Author: Merro

Are you allowed to pun on blogs? The Meander River runs through Ephesus [or Efes in Turkish] and completely changed the course of Ephesus in history.

Imagine a city of pearl marble shining out to sea and you could sail right up to it, the sun rays dancing off the buildings and roads as you approached. A chariot would have pulled up to the wharf and taken you up past the amphitheatre for 25,000 people,  past the library with its exquisite marble edifice, up to the temple of Artemis, where you could offer a sacrifice to the goddess and give thanks for your safe return home.

Ephesus was settled before the Bronze age, with Neolithic remains dating back to 6,000 years BC and it grew and retracted until circa 614 AD when both a large earthquake hit and destroyed many buildings and the Meander River silted up the port. Today the city of Ephesus is five kilometres inland from the Aegean Sea. Ephesus did survive after this time but it was much smaller settlement.

Religion has always been important here. The Hellenic gods, particularly Artemis were worshipped. St John came to Ephesus and helped to bring Christianity here. He is said to have written some of the Revelations here. There is debate that he brought Mary, Mother of Jesus to Ephesus and that she was assumed into heaven from here. Jesus and Mary are also sacred to Muslims, so Efes is important to them too. Our guide, Haldun, while showing us Hadrian’s Temple told us the Romans had temples to their gods and their emperors.  They could determine who was Christian because Christians would not sacrifice at the Roman temples, so they were sent to the amphitheatre to fight with the lions instead.

An early visit to library of Celsus is a memory I have captured in a photo. I have always been in awe of its grandeur.  It held thousands of scrolls made of parchment and the building faces east so it was able to capture morning light. Egypt became very jealous of the library and decided to suspend supply of papyrus, but the clever Ephesians developed parchment, which was much more durable and longer lasting.

 

We were with a group of about nine people with the wonderful guide Haldun, who gave us so much information but also made the history come alive.  I warn you, he does test you to make sure you are paying attention.

 

 

Many of you know that I lived in Izmir, Turkey for just under three years in the mid 60’s. My brother, Tony and I went to an American/International school and my sister, Linda, was born there.

Izmir is the third largest city of Turkey, in 1965 at just under 800,000 people and now about 3 million people. So things weren’t the same, the growth was both  exponential and hard to fathom. Surprisingly I could still find my neighbourhood and I could almost find my way to school except the old two story building was now a nine story commercial building.

Now stop trying to do the math and figuring out how old I am, just read the story, which is dedicated to my sister, Linda.

As much as Izmir has grown, our neighbourhood, Alsancak has had only minor changes. Our street has two striking visual differences, our wide boulevard has palm trees on a big median strip now. There were no stores on the boulevard then, now there are masses of stores at street level. It’s very Double Bay. It is on the southern shore of the gulf of Izmir, a giant harbour. We lived one street back from the harbour and Birinci Kordon or the esplanade. The Kordon seems much wider as if they have reclaimed some of the harbour.

This quarter, Alsancak, both now and then was home to upper middle class Turkish people and it was always a lovely place to live. It looks to me, that they have added to the Kordon to add parkland, bike paths and parking by putting it over the harbour. Izmir was a very European city then and still is today.

We had a car but much of our day to day travel was in a horse and carriage. Today they seem to be mainly for tourists but the horses are still lovely.

The bread sellers would come up our street, with a huge tray of bread balanced on their head.They would call out the types of bread they had, “bread man, bread man, get your fresh bread” .  We had a basket on a very long string that Raphon* or my mother would put money into the basket and lower to the bread man, who would take the money and put in the correct bread. There was a bit of calling out in the neighbourhood.

This is an apartment just around the corner that looks like the one we lived in. The actual buildings we lived in have been retrofitted for earthquakes and when they did that, they added more floors to the buildings.

There is quite of bit of parkland and public space in the city. The harbour is a long semicircle and in the 60’s, there was no sea wall and the water was also filthy, Linda’s Dad got a call to see if he would join a search and rescue, when a taxi went into the harbour on a stormy night during a gale.  This is fine weather but you can see there is no wall or barrier here now and that is what most of the harbour was like in 1965.

He was one of the scuba team that braved the gale and hepatitis to go down on a few occasions and bring back the bodies, including one of his colleagues.

There are two sights that I remember from Izmir. The clocktower built in Ottoman Rococo.

and a wonderful statue of Ataturk at the end of our street. Ataturk created the modern secular Turkey you find today. Freedom of religion is practiced.  Now women are allowed to wear scarves but they didn’t in the sixties.

*Raphon was Linda’s nanny.