As we headed east, our next stop was Sanliurfa. The prefix “Sanli” was added to “Urfa” in 1984, meaning “Glorious Urfa”, but most still refer to it as Urfa. For us, the city offered a base from which to explore two archaeological sites, Nemrut Dagi and Gobekli Tepe, but the city itself also had something to offer: it claims to be the birthplace of the prophet Abraham and there is a complex of monuments and mosques dedicated to him that are a destination for Muslim pilgrims.
Nemrut Dagi is a 2150-meter mountain, whose artificial summit – a 50-meter high pyramid of small rocks – was commissioned by a pre-Roman local king, Antiochus I Epiphanes, in the first century BC. On two sides of the pyramid, facing east and west, he built temples and had them adorned with large statues of gods, including Apollo and Zeus, and himself. Now, more than 2,000 years later, the two-meter tall heads of the statues have been toppled by earthquakes and the elements, and add a surreal quality to the site as they stare out from the summit in front of their still seated bodies.
The other site we visited, Gobekli Tepe, wasn’t really discovered until the mid-1990s. The site consists of a series of tall, t-shaped limestone pillars, carved with human and animal reliefs, arranged in circles around a central pillar. Four of these circles have been excavated so far, but there are an estimated 16 more, as yet to be unearthed. They are believed to have been used for religious rituals, and the earliest of these structures has been dated to the 10th century BC, (7,000 years before Stonehenge), making this the oldest known religious site in the world. The site is important, archaeologically speaking, not just because of its age (hunter-gatherers of this time were not thought to have the capacity to build such a site), but because it suggests that a desire to worship or practice sacred rituals, and not environmental reasons, may have led hunter-gatherers to transition into the stationary, agricultural societies that made up the earliest civilizations. A great National Geographic article describes the site and its importance better than we can. The site itself is still being actively excavated. In fact, the team of archaeologists was onsite during our visit, with several members looking very much like Indiana Jones in khakis, leather boots, and suspenders.
Nemrut Dagi and Gobekli Tepe aren’t the easiest places to get to without joining a large tour group or having your own means of transportation. In Urfa, we found a local guide to take us to the sites (and some others along the way). Yusuf, a short, 60-something, energetic man who walked with a cane, was a complete character. He was constantly joking, singing, and sharing anecdotes, and in time he had us singing along to his silly songs and speaking his own made up words (Gugugaloo!). About fifty percent of what he had to say about any particular place or site was dubious at best, but his heart was always in the right place. He took us to great restaurants that we would have never chosen, gave us hand-rolled cigarettes with raw Turkish tobacco, made us try a dish that he had told us would make us sick only moments earlier, and stopped at a roadside fruit vendor to buy us a huge melon (and proceeded to cut it for us and make us eat the whole thing). In short, he made our trips to these sites a lot more fun.
Back in Urfa, we were glad to have some extra time to explore the city. We visited the ruins of Urfa Castle, situated atop the tallest hill in town with wonderful views over the city, and the complex of mosques and monuments at the base of the hill, including the Pool of Sacred Fish (Balıklı Göl), where legend has it God saved Abraham after he was ordered to be burned by the local king, Nimrod, by turning the fire into water (and the coals into fish).
Click on the photo below to view our Urfa photo album.
Nemrut Dagi is a 2150-meter mountain, whose artificial summit – a 50-meter high pyramid of small rocks – was commissioned by a pre-Roman local king, Antiochus I Epiphanes, in the first century BC. On two sides of the pyramid, facing east and west, he built temples and had them adorned with large statues of gods, including Apollo and Zeus, and himself. Now, more than 2,000 years later, the two-meter tall heads of the statues have been toppled by earthquakes and the elements, and add a surreal quality to the site as they stare out from the summit in front of their still seated bodies.
The other site we visited, Gobekli Tepe, wasn’t really discovered until the mid-1990s. The site consists of a series of tall, t-shaped limestone pillars, carved with human and animal reliefs, arranged in circles around a central pillar. Four of these circles have been excavated so far, but there are an estimated 16 more, as yet to be unearthed. They are believed to have been used for religious rituals, and the earliest of these structures has been dated to the 10th century BC, (7,000 years before Stonehenge), making this the oldest known religious site in the world. The site is important, archaeologically speaking, not just because of its age (hunter-gatherers of this time were not thought to have the capacity to build such a site), but because it suggests that a desire to worship or practice sacred rituals, and not environmental reasons, may have led hunter-gatherers to transition into the stationary, agricultural societies that made up the earliest civilizations. A great National Geographic article describes the site and its importance better than we can. The site itself is still being actively excavated. In fact, the team of archaeologists was onsite during our visit, with several members looking very much like Indiana Jones in khakis, leather boots, and suspenders.
Nemrut Dagi and Gobekli Tepe aren’t the easiest places to get to without joining a large tour group or having your own means of transportation. In Urfa, we found a local guide to take us to the sites (and some others along the way). Yusuf, a short, 60-something, energetic man who walked with a cane, was a complete character. He was constantly joking, singing, and sharing anecdotes, and in time he had us singing along to his silly songs and speaking his own made up words (Gugugaloo!). About fifty percent of what he had to say about any particular place or site was dubious at best, but his heart was always in the right place. He took us to great restaurants that we would have never chosen, gave us hand-rolled cigarettes with raw Turkish tobacco, made us try a dish that he had told us would make us sick only moments earlier, and stopped at a roadside fruit vendor to buy us a huge melon (and proceeded to cut it for us and make us eat the whole thing). In short, he made our trips to these sites a lot more fun.
Back in Urfa, we were glad to have some extra time to explore the city. We visited the ruins of Urfa Castle, situated atop the tallest hill in town with wonderful views over the city, and the complex of mosques and monuments at the base of the hill, including the Pool of Sacred Fish (Balıklı Göl), where legend has it God saved Abraham after he was ordered to be burned by the local king, Nimrod, by turning the fire into water (and the coals into fish).
Click on the photo below to view our Urfa photo album.
No comments:
Post a Comment