galen taught and healed there. After touring the Bergama Museum, we drove up to the Asclepion, then decided we were not interested--Vicki was not enthused about drinking from the sacred spring, even using the SteriPen--so we drove back down, through the city, and up to the telepherique that goes to the top of Pergamum. (Ordinary cars can drive, but anything over 2.7m high, including us, is verboten.)

The museum was OK; actually the first one we have seen where the ethnoghraphic 
stuff was better than the archaeological stuff

The Pergamum telepherique--nicest, most up-to-date I have ridden, period; and I 
have ridden a few in the past year or so

The most famous parts of Pergamum are its theatre and its Trajan Temple, above; 
1st century

Trajan Temple complex, different view

Ditto



To me, there was at least one other fascinating aspect of 
Pergamum, namely, how they got the water up there for

100,000+ residents and their baths--240,000 pieces of terra 
cotta pipe spanned 45k to a mountain-top spring, a 
kilometer or more of lead pipe going the last distance from 
the valley, all employing siphon technique; the ditch 
pictured is where the pipes entered the city, at its arsenal



Pergamum's cliff-hanging Greek theatre, from the vicinity of the Asclepion, 
across the valley

Function follows form; the hillside did not permit the usual 180+ degree theatre 
form, so the builders made it much steeper and higher; climbing the staircases 
one almost wants to be belayed...

Looking down on the Altar of Zeus, considered the most magnificent altar of 
antiquity; alas, it was excavated by Germans, who took it all, including the great 
friezes, back to Berlin

And that's it, at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, which was closed when we were 
there in 2009

Temple of Dionysus, right next to the theatre stage; the stage building was timber, 
fitted into the square supports in a previous picture, and thus temporary, so it 
would not block view of the temple during non-festival times

So much for the upper city; at this point I began walking down (Vicki stayed in the 
camper this day), first to the middle city, and then through the lower city; this is a

nearly intact mosaic, found only a decade or so ago, in one of the large peristyle 
residences in the middle city; the so-called "Building Z"

Sanctuary of Demeter

Gymnasium and environs, middle city

At length--all this took 3 hours or so-- I reached the bottom, 
ran out of path, but fortunately got back on the road, thanks to

this hole cut in the barbed-wire fencing that encloses the whole 
site

Pergamum: Throne of Satan

Just when you think you've seen it all, something new, something you could not even have imagined, pops up. Monday we drove up past sprawling Izmir (formerly Smyrna) to Bergama, and its ancient city of Pergamum. Among Pergamum's great variety of ancient sites is something called the Red Hall. It is an immense red brick structure, the size of a European cathedral, a large one, flanked by two sizeable, tall rotunda-like structures. Brick construction is very unusual for monuments and temples in this part of the ancient world; indeed it is the first we have seen. The size is, well, immense. Best of all, it was a 2nd century temple to the Egyptian gods, Harpocrates, Isis, and Serapis. The ancients were really into hedging their bets. When the Christians built a church in Pergamum, it is said, they simply built a basilica (now gone) inside the Red Hall.

Pergamum, if you know your Book of Revelation, and your seven cities/churches of the Apocalypse, was the city of the Throne of Satan. (Revelation 2:13: "I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.") The Christians and Satan are now long gone, but you can hear the muezzin very clearly, echoing about the valley, five times a day.

Red Hall; way too large to get in one frame

View of the Red Hall, taken from Pergamum hill (note tour bus for scale)

One of the two flanking structures: one is a
sort of exhibit area, the other is a mosque

Interior artsy-fartsy view

This is a huge podium at the center of the temple, on which a 10 meter statue of 
one of the gods stood; a priest would go down the hole there and make the god 
"speak" to the faithful; "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"

Among many remnants laying around: looks Egyptian to me

Restoration work goes on, the old-fashioned

way, too

Ephesus III: the Outtakes

It absolutely cracks me up that the Turkish name

for Ephesus is "Efes," which is also the name of
Turkey's very popular and very good beer;
"popular"--82% of the market, I have read, but
from what I have seen after nearly 2 months in
Turkey, I would have thought it was 98%

Somehow, at Efes, the ancient public works, drains, sewer

lines, water lines, were more visible than in other cities we

have visited; here's a whole pile of drain spare parts, 2000

years old; or so



Alas, an abiding image; at least the feral dogs here are well-

behaved, guardians, in fact, of the public spaces



Another Turkish kitler

Of course everyone who finds the latrine

stages this shot...

Every site has its mini-bazaar; Efes has two; Turkish

merchants, even the ones in the tourist trade, are a good-

natured lot

We were feeling a bit guilty about having skipped St. John's

Basilica and the Virgin Mary's house, so we did stop by the

tomb of St. Luke; it was so identified in the 6th century

because it had a cross on it...

Which afforded also this fine picture of one of the afore-

mentioned mini-bazaars (with a tour bus approaching) and

A view of the biggest and best Priapos yet; marble, no less

Alas, spending the night on the beach at Pamucak would

have been great