Mustafa, our guide to Ephesus
After we got off the ship in Kusadasi we met Mustafa (our second one of the voyage) who was going to spend the day teaching us about the Ephesians. It turns out our bus was no good, so he found us a new one, which required a walk.
Mustafa walks fast, with a determined, angry stride. Maybe, I thought, he doesn’t want to be here.
He turned out to be a very nice guy. He told us about the five different locations of Ephesus, explained our day to us and said he didn’t know where we’d go first. He wanted, he said, to avoid the crowds.
So he had the driver take us to the Ephesus Archeological Museum.
Marcus Aurelius
They had a few nice pieces, but many of the busts and statues were damaged. After spending a day in the Vatican’s museums (and after seeing the excellent traveling Pompeii exhibit in Birmingham a few years ago) this little museum was a bit underwhelming. Mustafa, though, was hard at work, though, pointing out the symbols and meanings and words and telling jokes. He used to be a history teacher, he said, and he had that bearing. He’d start a sentence and before he got to the key point he’d stop for half a beat, as if waiting for the class to fill in the blank.
Stopping at the museum first was a good choice. We were one of two buses there when we started. As we left there were more than a dozen buses parked there.
After the museum Mustafa had us taken over to the site of St. John’s Basilica. The church ruins were built in the 6th Century by the Emperor Justinian who believed John — the apostle or the saint or the evangelist — was buried there. There was some agreement that John lived out his last days in that part of the world, and was buried there.
A smaller church had been standing there for some time, but Justinian’s church was massive. If it were reconstructed today it would be the sixth largest cathedral in the world. By the 12th Century the church was in bad shape. It was overrun by the Turks in the 13th Century. A massive earthquake a few decades later, and then Timur’s Mongol army, completely destroyed the church.
The tomb of John.
I made a panorama of the church’s ruins. Click and magnify to get a small sense of the place.
From here you can see almost the entire valley. Mustafa pointed out, by site and by map, the location of all five of the Ephesus locations. The city was moved as the shoreline changed, and as the people tried to avoid disease.
The prayer wall at Mary's house.
Mustafa then took us to the house of Jesus’ mother. This is believed, by some, to be where she lived her final years. John was said to have had the house built here because he was preaching in the area and this was one of the safer non-Christian cities available to them. (Others disagree and believe Mary lived and died in Jerusalem.)
So the story goes that a 19th Century nun had a vision of a location of the house. Her description led a researcher to this spot, but his discovery didn’t gain much attention. The place was subsequently re-discovered a decade later, ruins were uncovered and, in the 1950s, the modern house was built there. A red line on the structure is meant to demonstrate the original building and the new structure.
Since then it has become an important pilgrimage for many. Muslims and Christians alike come here, viewing the place as an important religious destination. There’s a stream running under the house, from which you can drink of the sacred waters. The picture above is a prayer wall just off the spring’s taps.
No pictures are allowed in the house, and my exterior shots were uninspired.
Curetes Street in Ephesus III.
Our next stop was Ephesus III, the most famous of the old cities, and the one best excavated. It starts out a little slow — you see the gymnasium, a few houses, some of the plumbing, a few shops, the hospital and pharmacy ruins — but you go down a hill on Curetes Street and make a little turn and the view above opens up in front of you.
Mustafa, once again, had chosen wisely. There were no other tours there when we began, and we only bumped into one other group during our visit. This from an area that sees thousands of visitors a day.
See that building in the left background? That’s a multi-million dollar structure where the archeologists work. See that building in the center background? You need a closer view.
Celsus Library, one of the great libraries of the ancient world.
This place held 12,000 scrolls. It was built as a monumental tomb for Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus. He was a consul in Rome, and was in charge of all public buildings. Between 105-107 A.D. he was the proconsul (think governor) of the Asian province, the capital of which was Ephesus.
Mustafa tells the story of how all the great learned men would go to the library. At the time literacy rates were very low and the great learned men were the readers. “Look, there he goes to read another scroll!” People might say.
When they excavated Ephesus III archeologists discovered an underground passage to the brothel that was across the street.
The ampitheater at Ephesus.
The theater sat 25,000 people. Scholars believe the town’s population was 10 times that.
We saw a recreation of a day in Ephesus by some of the locals. The Yankee took my picture with a beautiful Turkish dancer who did not understand the first word I said. Some guys at the little shop next to the ruins tried desperately to sell us things. By then, though, we were hungry. Mustafa’s plan made us late for lunch, but that’s better than fighting crowds.
Crunch.
Our bus driver had an accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, but there we were standing on the side of the road in Turkey, building up this great story about how we had a wreck on our honeymoon. The nearby hotel had a party going on at the time and the guy announcing over the PA system was yelling out something very emphatically. Everyone on our bus, now standing on the side of the road, was left to make up our own translations.
Another bus was sent for us, but not before …
The Yankee hitchhikes her way through Turkey.
When the new bus finally did arrive we were taken to lunch in a Mercedes. We’re moving up in the world.
Lunch was buffet style at a resort hotel where we had both Turkish foods and more generic tastes. Turkish fries, for instance, are not that different than ours. Different oil, less salt, but otherwise the same. Turkish food, meanwhile, is delicious. And the desserts are rich and ridiculous.
Mustafa took us to a rug shop at the end of our tour. We had another great showing of beautiful works.
Another beautiful handmade rug from Turkey.
We also got a mini-demonstration of the technique. It is an incredibly beautiful art form. One, Mustafa said, that is disappearing. We’ve heard that twice now. These rugs were less expensive than the ones we found in Istanbul, but still more than we could afford. The demonstrations, though, are very impressive.
We shopped in the local bazaar, picking up a few more gifts for folks back home. I bought The Yankee something pretty. We had a terrific day. This was a great excursion that exceeded our expectations. I don’t want to oversell it with words, but there are plenty more pictures in the new Ephesus gallery in addition to the ones seen here and that panorama above.
At some point I’ll have some video as well.
Tomorrow: We’re back at sea. Then we’ll visit Athens, Naples and Pompeii. Nice trip, no?
