Ancient And New
05 November 2021 | Didim, Turkey
Tomb of Anitiochos
Wednesday 3 November 2021
Our guide on tour of Southeastern Turkey & Mesopotamia, Baran - a lovely fellow who is the human image of Gru from "Despicable Me", speaks quite good English, but is still a bit difficult to understand due vowel pronunciations, accenting and sentence structure. Although English is a Germanic language, it is lousy with Latin lexicon and is very different from Turkish which originated in central Asia. Also, although Turks since 1928 have used the Roman alphabet (derived from Etruscan, which was derived from Greek, which was derived from Phoenician which originated along eastern Mediterranean), pronunciations are not as phonetically related to spelling as is English or the strictly Latin languages.
Today we visited an archeological site from the earliest, pre-pottery Neolithic, Gobeklitepe (no idea how to pronounce and probably couldn't even with practice), in the "Fertile Crescent", which goes north from Jericho on the Mediterranean (oldest continually-inhabited city in the world) across southeastern Turkey and down through Mesopotamia ("Land Between Rivers": Tigris & Euphrates) to the Persian Gulf. This is the "Cradle of Civilization", where animals were first domesticated and agriculture began about 10,000 BCE - 12,000 years ago. After that we rode to the Sanliurfa Archaeology Museum which covers entire Neolithic age through the Iron Age, which ended as late as sixth century CE. There were also Islamic and mosaic sections we didn't have time to see. Extensive and well curated with English as well as Turkish explanations, it provides an excellent overview and perspective on the development of civilization over the millennia.
Thursday
First stop today was Ataturk Dam, largest in Turkey and named after the guy, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who invented the modern, secular Turkish Republic starting in 1928. It, along with several others on the Euphrates and Tigris, provides irrigation & electricity to Turkey and reduced water to aggravate Syria & Iraq downstream, especially during draughts.
Also visited a bridge built over the Severn River by Romans that was in use by motorized vehicles until sometime after a 1997 renovation. Originally supplied with four columns, two on either side of each end for the builder, his wife and their two sons, only three are left as the brother who murdered his sibling also tore down his pillar. You could do that sort of thing with impunity back then.
Last event was a grueling climb to the burial mound atop two kilometer high Mount Nemrut, one of the highest points in SE Turkey. King Antiochos built this for himself in one of the most colossal undertakings of the Hellenistic period. One carving among many statues showed him shaking hands with a god. Seems he had quite the elevated opinion of himself. Once there we photographed spectacular vistas of surrounding mountains and Euphrates valley below. Stiff from climb, inactivity while awaiting sunset in frigid temperatures exacerbated by high wind, and half pickled from red wine we had schlepped up, tottered back down to a prix fixe dinner and well earned night's sleep.
Jack & Jan