Aphrodisias, Turkey, Saturday 12th

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Our trip to Aphrodisias was with an elderly friend of our pension owner in a car that had seen better days. Our fellow passengers were two Italian artists who had just finished their exhibition in Istanbul. I don’t know if readers are up for another Roman City, and after our third in a week, we feel that we need a break too.

Aphrodisias – the town is named after its cult goddess, Aphrodite, of love and lust fame. It had a very prosperous period and an unusual benefactor. C. Julius Zoilos was born in Aphrodisias but was stolen by pirates and sold as a slave. He was a slave to Julius Caesar and then was freed, becoming an agent for Augustus Caesar. He became very wealthy and had many excellent connections. He returned home and financed much public building which, not surprisingly, included a Sebastarian, which is a temple where people worship the Emperors as gods. In addition he built an enormous agora, which is a colonnaded square with official and commercial buildings around the sides, and a temple dedicated to Aphrodite.

This site has an enormous intact stadium, which could be used for Olympic events today. Apparently they specialised in athletic events and animal fighting. The ends are so far apart that the animals would never have to be near each other or could run off instead of fight, I thought. It turned out to be man versus animal so presumably at least the man knew what he was supposed to be doing.

The sculptures, stonework and statues are particularly fine. Many are on an enormous scale, with one, only to the waist, being nearly as high as the building. A Turkish man who was educated in American universities, Professor Kenan T. Erim , became an archaeologist and spent most of his life excavating this site, raising funds for projects and putting the clues together. When he died, he was given the honour of being buried on the site with a special monument being erected for him.

This site is even prettier than Hieropolis, with glades of trees and swathes of flowers everywhere. It was our first really hot day and quite uncomfortable, so we will have to hole up in a cave somewhere when the real Northern summer hits.

Driving back, the car lost power and we limped to the side of the road. Bonnet up, revving and adjustments for two minutes, and we were off again. For 200 metres. Eventually the owner of our pension, Serif, stopped to help. He was driving a group of eight tourists in his mini-van. We all piled in. This put him over the limit for passengers so we went home by a different route to avoid the police checks. Turkey is so different from Egypt, where an overladen car would probably give a policeman a lift.

We had tea at a restaurant where the owner is into making jokes about national stereotypes, ad nauseum. He did very kindly let us use his internet for nothing, and, like everyone else, said that a good carpet must be at least 60 years old. They had beautiful kilims on their walls which his mother in law had made. I am going to have a go at making one when I come home.