Greece and Turkey 2015: Day 11- The Ancient Cities of Near Kusadesi

Ready for a new adventure! We are! Off to Didyma first this morning.

This is Apollo's Temple of Didyma. The city's name comes from the Greek meaning twin, as the Greek gods Apollo and Artemis were twins in the ancient mythology. This entire temple was built on a platform with steep steps leading up to the temple. During the temple's construction, the government ran out of money or the contractor ran off with it, so there are several pieces of evidence showing the temple was unfinished. The most glaring piece is the column in the rear of the temple. You can see that it was not fluted and not even standing (it was built by the archeologists). However, the original builders were prepared to put up the column as a plum line (a string with a weight on the end to determine what a straight line is for the flutes) was found. Finished or not, it's still amazing!

Another amazing picture of the two main fluted columns with the blue sky in the background. The interesting thing about these columns is these were not rebuilt at all by the archeological team; even though they are well over 80 feet tall marble structures, the earthquakes and weather from the 1st century AD until today have not been able to topple them. Let's hope it continues!

Even though this temple was not completely finished, there are some bases of the ionic columns with these ornate decorations on them. This particular base contains several flowery scenes and a scene from Greek mythology, which is very typical of the time period.

This panaorama shows the half of the temple where the oracle visions were seen by local priestesses (basically their bedroom). When someone wished to receive their oracle vision, they would pay a sum to the temple (usually eggs or animals) and wait for a priestess to arrive. Once the payment is collected, these women (not the people themselves) made their way to this room and became intoxicated either on some sort of drink or some kind of laughing gas (like the stuff at the dentist). After falling asleep and awakening, she would tell a priest what visions she saw in her dreams, tasking the priest with poetically writing the fortune of Apollo without giving many specific detail. The message is read to the citizen, and it becomes their responsibility to interpret it.

The mythical creature on the right side is a Gryffin, half lion, half eagle. This is frequently seen in the temple on friezes and some bases.

Another photograph of the side of the Temple of Apollo in Didyma. Amazing!

A huge thank you to our bus driver Vedat for getting us around the country for the past week and a half. Ti sekir e direm!

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The city of Priene, built into the side of a large rock formation, was one of the first Hellenistic cities (200 AD) to be built in the Hippodomous Plan. This plan, named after the city designer, to use a grid system of organization with very few exceptions. The vertical streets ran up and down while the left and right running streets ran along the hillside.

These plants, known as St. Paul or St. John Bread has an interesting history here. In ancient times, the citizens, after comsuming the black flesh, would keep the inedible seeds for themselves as they always were the same size and weight. After some time, jewelers used these karob seeds to weigh their diamonds and jewels before buying or selling product. It is from these seeds that the modern weight measure karat comes from.

We weren't kidding about the hill...

Unfortunately, we lost one of our own on the trip... Dallas was a victim of a human sacrifice to the god Dionisis, god of theater and wine. This practice was common in this theater, built into the side of the hill in the traditional Greek way.

There are several differences between the Greek and Roman theaters:

1) Greek theaters we more often built into hills, instead of using arches to support the heavier upper decks of seats.

2) the Doric style pillars here are much simpler and less decorated than the Roman theaters.

3) The orchestra pit here was not used for gladiator or blood fighting, as the walls were not high enough. In fact, the seats came down completely into the orchestra. Plus, the orchestra here was even larger than in Roman orchestras (this was slightly bigger than a semicircle, unlike the Roman model).

The Temple of Athena represents the Pagan temple used to show the Greek goddess of wisdom was doing her job as the guardian of the city. What a beautiful backdrop for this holy place!

Here are two adjacent agoras within the city center. On the left is the ruins if the shady marketplace for supplies and produce. On the right is the agora specifically for meat and fish.

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"Rubber ducky, you're the one! Rubber ducky you make bathtime so much fun!"

It was time for our Turkish bath! Here's the process and a photo of the beautiful building: