Ephesus and Pamukkale, Turkey

Ephesus day tour from Kusadasi

Friday 7 October 2011

The main street of the ancient city of Ephesus is thronged with people. In Ephesians times it must have looked like this when the gladiator games finish in the Great Theatre. There were between 250,000 and 400,000 inhabitants in Ephesus at its height and the Great Amphitheatre seated 25,000. That meant daily traffic jams in the city. Today it is the sheer volume of tourist, Ray and I amongst them, come to visit the ruined city. We are in a group of 23 following our guide, Murat, who holds high a red and white umbrella. Ray and I take frequent sorties to snap photos so the umbrella is our beacon to find our group again. We would have preferred a smaller group and less people to compete with in Ephesus, but this is the way it is and Murat is very informative.

We arrived in Kusadasi last Sunday, having travelled by bus from Fethiye. Our condo complex, Holiday and Leisure Club, is in the hills several km above the city. We have a small studio with a kitchen where we are preparing most of our meals. We take the free shuttle service to the city center to buy food and explore the harbour area. Huge cruise ships dock every day but the city is not overcrowded with tourists. That is because the vast majority take a day trip to Ephesus. We just walked around the town, avoided the entreaties of the hundreds of small shop owners and enjoyed a glass of Turkish tea sitting by the sea.

Back at our condo we spent an afternoon by one of the many pools and swam in the refreshing water i.e. colder than the Mediterranean. Another day we took the club shuttle to Long Beach, several km of sandy beach lined with small resorts. The water was pleasant and a good way to spend a lazy afternoon.

The condo offered several day tours at reasonable prices. We took their full day to Ephesus and plan to visit Pamukkale tomorrow. Pamukkale also has a reputation for being crowded but it is said to be worthwhile.

Despite the crowds we did enjoy our Ephesus trip. We started at the ruins of the Temple of Artemis. You would never know it know but it was once one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, even larger than the Parthenon in Athens. Artefacts from the Bronze Age have been found at the site. The first temple was built by the Amazons, the warrior clan of women, who celebrated Artemis as the Goddess of Fertility. It was built entirely of marble with 127-40 ft columns arranged in rows around the perimeter of the temple. The temple was rebuilt at least three times. Once after floods in the 7^th C BC destroyed the temple and it was the victim of a pyromaniac, Herostratus, in 356 BC. Then the temple was sacked in 401 AD by a mob led by the Archbishop of Constantinople, as an attack on paganism. All that remains of it now is blocks of marble strewn about the grounds and one reconstructed column with a stock nest on top. It is a true ruin.

All tours have at least one stop at a shop. Ours was a pottery factory where workers demonstrated their expertise at a wheel and painted intricate designs on items. Of course there were rooms full of merchandise to buy but it was too expensive, too difficult to transport, and not to my taste.

According to a legend, Ephesus was founded by an Ionian. Androclus left Greece in the 10^th C BC and after a long journey landed on the Agean Coast. A cryptic oracle had told him that a fish, a boar and a fire would point him to the best site for a new city. All came true in its fashion and Ephesus was born. Many of the ruins in Ephesus owe their existence to Roman occupation in the 1^st C BC. There are Roman baths, mosaics on the floors of houses, aqueducts bringing a sophisticated water system to the city and even toilets cleaned with constantly running water.

One of the most impressive buildings is the Library of Celsus, the Governor of Asia Minor in the 2^nd C AD. His son built the library after his father’s death to honour him. It originally housed 12,000 papyrus scrolls in niches in the walls. There was a 1 m space between double walls behind the niches allowing air to circulate and preventing damage to the scrolls due to extremes of temperature and humidity. Our guide Murat told us that Cleopatra moved the scrolls to Alexandria after her visit with Mark Anthony. The facade was two stories tall and slightly concave, giving the illusion of a much larger building. There were three doorways on each level, with a statue of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, above the center door and four statues representing the Virtues: Goodness, Thought, Knowledge and Wisdom flanking the lower level doors. The facade was carefully reconstructed by the Austrian Archaeological Institute in 1910. You must go to Vienna to see the original statues as reproductions now stand in their place.

Beside the library are three archways built in 40 A.D by the slaves Mazeus and Mythridates for their emperor, Augustus, who gave them their freedom. Other impressive ruins were the two amphitheatres; the Odeon with a capacity of 1500 people and the Great Theatre seating 25,000 spectators. The Temple of Hadrian is covered in carvings, including Androclus chasing a wild boar that has stolen his fish and causes a bush to catch fire; a depiction of the founding of Ephesus. The Fountain of Trajan overlooked a bathing pool. A round sphere at the entrance once was the footrest of Emperor Trajan indicating he was a global traveller and knew the world was round, long before Galilleo. Murat pointed out a symbol scratched into the pathway. It was a secret way to indicate Christians were there. Shaped like a pizza, Christians used the symbol for the Greek word iktus, meaning fish. The Greek symbols making up the word iktus can be found in the pizza and act as a short hand for a phrase in which each word represented by one letter of iktus is ‘Jesus Christ God's Son Savior’.

As we were walking to the exit, bugals rang out and the Emperor and his entourage approached his throne. Several times a day, a theatrical group depicts dancers and gladiators performing for the emperor and his lady. It was a fitting end to our visit.

After leaving Ephesus the people who were on a half-day tour were driven back to Kusadasi while the rest of us went to a roadside restaurant where we joined other tour groups for a good buffet lunch. From there we drove to the House of the Virgin Mary near Selςuk. Nine years after the death of Jesus, St John the Evangelist brought Mary to Ephesus, where she lived for the last years of her life to escape persecution. The house was ruined by many earthquakes and not discovered until dreams of a German Nun, later beatified, led to the site in 1951. The restored house has become a pilgrimage site and has been visited by several Popes. We got there just after lunch before the rest of the bus tours arrived. This would have been great had we toured right away but Murat gave us a lengthy history of the site while the buses disgorged their passengers. That meant a line-up to enter the small house. Most interesting for me was a stone wall covered with bit of fabric and notes begging favours from Mary and God. One even asked that her parents stop fighting and love each other. Several of the tourists added to the collection during our visit.

Our last stop was the Isa Bey Camii (Mosque), built in 1375. Columns and stones from the ruins of Ephesus and the Temple of Artemis were used to construct the building. Earthquakes destroyed one of the minarets and damaged the rest of the mosque. It was restored in 1934 and is still in operation today. The center court contained several gravestones with decorations indicating the type of head dress the deceased wore.

And so ended our day tour. If I had it to do again I would stay in Selςuk and take a taxi to Ephesus, rent an audio guide and tour at my leisure. There is a lot to see, even more than we managed in several hours. 

Pamukkale: Where Romans Took the Waters

Monday 10 Oct 2011

All’s well that ends well. After a three hour bus trip from Kusadasi, we catch the first glimpses of white on the hills of Pamukkale. We are going to bath in the hot mineral rich springs that created the white mountains and tour Hieropolis, the spa town build by the Romans around the springs. It was worth all the aggravation beforehand. First of all the tour company forgot to pick us up at our condo on Thursday and the next tour was not until Saturday, our last day in Kusadasi. It poured rain Friday night and was still chilly and grey Saturday morning. After our bus finally arrived and the last passengers were picked up from their hotels, the weather cleared and the tour started to improve. We were glad we came.

Pamukkale, Turkish for ‘Cotton Castle’, named for the white travertine pools that cover the hillsides is another World Heritage Site to cross off our Life List. 17 hot thermal streams spew over 400 l/s of mineral rich waterhigh in calcium, magnesium sulfate and bicarbonate. The water tumbles down the sides of the hills, eventually hardening into shallow concentric terraces filled with water. Most of the travertine pools are off limits to waders but people still come to the area to bathe in the springs at various hotels and so are we. We were brought to one of the many spa hotels with its own thermals to test the waters and enjoy a good buffet lunch. We could have bathed in the waters if we had known we were supposed to bring bathing suits. As it was, we waded in the hot pools. Our guide, Risa, told us to slather our bodies with the brownish-yellow mud in the hotter pools and we would look five years younger. I spread mud up my knees so at least my legs are more youthful looking.

After lunch Risa led us to the top of the travertines for the best photo ops, no bathing allowed, and to explore Hieropolis, the ruins of the Roman City. Just 25% of Ephesus has been uncovered but only 5% of Hieropolis has been fully excavated. We were given two hours to explore on our own and like all the other archaeological sites we have visited, it wasn’t enough time.

Hieropolis, meaning ‘sacred city’, had a population of 25,000 people in its heyday but the adjacent Necropolis, the city of the dead, had over 100,000 tombs. The discrepancy occurred because of the number of people who came to Hieropolis hoping the medicinal waters would cure their illnesses. Many were not cured and became permanent residents of the Necropolis. This is the area Ray and I found the most fascinating. There were informative signs to explain the varied styles of the often elaborate tombs and sepulchres. In Roman times the dead were sent richly attired and provided with food and valuables to ease their way into the afterlife. Consequently most of the tombs showed evidence of grave robbery.

Besides the tombs there were ruins of a Basilica, huge archway gates leading to various parts of the city, temples, and a theatre, currently under reconstruction. The roadway leading through the agora was discovered covered in two M of calcite. Compressors had to be used to remove crack the calcite and reach the paved roadway beneath. Cleopatra’s Pool is open to bathers for 25 TL each. We didn’t think it was worth the price. We also didn’t have time to visit the on-site Archaeological museum. You can’t do everything in a short day.

On the way home we stopped at a textile store. Besides the cotton of the travertines, the area is noted for growing cotton and producing cotton textiles. Ray convinced me to buy two locally made bath towels made of 60% bamboo and 40% cotton. The drawing card is their improved drying power. We shall verify that claim at home.