A Journey Through Time: Traveling the Seven Churches Route
The modern city of Izmir sits on ancient Symrna. The city was famous as a trade route in the ancient world and remains so today. It is my starting point for an excursion around the lands of the Seven Churches mentioned by St. Paul and St. John. This part of Christian heritage is today almost entirely in the province of Izmir, but in the past each of the city-states fought contentiously with each other prior to the Roman conquest and again well into the Islamic era. A journey here leads one from pre-history with iron age ceramics, tools, and votive figurines on display in each of the local museums, to the Hellenistic Age where statues and architectural remnants abound, through the Roman era, which as in all Roman settlements demonstrate how they overpowered all that went before it, to early Byzantine, which reused much of the Hellenistic and Roman artifacts for their own purposes and to wipe out the pagan temples, finally to the Islamic era, which has had many transitions over the past 1000 years. This region’s history is based on a fusion of pre-Greek, Greek, Roman, and Turkish elements and the landscapes reflect these tensions and syntheses. Traveling by car from Izmir, on what are now good and well marked roads, (this wasn’t the case a few years ago!), it is possible to complete the Seven Churches route in four days, although adding a few days makes for a more relaxing trip.
Part of the ancient city of Smyrna is found in the State Agora ruins (4th C BCE) adjacent to the Kemeralti Bazaar in downtown Izmir. The site is up a small hill and would have been a commanding presence in ancient times. Most of what is left from Homer’s supposed birthplace is an arched gate and the understories of the old basilica. From those remains, one can make out how water was used within the complex and the precise geometry of rows of Roman arches. Today the main inhabitants are a few cats and a number of dogs, who laze around on top of fallen marble columns warming themselves in the sun. Alexander the Great’s castle is still visible from the top of Mt. Pagos. The Church of St. Polycarp, the oldest church in the city built in 1625, is the other side of the Fevzi Pasa Blvd. separating the bazaar area from the rest of the commercial district. This church is dedicated to the second century martyr of that name from this city. Perhaps the nicest area is the new park around the early 20th C Konak Clock Tower by the harbor ferry. The clock tower was a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Sultan to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Sultan Abdülhamid II’s reign and their personal friendship. The park is between the bazaar and the harbor, with lots of places for eating, or just for getting a cup of tea or an ice cream. The view across the bay is beautiful. The anthropological and ethnological museums are just behind the park up a hill past the bus station. It is easiest to cross through the busses to get to a series of stairs that lead up to the anthropological museum rather than trying to dodge traffic on the main road. The museum has two floors and is a good introduction to the history of the province. The ethnographic museum is in an old fortress looking building flying the red Turkish flag (which you can see from the park & will provide a way to recognize the buildings) and displays waxed figures in local costumes conducting typical activities, such as cooking, weaving etc. As long as one stays with the ancient sites, everything is within walking distance from any hotel near the bazaar or Cankaya metro stop.
As I don’t enjoy driving in cities that I am not familiar with looking for hotels I can never find, I spent a couple of days walking around Izmir before picking up the rental car at the airport to start the road trip. The drive from Adnan Menderes Airport to Bergama, the next stop of the Seven Churches loop, took about two hours. Bergama is home to ancient Pergamon, and while many of the most famous artifacts from this site are in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, the archeological areas in Turkey are well worth visiting. (As is the museum in Berlin!) As the Christian fathers, were teaching/preaching to a Roman audience, both Jews and Gentiles, their churches were in major commercial cities of the time. As with Smyrna and Ephesus, Pergamon at one time had a major waterway connecting it to other commercial centers. The rivers that formed that path have since been diverted and/or dried up, which coupled with political tensions and natural disasters led to its downfall, which is a telling reminder of the power of drought over the ages. Each of the main cities have foundation legends, and one of the most commonly repeated for Pergamon is that which is found on one of the friezes from the Great Altar from Zeus’ Temple. One of the guidebooks explains the reliefs by stating that an oracle told Argos, the King of Tiega, that his grandson would overthrow him. His daughter, Auge, meanwhile had met and fallen in love with Hercules, by whom she became pregnant. Her father was so angry that he packed her in a crate and sent her down the river. At some point, she gave birth to Telephose, who she left in the woods in fear of what her father would do to the child. The crate with Auge in it washed up onto the shore of Mysia, where she was welcomed by Teuthras, the King of Teuthrania. The King did not have an heir so he adopted Auge. Meanwhile, Hercules found the baby Telephose and had the Nymphs look after him. When the boy was a teenager, he followed the oracle’s advice to look for his mother. He set out with a few friends and landed on the Mysian coast, where he met Teuthrania, and aided the King in battle against his enemies. (Up to this point the story is the same as Lugh from the Irish Celtic tradition as well as a few other warrior heroes across the Eurasian continent.) As a reward for his service the King gave Telphose the hand of his beautiful adopted daughter, Auge in marriage. On the wedding night, Athena sent a snake to come between mother and son thereby preventing their union. (Oh, where was she with Oedipus!) Mother and son then recognized each other and Telephose went on to found Pergamon as its first king. (Atila p.4)
Another version is that “Perg” means mountain, and yet another that it was the name of a warrior hero who supported the Teuthraian King Grynos in a war. Upon successfully concluding the battles, he built two cities, one, Gryneion, after himself and the other, Pergamon, in honor of his supporter. (p.4 Tuzcuoglu)
Regardless of legend, Pergamon as a city was probably founded sometime in the 6th C BCE, when it was under control of the Lydians, who lost out to the Persians, who lost out to Alexander the Great, whose general Lysimachus used the city as a military rather than as a primarily commercial base. Lysimachus’ successor, General Philetairos founded the dynasty that brought the city its greatest rulers, including Eumenes I & II, who created many of the buildings that are now part of the ruins one can visit. The last of this dynasty Attalus III died childless and gave all his lands, including Hierapolis, which reported to Pergamon, to the Romans in 133 BCE. Mithradates IV had a series of problems with the Romans and took over Bergama for awhile. In 88 BCE he ordered the slaughter of 80,000 Romans throughout the Anatolian province, including in Pergamon. With Mithradates demise, the city came back into Roman hands. After Caesar’s brutal murder in 44 BCE, the Anatolian lands were divided between Octavian and Anthony. Anthony received Pergamon, including the great library, which Eumenes II had completed. As a present to his great love, he gave Cleopatra the 200,000 scrolls/volumes that the library contained. These were sent to Alexandra, and we all know their ultimate fate. It is from this city and library that we get the name ‘pergament’, as, according to legend the Alexandrians who had a market on papyrus were not happy with the development of a rival library and stopped sending the writing material to Pergamon so that their texts couldn’t be copied, or new ones created. As Eumenes II wanted to make his city a cultural hub, he needed a new technology. Goats were an abundant resource, so their skins were cut and tanned, which created a material that was immeasurably better than papyrus as it could be written on both sides and bound into book form for easier reading rather than the flimsy papyrus scrolls. The library, which in its heyday was a center of Stoicism, was near the oldest building on the Acropolis, the Temple of Athena.
The Temple of Athena was probably built around the 4th C BCE and lies above the Great Altar, next to the steepest theater in Anatolia (and perhaps the entire Hellenistic world). There is only one wall left from this great sacred site to give testimony to its various configurations. First as a temple to the great goddess of wisdom, then it seems her statue was replaced with that of Octavian/Augustus when Emperor worship was common, then her stones were used to build a Byzantine Church, and then even the Church was plundered for a mosque so that now little remains.
The Acropolis has various terraced tiers. The highest has the most imposing remains, that of the Temple of Trajan and the Royal Palaces, with the next level that of the Temple of Athena and the upper level of the Theater, below that is the level of the Great Altar; the upper Agora is down a short walk from Zeus’ temple complete with temples to Demeter and Hera and a gymnasium complex. By the foot of the vertigo inspiring theater is a Dionysus Temple. One can either take a cable car or walk up to the site. The cable car costs 10TL (ca. $3.65) one way, 13TL up and back. The view is worth the ride up. On the walk back, there is an old Mater Kybele grotto that lies almost directly below the Athena temple, which nicely connects the very ancient to the simply ancient forms of worship.
Bergama is not only famous for the Pergamon Acropolis site, but also for the Asklepieion, which was a major health center and the one where Galen, who was instrumental in forming what became modern medicine, studied and practiced. Fascinatingly, he wanted to hedge his bets as well, and no critically ill patients or pregnant women were allowed into the sacred site. Most of the cures were accomplished via hypnotheraphy, sleep therapy and dietary changes. All sites need to have a theater and this one is in fairly good condition. While I was there a group of Turkish school children were visiting. Their teachers had them sit on the rock-carved theater benches to sing an appropriately anatomical song, “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” - in English. Youthful giggles and laughter filled the otherwise silent site.
As the imperial Roman world was heavily influenced by Egypt, Bergama also has a temple, known as the Red Hall for the color of its bricks, that was dedicated to Serapis, the Egyptian god of healing, and Isis. None of their statuary is existent, but one of Sekhmet has been reconstructed. The Lion-headed goddess now surveys all her cousin Bastet’s children; cats roam freely throughout the site.
While there are few traces of an early Christian church, today’s Bergama is a wonderful town to walk around and the sites are spectacular.
From Bergama it is about a 4-5 hour drive to Laodicea/Pamukkale, depending on how long one stops at Thyatira (Akhisar), Sardis, and Philadelphia (Alasehir). There isn’t much left of any of these churches, a few walls and some columns, although in Sardis there is more from an Artemis Temple, built on an earlier Mater Kybele site, and some 3rd C decorations from a synagogue. Even though the archeological sites aren’t as spectacular as those of Bergama, Pamukkale and Ephesus, the landscape, which follows a valley through the rolling hills and mountains is simply delightful. The hills are dotted with pine trees and the valley covered in lush grapevines. Goats graze on the hillsides while men and women are hunched over planting their fields as they would thousands of years ago. Time stops in the villages; there is simply the cycle of the seasons and the years.
This changes dramatically in Pamukkale. Laodicea, a site of one of the Seven Churches, lies just a few kilometers away from modern Pamukkale, ancient Hierapolis. Currently there are fairly massive excavations going on throughout this quite large site, including in the area where there are remnants of a Byzantine Church, as well as an older church. The city was built in the 3rd C BCE by the Seleucid King Antiochus II and named after his wife. There are a number of partially reconstructed temples along the sides of the marble sacred roads that offer incredible views of the mountains in the distance, some still with snow even in early June. From Laodicea one can also see across the river to the white travertine terraces that identify Pamukkale.
Pamukkale and Hierapolis have become a Turkish Disneyworld. Tourists are encouraged to follow a path through the terraced dissolved calcium pools up to and down from the archeological site. Vastly different from the other ancient cities, Hierapolis’ museum is on site, not in the town’s center, and there are coffee/tea and knickknack shops, (& WCs) throughout the area. In none of the other archeological sites were there shops or facilities within the site itself. There were also far more people in Pamukkale than anywhere other than Ephesus (and of course in Izmir, but that is a major city – the third largest in Turkey). Hierapolis is very large about as large as Ephesus, and larger than the other five. The waters of Hierapolis were known for both their healing and harmful effects, even in Strabo’s day. He relates that there was a gas hole, called “Mephite” and that it was known that whoever came close to the hole would die. Priests who held their breath and came out alive were said to have been graced by the gods. This hole was supposedly covered up in the 4th C BCE; today there is still a “Demon’s Hole” or “Pluto’s Hole” that also produces toxic gas, and it too is now covered. The museum has one of the few intact statues of Hades/Pluto that I have seen in this region. The waters are visited today, as in ancient times, by those seeking a cure for skin ailments, rheumatism, and some heart conditions. For those who simply want to swim with antiquities, there is “Cleopatra’s Pool,” a large swimming pool with fallen columns on the bottom. The pool is surrounded by cafes and shops for one’s eating and mercantile pleasure. The cost to swim is TL30 (ca. $11). Viewing those taking selfies in the water is free.
Not far from Cleo’s center is the large theater, which has the most completely restored backdrop of all the theaters on this loop. It gives a good sense of what those watching the spectacles would have seen. On the porticos are high reliefs detailing events relating to the twins, Artemis and Apollo. Not far from the theater, further up the hill off to the north, lie the tomb and church of St. Philip the Apostle. A bit further up from them is an octagonal building dedicated to his martyrdom in this city in 87. Along the hillside are tombs of various shapes and sizes, including tumulus, corniced tombs, and monumental tombs of the rulers and leading members of the ancient city. Hierapolis may be an ancient site, but life lives amidst the ruins. In addition to the swarms of tourists from countries across the globe, countless lizards of various sizes from about 20 cm to around a foot in length, numerous songbirds, a few non-poisonous snakes, I came across about 10 turtles, mostly in pairs, and one couple looked like they were smooching. Love is eternalJ
Normally, I don’t plug hotels on this blog, but here I will. The Venus Suites in Pamukkale is just fabulous. The owners have recently opened a new section which has a (much appreciated!!!) spa-quality shower, good beds, great breakfast, balcony with a view over the hills, internet that works, and staff who go out of their way to meet all your needs and desires even before you express them, and all this for $46 pr. night. This place is great.
The drive from Pamukkale to Ephesus takes about 2 ½ to 3 hours depending on traffic as most of the way is stop and go through towns. This isn’t the prettiest section, but it’s not bad as it is still through the hills, but the vineyards from the Sardis section give way to more industrial settings. Those disappear as one enters Selcuk and the Ephesus area, which is again filled with pine trees and grapevines. Ephesus, the site of St. Paul’s Letters to the Ephesians, is one of those sacred places that has been significant over millennia to various religions. To say it is special completely understates the obvious. Similar to the other seven sites, this region has been devastated by earthquakes, and what man could not ruin, nature did. Nonetheless, this site of ancient magnificence still holds the visitor captivated. I have been fortunate to have been here a number of times and each time I learn something new, another insight gleaned, yet another image engraved in my memory. Ephesus was the home of the Artemision, the largest and most famous Temple of Artemis in the ancient world and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. No one knows for sure when the city was founded. Neolithic artifacts from about 6,000 BCE have been uncovered in the area along with Hittite and Mycenaean tombs and ceramics. The founding legend, however, has it that Androklos, the son of King Kadros, wanted to build new cities to the West, but the Oracle of Delphi predicted that he should build where, “ the fish will jump, the boar will flee.” As he was wandering around Anatolia looking for the perfect spot for his new city, he stopped to fry some fish, which jumped in the bubbling oil of his skillet. A spark from the oil enflamed the nearby bushes, sending a boar that was hiding there running away. The young prince hopped on his horse rode after the boar, killed it and that spot is where he built his new city, Ephesus. The first written mention of the city is in regards to its relationships as a member of the Ionian League in the 7th C BCE, when the city was defended against the Cimmerians from what is now Russia. In 545 BCE, King Croesus of Lydia conquered the city and commissioned the construction of the first version of the Artemision. He also required all the people who lived in the surrounding area to settle in one spot in the neighboring city. A year later Croesus was defeated by Cyrus the Great, and during the Ionian Revolts, the Persian emperor used Ephesus as a military base in the war against Sardis. The temple, however, was held sacred and even when his lineage holder, Xerxes, plundered everything he didn’t touch the Artemis temple. But what rulers may refrain from doing, terrorists of all ages do not. The day Alexander the Great was born a commoner who wanted to be remembered by history set the temple ablaze. As the roof and many of the columns were partially made of wood, the building collapsed. Legend says that Artemis was watching over the birth of the new leader and wasn’t paying attention to her house. As recompense, when Alexander passed through the region on his march eastward, he offered to rebuild the temple as long as his likeness could be installed. The Ephesians kindly refused as “a god cannot build a temple to another god.” The city and the site remained important, but not quite as influential until Caesar Augustus’ reign. He had aqueducts built and remodeled the city to make it one of the most important in the Roman Anatolian region. This was the city that St. Paul and St. John knew. It was a city of vibrant cultural activity with an incredible library, where women had a say in government and daily life, where the Goddess was worshipped and where her votive figurines were produced and sold, which was big business for the city and its people. This was the city where the citizens shouted “Artemis is the greatest” in the theater to St. Paul, who wanted to convert them. It is also the city to which St. John the Apostle supposedly took Mother Mary when things got difficult for Jews and Christians in Jerusalem. Legend has it that they didn’t like living in the city, so they found a place up the mountain where they could look down on Ephesus as well as on the coast (which was considerably closer then than it is now as the bay has silted up). Mary’s house has been reconstructed and is now a place of worship after having been lost for almost 13 centuries. The last record of her dwelling near Ephesus was in about the 6th C; it wasn’t until a 18th C German nun had a vision of the place that it entered back into conversation, and it wasn’t until the 19th that it was rediscovered.
St. John has his own church and tomb site on a hill in the middle of modern Selcuk, just up the hill from the marshland where the remnants of the once great temple to the Anatolian Goddess Artemis stood. And so we come full circle in Ephesus back to Artemis’ site. This goddess is descendent from the Anatolian Kybele, somewhat mixed with Sumerian Iananna and Babylonian Isthar. She is a moon goddess, represented with a crescent moon, stars, a headdress that symbolizes the city, and her bodice is filled with gourds representing fertility and her skirt with numerous animals. She is associated with water’s healing aspects. Mary’s iconography has her standing on a crescent moon, with stars, her blue gown both water and sky, and she protects those who ask for her help as the earlier sacred figure did. Through all the wars, political and religious changes, Ephesus has kept its sacred identity. The systems, political and religious, change, but the power and magnificence of the site remain.
And so comes to a close the journey to the Seven Churches. It ended up more a journey into the ancient world than about the churches themselves, which are often no longer existent. Yet, as always, the journey one lives is infinitely richer than the one planned.
References:
Atila, Lakan. Ephesus: New Edition. Güney Books.
Atila, Lakan, Pergamon & Troy: New Edition. Güney Books.
Edmonds, Anna. anatolia and its biblical visionaries. Istanbul: Archeology and Art Publications. 2002.
Kekec, Tevhit. Pamukkale “Hierapolis.” Pamukkale, 2015
Tuzcuoglu, Kazim Selcuk. Pergamon Past and Present. Istanbul: Duru Publications.
Additional Guide brochures for Pergamon, Pamukkale and Ephesus.
