The next day we carried on to Didyma, a tortuous trip in that we had to circumnavigate a tourist city to reach the ancient site.
Here we found the Temple of Apollo. Not only did we find the temple but also accommodation right beside it!
The ancient temple was originally found by the Greeks who discovered a small sanctuary around a spring on a hillside. They considered it such a neat idea that they built their own sanctuary around it, with some trees, a statue, and some nice columns. The Romans when they arrived typically overdid it and made it into the most popular and important temple in what was then known as "Asia". Everyone who was anyone visited it. From Alexander the Great to other famous leaders.
The petitioner would enter the temple and write down their request for the Oracle. This request would be read to the Oracle by a priest. The Oracle was a woman in a trance with her feet in the sacred spring, and she would give back a reply. That reply would be intpretated by the priest and the answer returned back to the questioner. Seems like a great way to control what you wanted people to believe.
Still this an amazing construction overawing in its work and importance. Its very hard to take a picture that gives justice to the temple owing to its size. Either you see everything and loose the size proportion
Or you see part of it an miss its place in the rest of the building
When looking at ruins I am often looking for the small signs of humanity that add a personal touch to the scene. here I hit a jackpot. Someone scratched an ancient scene from the past of a man with a spear and a shield supposedly being attacked by a duck (Hey you can't win them all, maybe he just wasn't very good?).
The far wall in the temple marked the place of the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary and the Oracle. Nothing remained of this above ground level. I suspect it would have been fantastically ornamented, if the rest is any indication. Here, where for 100's of years an entire nation worshipped is now nothing.
Here is the corridor that the priests walked down to enter this inner court, note the floor is worn smooth from generations of walkers.
Here is where the sacred water would have exited the temple, through a channel at the base of the building.
Leaving Didma we cycled north. Emerging from the surrounding country side you are immediately hit by the magnificence of the Theatre at Miletus. Its not only huge but its beautifully preserved. From the vaulted corridors to the curved seats, to the engraved front its a magnificent ruin to visit, almost complete in its entirety.
As the theatre is on a flat plain, its more amazing that this massive structure was created by hand.
Looking North to where we were going next, to those shadowy mountains across the plain, that used to be the bay.
However perched like a barnacle on top is a Byzantine fortress, taking obvious advantage of the view of the plains around. A pleasant couple of hours were spent exploring the ruins. As we were leaving a tour bus arrived, the people were herded into the main theatre, given a 10 minute speech about it and herded back to the bus. It was pathetic, so much to see and experience that it was almost criminal to leave it so soon.
However upon reflection I figured its probably for the best if tour parties are moved in and out quickly, it at least makes the ruins are more interesting and quieter place to visit for the rest of the visitors.
From there we cycled over the ancient harbor bed, now silted up and converted into fields, and ended up in the Port city of Kusadasi.
Kusadasi is the closest I have encountered to an integrated tourist /local city. As a major entreport in the region for tourists its had a long time to adjust to the influx. Mostly absent was the aggressive touting for customers that so poisoned the atmosphere of the other resorts. Instead shops were staffed by regular people and the little touting we received was easily deflected by humor.
However there is a degree of desperation to the Turkish shop keepers at present, the crowds are just not here this year, either Turkey has fallen out of favor as a destination or the world cup, the bird flu and the war threats are keeping the tourists away. I noticed this when one restaurant tout pleaded with us to try his food and pointed to an entirely empty establishment.
From Kusudasi we went to Ephesus, the expected highlight of our trip.
Ephesus is a place of mixed emotions. As a ruin it has magnificent properties, however I found it marred by one feature. Some of the exhibits were recreated. They were not real.
The Theatre when examined up close had partly concrete and partly added stone seats. It didn't have the authenticity of Miletus, and instead with the many Americans seemed to me to be a Hollywood set developed for the tourists. The same for the famous Library, certainly the facade was impressive, but it too had been rebuilt along with the shop frontage beside it, We saw in an old photo in the museum later that the shop ruin was missing, it had been rebuilt after the photo was taken.
This struck me with a kind of sadness, immediately I lost the experience of being in an authentic place, the more I looked the more the recreations emerged, flagstones that obviously had been moved around, columns that were obviously not in their original places.
However the city was still impressive, the atmosphere and the information imparted by the guides (we just hung around the edges of tour groups and listened to the speakers) made it an entirely different experience to that of the other ruins. Even the crowds of people added to the atmosphere, like walk-ins in a movie, they created the illusion of the main city as being alive again. So Ephesus was worth it, but not in the manner we expected.
The ruins in Turkey were certainly worth the effort, expense and difficulty it took for us to visit them.
They are not places of an accumulation of shaped rocks, or a boring history lesson, but the remnant of magnificent civilizations wrought in stone. Testaments to mans ability to create magnificence in a time when the human arm was still the only effective tool to use. When we stood back and imagined the effort it took to create some of these places, the amount of manpower and logistics to carve smooth stones, move and install the stones as well as excavate the hillsides and ground for foundations it certainly amazed us.
Walking through the temples, theatres and agoras one realized that only a wrinkle in time separated us from the owners and users of these places. Not only on the macro scale of the buildings but also on the micro scale.
The seats in the theatres for example often were littered with marks from their users, graffiti and names of the citizens, (missing in Ephesus and the first indication I had to its lack of authenticity), In Militus was a sign etched in the Theatre that said the "God fearing Jews sit here". The streets in Ephesus had game boards etched in the shaded areas between the columns on the colonnades, The theatre in Miletus also has the names of some of the builders engraved on the side, settling a dispute by visiting the Oracle in Didyum. These minor marks gave reality to the many generations of people who inhabited these cities.
The Greek and Roman civilizations left us massive legacies in law, art, literature, and societal structures, but one thing they didn't leave us, their religion.
Nothing of Apollo, Zeus or the other deities survived no one worships them any more. What killed this one aspect when so much else came to us? The one religion that for 300 years they tried to destroy, Christianity.
In Ephesus the theatre had a daily timetable that read..
1 Wild animals killed.
2 Criminals killed.
3 Gladiators fight.
In the front, under the seats, are the entrances to the animal cages that contained the animals, for 300 years Christians were included among the criminals and brutally killed by beasts. A fate so terrifying that some criminals committed suicide by ramming their heads through the spokes of moving wagons rather than endure. Yet Christianity endured and eventually overcame the ancient Gods.
Eventually even the revered Temple of Apollo in Didyma contained only goats and sheep, and a nameless shepherd committed the greatest travesty to the temple by digging a well in the central holy place to water his animals. For centuries these beliefs flourished and were integral to the functioning of the nations, but something stronger entered the world and they faded away no more occupying humanities attention.
These places now are tombs of past beliefs as sure as those of their human builders. They hold no awe inside them, just the magnificence of their construction, like a beautiful wrapping around some prized but eaten sweets.