Ephesus

I don't know very much about Turkey at all. But the parts that I saw were very pretty. For the tour, we visited the ancient city of Ephesus (sounds like 'emphasis'), you know, like the book of Ephesians. Just walking through it, I probably wouldn't have been very impressed. But we had a very good guide.

The city of Ephesus was a port city that built its harbor just like any other port city would do. But the nearby river constantly brought so much silt that the city had to move its harbor and city multiple times over the course of a few hundred years. That probably didn't bother them that much since the Turks were nomadic by nature. Even our tour guide's family is still nomadic, except for his rebellious father. They originally came from East Asia. Today there are many Turks still living in China.

In the ruins, our guide explained to us how advanced the society was. They had water distributed to all buildings in a place with a population of 250K people and they did it without pumps. Their sewage system was quite advanced as well. Toilets led straight into a constantly running water system. I suppose you could say that it was constantly flushing.

There is a very interesting statue, or at least what remains of the statue. It's just a foot on top of a globe. Just another man who thinks he conquered the world. But the intersting thing about it is the globe. The statue was made ~1500 years before Galileo's theory of a round world.

Our tour guide tried to animate the ruins of Ephesus as much as possible, and he did a good job, but they're still ruins. He joked a lot about what we were seeing was what the British Museum forgot to take (a recurring theme throughout my travel in Europe). Even its historic jewel, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemis is reduced to the last of 127 columns. Just imagine, Parthenon in Greece was only 1/3 the size of the Temple of Artemis.

There is a relief of Nike, the goddess of victory. It is rumored that the creator of the Nike brand swoosh took their inspiration from this relief. Do you see it in her robe at the left?