Ephesus

We left Antalya and drove up to Parmukale, an ancient hotsprings/health spa, then up to Izmir and Kusadasi. On August 8 (my birthday) we visited Ephesus.

Hopefully I have all this history right:

Ephesus is located near Kusadasi on the middle west coast of Turkey, on the Aegean Sea. The story goes like this:

9,000 years ago Androkeles, the son of the king of Athens, wanted to found a city of his own. He went to the oracle at Delphi to ask for advice. He was told to found the city 'where the boar, fish and fire meet.'

He sailed across the Aegean Sea and landed somewhere around what is now Kusadasi. He and his men looked far and wide for the fish, fire and boar but to no avail. Finally, exasperated, they sat down to cook dinner. The fish they were cooking lept out of the frying pan, disturbed a coal which set fire to a bush, causing a terrified boar to run out of it. Androkeles realized that he had found the right spot.

The community grew until there were as many as 100,000 people. The Epheseans worshipped the goddess Artemis for thousands and thousands of years. They built a great temple to her. One night a man, determined to make a name for himself, burned down the temple. They decided to rebuild it, better than ever. (This was around 350 BC, right about the time Alexander the Great swept through and conquered everything, including Ephesus.) The rebuilt temple was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Today you can still see the site - but only one lone huge pillar remains.

Anyway, a couple hundred more years went by. The town was thriving with a huge population. Over in Bethlehem, Jesus was born. You know the story. After he died, his apostles were expelled from Jerusalem. They left and went to other parts of Asia Minor, spreading the Word.

Paul was one of the apostles. He is responsible for writing a good portion of the New Testament, and is mentioned in the New Testament a lot. He went to Turkey and travelled all over, making converts. (He was born in Tarsus, Turkey.) He lived in Ephesus for 3 years. He was so successful in converting the local population (which consisted of the Artemis worshipers, a community of Jews, and some worshippers of Egyptian gods) that he roused the ire of the silversmiths who were making statuettes of Artemis, because he was seriously cutting into their profits. One night there was a crowd gathered at the Ephesus Theater. One of the silversmiths, Demetrius, successfully turned the crowd against Paul, getting them all to chant, 'Great is the Artemis of Ephesus.' No one was hurt, but soon after that Paul left Ephesus. This is all recorded in Acts 19: 24 - 41.

He later wrote the Letter to the Epheseans, which is part of the New Testament. Later, Paul was decapitated outside the city wall of Rome.

Meanwhile, to back up a bit -- when Jesus was being crucified, he looked down from the cross and saw his mother, Mary, and his favorite disciple, John. He told John to take care of Mary, and he told Mary that John was now her son. After Jesus died, there is evidence that John took Mary to Ephesus, and they lived there circa 37 - 45 AD until she died. There is a chapel on the spot where they think she lived. In 1967 Pope John Paul VI visited the site and confirmed the legend. We also visited this chapel, called Meryemana. This, the Virgin Mary's house (!) is very important to Christians. There were many pilgrims, both Christian and Muslim, lighting candles and praying. Muslims also consider this a sacred spot. (Muslims accept fully the stories of the Hebrew Bible and that Jesus was a prophet, but reject that he was the son of God, or God. But they respect his teachings and highly revere his mother. In fact, she is mentioned in the Koran.) Outside there is a wall where believers tie messages in knots (with toilet paper (? -- somehow seems not quite right!) somewhat similar to the wailing wall in Jerusalem.)

Back to the story. After Paul left, John took over the Church of Ephesus. Some time after Jesus' mother died John was taken to Rome, tortured, and exiled to the island of Patmos, Greece, where he wrote Revelations, the last book of the New Testament. Then he was allowed to return to Ephesus, where he died. We went to visit his tomb. Later, about 400 AD, they built a church around the spot, and we saw those ruins, too.

Ephesus today is one big magnificent ruin. They have been excavating the area continuously for 100 years. It is as interesting as Pompeii. There were many earthquakes, though, so they had to reconstruct a lot of it. We saw the Hippodrome (where they had chariot races a la Ben Hur), the theater where the Demetrius/Paul incident took place, the beautiful library of Celsus, the latrine, the Hercules Gate, and so on. Really pretty amazing.