The Carmichaels Abroad: April 16: Sardis, Land of Croesus

Today we drove from Assos to Salihtli, and saw the ancient site of Sardis. This is the land of the Lydians, and must have been a very rich place, since their king was Croesus, as in "Rich as". We have settled into our Spa hotel, enjoyed a very nice dinner, and are beginning to sort through our things and get ready for pedestrian life again, as we give up the car tomorrow.

We began our day with a very long drive, leaving Assos just after nine and arriving in Salihtli just after two. We have learned a lot about driving in Turkey.

First, we got our brand new GPS map just two weeks before we left, and it is outdated. Many of the sites we are looking for either don't exist on the GPS, or, worse, are misplaced. We had backup, of course, in the form of the map on which Ian had painstakingly marked our route. Unfortunately, it can't show all of the place names of each hamlet -- there would be no room for roads! The GPS can't tell the difference between a good paved minor road and a goat path. Everything is termed "unpaved road" except the highways, and most don't have names or numbers. Some of the roads we have been directed to drive on are too narrow for the car, and run between buildings!

While the main tourist highways are generally in good condition, there is a great deal of construction, with sudden lane changes as a single construction worker appears out of nowhere in the lane ahead, frantically waving a red flag. The smaller roads are not maintained at all, it seems, and we have seen everything from large deep potholes, to mud slides covering 3/4 of the road, to subsidences where the entire macadam road has slipped down a hill. This makes driving slow and requires great attention, so driving can be a bit more exhausting than the term "road trip" might suggest.

Things are also somewhat complicated by the fact that Turkey is a very agriculturally oriented place. Even in town it is not unusual to find chickens and even sheep living in someone's shed, and the roads are used to move the herds of cows, sheep, and goats back and forth. The huge number of feral cats and dogs add to the difficulties of driving in town, while donkeys, horse carts, and tractors are also frequently encountered, in town and out.


For example, this was the view from the car as we began our journey, and the video below shows how it ended!

There are also the other drivers to contend with on the road, who drive on the white line between lanes, stop without warning and apparently without reason, pass when there is absolutely no way to see oncoming traffic (especially nerve-wracking when you ARE the suddenly appearing oncoming traffic). Motorcycles apparently don't need to follow the rules of the road, and frequently drive down the grassy strip between lanes, on sidewalks, or amongst sheep. In towns the streets are unmarked, and one needs to blindly follow the GPS, keeping one eye on it, one eye on the road, and a third eye out for pedestrians who blithely walk in front of vehicles, confident that they will stop. All in all, Ian is really ready for a break from driving. I have offered to drive, but I am a more cautious driver, and my reluctance to merge by forcing the nose of the vehicle well into harm's way and hoping for the best stresses him more than I am stressed when he merges in just such a manner.

For both of us, the worst part has been that the GPS rarely recognized Turkish addresses. Part of this is a confusion between Turkish and English spellings, especially of famous places: "Efes" in Turkish, "Ephesus" in English. While we can navigate from town to town with the paper backup, if necessary, we tend to rely on the GPS within towns. Too many times we have had to pull over, boot up the computer to look at all the maps I saved from home (rarely useful since I never know where we are) and use the Kindle to search Google Maps for crossroads. This hour of frustration and fear can really put a damper on things, and I think I would print out much more detailed maps and directions next time.

However, we have seen the Turkish countryside in a way few people do, we have been able to choose to visit sites not on the usual itinerary -- how many museums were opened just for us? -- we have been able to eat when we wanted to (usually only two meals a day, and sometimes a snack around 3) and always in authentic places, we have met a lot of Turkish people and have had time to have tea and conversation with them, and we have not had to visit a single tourist shop -- well, except when we took a tour!

I can see the advantages of taking a tour -- no decisions about hotels, restaurants or routes, built in guides, the chance to make lots of friends -- but I feel we have had the best of both worlds by taking tours in some places, and just hanging around in others. If only hotels and ruins were reliable on the Gimli! as you might be able to guess, Google maps had the site of our hotel wrong, and we had to phone and get directions -- in Turkish. I mixed up right and left, and we only got here because Ian noticed a sign as we headed off to Izmir!

Back to Sardis! Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, and ruled by Croesus; one of the important cities of the Persian Empire; the seat of a proconsul under the Roman Empire, and the metropolis of the province Lydia in later Roman and Byzantine times. This was because the main highway into the interior from the coast has led striaght through Sardis for about 7000 years, and still does!

As one of the Seven churches of Asia, it was addressed by St. Paul in the Book of Revelations in terms that implied that the Christians there were a bit feeble and soft.

The city was captured by the Cimmerians in the 7th century, by the Persians in the 6th, by the Athenians in the 5th, and by Antiochus III the Great at the end of the 3rd century. In the Persian era Sardis was conquered by Cyrus the Great and remained under Persian control until it surrendered to Alexander the Great in 334 BC. Later on the Romans had a go at running the place, all of which proves that if you are a strategic city with a reputation for being "Rich as Croesus", everyone wants to take you over.

The ruins are located all over the town, and there is no guidebook, so one has to rely on the maps on the signs at one of the major sites. Ian and I first found (by accident) a smelting centre and Roman house, but there was nothing there to explain the fenced off site, so we just took pictures and then looked at a tortoise for a while. We had been in the car for five hours, remember.

That round basin at the top, tipped on its side, might have something to do with smelting god and silver. Or it might not. There was a sign and a picture, but I didn't quite understand.

The GPS then took us up a road that suddenly ended in a forty foot wide and 12 foot deep hole.

Our next attempt was really interesting. We found a Roman house that had painted frescoes and the original floor. It was covered with a roof, as were some structures near to it. We were able to see the ongoing archeological dig.

Ian walking on the original Roman floor.

The basement.

The second floor with painted frescoes.

As we turned around, we saw the site of the Roman baths, which we had noticed from the highway. This was the main site, and is particularly noted for the Roman latrine, the Byzantine shops, the Synagogue (amazing!) and the most completely reconstructed baths next to the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.

I had thought to see many different cultures and civilizations in Turkey: Hittite, Lydian, Phrygian, Lycian, Carian, Hellenic, and Roman. While there are traces of all of them, and the museums are full of artefacts, each succeeding invader or culture settled on the ruins of the one before, so even in this capital of the Lydian kingdom, one mostly sees Roman ruins. Although Schliemann was criticized for his trench at Troy -- and they are doing lots of reparative archeology there at present -- one must admit that if the Roman and later Hellenic ruins had not been cleared away, nothing else would ever have been seen.

Here is Sardis!

Like so many places we've seen in Turkey, there were wildflowers everywhere, including these poppies.

The Roman latrine. The "seat" remnant on the wall is over a trench that would have led to the "cloaca" or sewer fresh water would have run in the channel in front to wet sponges for cleaning.

The street of shops, running between the Roman Road (just behind us) and the wall of the synagogue.

We couldn't believe that these drainage pipes were still connected under the Roman Road -- right up until the time of the excavation.

The synagogue was covered in mosaics, done in sections, like carpet, each with intricate designs.

The antechamber of the synagogue.

The view to the west.

The synagogue, looking east.

IF you look carefully, you can see the only other person that was at the site when we were there, at the base of the column just to the right of the entrance.