Ephesus discovery

Day 13     Kușadasi, Turkey    Wednesday, August 6, 2014

The Celsus Library was the highlight of Ephesus, our excursion from the Turkish port of Kușadasi (pronounced Kushadasa). This town is on the western shore of the country, south of Istanbul and directly east across the Aegean Sea from Athens. Ephesus had its heyday during the Roman Empire (population 50,000), but was abandoned in the mid 15th Century and became completely covered over by the elements, rediscovered in only 1895.

 We did not arrive in Kușadasi until 1 pm, so we had a relaxing morning (but including cycling in the fitness room) and they offered two special lunches. Instead of the Turkish BBQ at the pool, we chose the English Pub Lunch at the stern with live entertainment.

We reached the port on time, and there were two other cruise ships there, including another Norwegian.

Just as we were docking, we passed Pigeon Island on our starboard side, with its old fort that was to protect against pirates.

As in Istanbul, we were greeted on disembarking by a colorful cultural performance of costume and dance. We soon boarded our tour bus and drove the 12 miles to Ephesus. It had its beginnings in the 10th century BC. In the 6th century BC, the Greeks built the Temple of Artemis, which is one of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World. It took 200 yrs to build, was estimated to be 200 yards long by 50 yards wide, and had 127 columns. It was four times larger than the Parthenon in Athens. The temple was destroyed and completely rebuilt four times until it was destroyed for good in 401 AD by the Goths. There is nothing left to see but a lone reconstructed column, located a short distance away.

Ephesus began to flourish once the Romans conquered this area from Greece in about 129 BC. All the ruins we got to see were from the Roman period, which lasted for 400 years. We had seen the Roman ruins of Pompeii, and now we saw a similar Roman city of Ephesus.

The bus dropped us off at the upper end of the old town ruins, and our tour proceeded downhill to where the port used to be. Yes, Ephesus was a bustling port town through the centuries until the harbor silted in, about 1500 years ago. The sea is now 5 miles away, and as it receded, it caused the city to lose its importance. Now that the ruins have been found and partially excavated (only an estimated 15% has been excavated), Ephesus contains the largest collection of Roman ruins in the eastern Mediterranean.

The photo above shows our tour guide and Janet in the Odeon, which was a small covered theater holding 1500 and built in the 2nd century AD.

This archway and the one on the far side were the entrances to the Odeon, whose seats rise to the left through the arch.

These ruins are the Prhaneion, which was the governmental area. Apparently they had an eternal flame here that lasted "hundreds" of years without ever going out.

 Detailed carvings survived the centuries. The most famous one there is...

...Nike, Goddess of Victory. Nike was located in the area in the photo below...

...the plaza that had the Temple of Domition, from 1st century AD. At the far end you can see two of the columns, from originally eight across the front and back of the temple, and 13 on the sides. They are continuing to excavate into the hillside behind. The arch on the left behind Janet's head is the Fountain of Pollio, who was a rich guy in 97 AD.

On the other side of the road from Domition Temple is Memmius Monument made during the reign of Emperor Augustus (1st century AD). To couch this in an historical context, Memmius was the grandson of famous Roman Republic Dictator Sulla, who was the immediate predecessor of Julius Caesar. The figures you can still see on the side of the ruins are Memmius, his father, and grandfather Sulla.

This picture shows the primary street of Ephesus. All the ruins excavated so far are on either side of this road, spelled either Curetes or Kurets. The road is made from marble blocks. We simply walked down it from the top of the hill behind us, examining the ruins on either side as we went.

A bit farther down Curetes Street was this Fountain of Trajan, and still farther was the Temple of Hadrian:

See the Temple of Hadrian back there on the right? Yes, the one covered in scaffolding. It is said to be the best preserved and most beautiful structure in Ephesus, but we pretty much missed it.

Therefore, I stole this photo of the Temple of Hadrian from the Internet.

On the other side of the street was this mosaic sidewalk that we liked. In the background you can see the covered area where they are still excavating the "terrace houses". We would be getting a special tour of those in a few minutes, but first...

 ...the latrines! Yes, one of the highlights of an Ephesus tour is to see Latrina, a formal public toilet built in 100 AD. The citizens had to pay a fee to use them, and they didn't even have any privacy! The toilets lined all four walls of the square structure, which had a pool and fountain in the center with columns to hold up the wooden roof. They had a drainage system below the toilets, thankfully for them.

 Here we are inside the Terrace Houses, an extra-cost tour. The rich people lived here, and they are still actively excavating as you can see. What I found amazing was that this entire area was just a grass-covered hillside until 1967.

I took this photo of a photo they had posted, which shows the green hillside to the right of the existing ruins prior to 1967. That green hillside is now the Terrace Houses. The square section of ruins in the photo was also just a green hillside before that excavation work began. This made me realize what all of Ephesus must have looked like before they began excavating, and to think they have uncovered only approximately 15% of the old city. The other 85% is still under green hillsides all over the area. If 50,000 people lived there at its peak, the city must be huge under the dirt hills.

They have excavated six homes on this terrace, all very large and obviously for the wealthy considering the decorated floors, the artwork, the central heating system, and how large each home was. See the artwork pieces behind me on the arch? Well, that was nothin! I will post seven photos I took of their artwork:

These homes dated from the 1st century AD and were occupied until the 6th century. As I mentioned, they had central heating, so I have one more photo:

If you look carefully at the left center, you can see one of the clay pipes behind the decorated corner wall of this room. That's where the hot air from the fires went to heat the rooms. Those Romans were pretty amazing.

 Here is another view of the Celsus Library at the bottom of the hill (see the beginning of today's post for another photo of it). I wanted this photo to include the old Latin carving on the left, which describes the library. Construction was completed in 120 AD. This building showed that public libraries were built not only in Rome itself but throughout the Roman Empire. It held 12,000 scrolls on three floors, but the interior and all its books were destroyed by fire in an earthquake in 262. Only the faҫade survived, but it later crumbled apart too. In a massive restoration which is considered to be very true to the historic building, the front faҫade was rebuilt during the 1960s and 1970s entirely from its original pieces. It came out pretty breathtaking!

There are four women statues across the front (the originals were "stolen" to Vienna in 1910), and the one behind me is Arete, representing Virtue.

This statue is Sophia representing Wisdom. The other two are Annoia representing Fate, and Episteme representing Knowledge.

I included one more photo of the Library to show up close the intricate details of the carvings and marble columns.

Immediately to the right of the Library are these three arched "gates" leading out to the large commercial Agora, or central town marketplace. Thus, these archways are called the Gates of Agora. You can see through them to more ruins behind, and these are from the Agora with its many shops and monuments and statues (the Romans loved their statues!). The walk down Curetes Street ended at the Library and you then turned right onto Marble Street. It is made entirely from white marble, and passes along the Agora and over to the grandest remain in Ephesus:

The Grand Theater! It held 24,000 people, and was even larger than the excavated portion you see here. It had 66 rows of seats. They still use it for concerts, such as we watched a YouTube of Elton John singing Your Song there. It faces westward toward the harbor (when there was a harbor).

From inside the Grand Theater, this is looking down Harbor Street. The sea water and harbor used to be there at the end of the street until it silted in leading to the city's demise. To the right of Harbor Street is the Gymnasium.

We are near the Gymnasium looking back at the Grand Theater. Our tour of Ephesus was over. I thought the Virgin Mary House was within walking distance, but that turned out to be ruins of something different called Mary's Church. The Virgin Mary House was about 3 miles south of Ephesus.

I stole this photo from the Internet. It's a reconstruction from remains of a building that is believed to be where Virgin Mary lived the final years of her life. The story is that after Jesus died, Apostle St. John brought Mother Mary here (in 42 AD) and never left her side. St John stayed on here until he died too, at the end of the 1st century, and wrote his Bible chapters here. The Catholic Church has never pronounced in favor or against the authenticity of the house, but nevertheless maintains a steady flow of pilgrimage since its discovery in 1881.  St. Paul also gave two lectures in Ephesus in 52 and 55 AD.

Our tour then became commercial. They took us to a brand new stop on the road dedicated to eating a "Roman Feast", watching a 10-minute gladiator fight reenactment (before Antony and Cleopatra!), and shopping. You did not HAVE TO wear those togas while eating lunch, but what the heck, we did.

 The show was overly dramatic, which those poor actors had to perform every 30 minutes or so. Each character made a grand entrance from stage right, set to regal music. Antony and Cleopatra already entered and are seated in their thrones. This lady is acting Egyptian prior to...

...the gladiator battle. You might wonder why they staged an Egyptian show here in Roman Turkey, but it turns out that Cleopatra and Antony actually did visit Ephesus in 41 BC.  We had to hang around the shops for quite a while until the bus finally took us farther, but even then it was still commercial. They dropped us at a carpet demonstration. Since we had just seen this the day before, Janet and I elected to just leave and walk on back to the ship.

Actually, we decided to try to get some free WiFi time, so I hurried on back to the ship and got my computer and hustled back to Janet in the port shops. At our WiFi cafe, we ordered an obligatory drink (a Coke), and then tried to get onto the Internet but it failed. The waiter tried to help, but didn't really care and we never did get on even though others there were successful.

I'm sure we enjoyed our dinner on the ship that evening. The theater show that night, called Duo Dillon and Antonio, was entertaining because of Antonio, a silhouette artist who created amazing characters with his hands back-lighted against the screen. The Dillon woman did hula hoop tricks, while her husband did juggling tricks. But Antonio stole the show with his character "stories" set to music. It was hard to believe he could create the silhouette images that he did and animate them, and stimulate our emotions for them.

We would need to awake early for Athens, so we couldn't stay up too late.