We spent the morning walking through the ruins of Ephesus just outside of Selçuk.
It was pretty incredible.
Yet it also gave me a sense of the frustration that has to be felt by the Turks and many others every time the West has stepped in to rescue some defenseless statues. Our tour guide at Pergamon yesterday made a point of noting that "the statue from the Temple of Zeus was NOT stolen by the Germans - it was bought from the Ottoman Empire fair and square, unlike everything else, while Schliemann was busy demolishing Troy." She was rather understandably bitter about the whole thing.
At least they left us the seats.
As we walked through the remains of Ephesus, nearly every building would mention somewhere in its attendant description that the statues originally decorating the facade could now be found in the Ephesus Museum... in Vienna. Well, that's not particularly convenient.
There are several rather conspicuously missing statues here.
There are several rather conspicuously missing statues here.
The Ephesus museum in Ephesus has done its best with what European museums left it. It has a number of satisfactory exhibits and displays, yet from the incredible goldmine of Ephesus it's barely kept a pittance. What I found to be the most meaningful exhibit in the museum was a letter from a Dutch tourist who apologized for taking a small rock from the floor of the agora in Ephesus and mailed it back to the town. Above the rock was a short poem in Turkish and English: "Every flower is beautiful in its own garden. Every antique is beautiful in its own country."
We're looking at you here, Europe.
Well, he's not. His head's somewhere in Europe.
Well, he's not. His head's somewhere in Europe.
3 comments:
I can hardly wait to see those incredible photos. The story about the tourist picking up the small rock reminds me of others who have done the same....
hey traveler! wasappening?
I was just reading about all the excitement in Berlin about the Germany v. Turkey match, and wondered if it was the same in Istanbul...but it looks like you're not there. are you in turkey? any frantic football fans running around? have fun...
matthew
Ephesus is amazing. Great photos of what is remaining. Wish that the Europeans et al had not been so possessive with the artifacts. Somehow paying for what was taken doesn't quite seem appropriate. Just maybe it should not have been taken at all!
Assume the seats are toilets? Would have been a difficult, messy job taking those.
(I believe that I now have a date-painted rock to send back to the folks at Mt. Wheeler in New Mexico. Or maybe you could take it or a future Philmont trip? Somehow it seemed fitting as memory of that close-to-death hike. I knew that one or another, I would not be doing that hike again. Can you take it back to the summit?)
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