For some reason I kept calling Domitian, Diocletian in this post. Sorry about that, the emperor who I talk about here is definitely Domitian, not Diocletian.
(For some reason I couldn't get these two pictures to move down where I want them to be. Above I'm at the burial place of John the Apostle, below is an idol of Artemis. The idol was found buried, but dates back to the first century and was definitely an object of worship. All the Artemis idols (or Diana, which is the Roman name) in would have looked like this. It was about seven feet tall.)
Even though we did the same amount of stuff today that we normally do, today seemed like an easy day. We did have less travel, which helped, and just about everything we saw today had to do with Ephesus, which made the day feel easier too. It's enough to see four different archaeological sites every day, it's a whole other thing when they are the remains of four totally different cities.
The more we see of the ancient cities the more I'm amazed at what they must have looked like 2000 years ago. Everything in these cities is marble, they are full of beautiful pillars, statues and buildings, the views are unbelievable, there are fountains and all sorts of other things. They must have been amazing. I've never been one to think that we are smarter today than people were back then, but if I were my mind would be completely changed.
Ephesus is the biggest archaeological site in Turkey, they have been working on it for over 100 years, and they have only uncovered about 20% of the city. Granted, the government only lets people "do archeology" in the summer months, but that still gives you a sense of the size that these cities were.
Ephesus used to be a port city, now it is a few miles inland, 2000 years of silting by a river will do that to a port. We walked into the city from what would have been the land side back in the day, it was where the official Romans would do their business. That was were the Roman agora was (the governmental marketplace) its where the town clerk in Acts 19:35 would have been while the riot started by the silversmiths began to take place in the lower part of the city. There was also a temple dedicated to Artemis in Roman agora and a few temples dedicated to Emperor worship, one to Augustus and his wife and one to Diocletian.
(Part of the statue of Diocletian that was at the Imperial cult temple in Ephesus. Everyone hated him so much that after he was assassinated the Roman senate ordered all his images destroyed and his name erased forever, some pieces still survived though. That section of arm is about five feet tall and almost as big around as me.)
The acoustics of the city are set up in such a way that even if people were shouting "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" for two hours in the theater (which is in the lower part of the city) they wouldn't have been able to hear it in the upper part of the city. (which is probably why the mob yelled for two hours without anyone stopping them.)
(The theater in Ephesus opened out to the bay, away from the upper city and the Roman agora.)
In Ephesus we also saw some of the terrace houses (where the rich people lived, they were ridiculous, ask me about them,) we saw the commercial agora (where the riot in Acts 19 started and where Paul preached regularly,) we saw the theater, and we saw the ancient library.
All in all we spent about four hours in Ephesus, and I can't really imagine spending much less time there. After Ephesus we had lunch at a place where they show you how Turkish carpets are made and then try to sell them to you. I thought about buying one but I decided
to pay my tuition for next semester instead. Since I was busy not buying carpets, I did have a few minutes to sketch a little bit, which was fun until everyone else who wasn't buying anything decided to come and watch me, that was less fun.
After lunch we went to see what is left of St. John's Basilica in Ephesus. This is was the alleged burial place of John the Apostle (He spent some time in Ephesus as Bishop) Our teacher, Mark, thinks that it probably was the place where he was buried, the tradition is really early and very consistent. The remains aren't there though, they were taken to Constantinople in the 6th century.
After that we saw what is left of the temple to Artemis, which was one of the seven wonders of the world and was the largest place of worship in the ancient world. The belief was that the idol of Artemis that was in the temple fell from the sky. If you see the picture of Artemis I posted above, you can she that she was definitely ugly enough to have crashed into earth from outer space.
And our last stop of the day was the Ephesus museum, where they put some of the stuff they found in Ephesus under a roof (stuff like the Artemis statue and Diocletian head and arm.) After the museum we drove to Izmir (ancient Smyrna) for the night. Amazingly we only have three days left in Turkey, then we're on to Greece.
I hope everyone is well and as always, thanks for reading. Until tomorrow...
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