Laodicea, as you may remember comes in for some heavy criticism in Revelation…. It was a very large (by ancient standards) prosperous city that had a water problem, namely the water was brackish. Last time I was there they showed me a Brita  filter of sorts installed in a villa meant to get out the calcium and other minerals that made the water not very potable. But this was not the only problem for this site— earthquakes devastated this site... Read more

Perhaps by now you’ve gotten a bit hungry digesting all that archaeological data— how about some normal food instead?  Well we have just the thing for you.  Mehmet is making you a pide— the Turkey version of a long pizza of sorts… Or perhaps you just want to go through the buffet line…. Yes that’s umpteen different kinds of olives prepared in different ways… everything imaginable grows in Turkiye And all that was for breakfast, but actually my favorite Turkish... Read more

The remains of the Roman road can be seen right beside the entrance way to the lower city of Sardis. And as the picture shows, there were various sorts of shops that line the avenue or road. And these shops even had plumbing— notice the clay pipes on the left. In the first century, many families ran a sort of fast food counter service out of the front of their houses, something you can see several times at Pompeii and... Read more

Some of the seven churches of Revelation really provide us with little or nothing to see in the present (e.g. Thyatira and to lesser degree Philadelphia), but Sardis is a different story, and we will consider it in this post. Like so many of these cities, the reason we find it out in a field and not close to any real city is because of the earthquakes which destroyed or severely damaged so many of them that they were eventually... Read more

The Asklepion is near to, but outside the lower city of Pergamon.  It was reached from the acropolis by a via sacra, or sacred way. These special roads were not uncommon when one had a major temple complex which was not right in the city. Another good example would be the sacred way in Ephesus that led from the city to the Temple of Artemis.  In Latin this covered walkway which began from the theater at the base of the... Read more

Pergamon.  This site makes the acropolis in Athens look like a molehill, and it gives new meaning to the phrase nosebleed seats in stadium or theater. You will soon see exactly what I mean.  Here are two illustrations of what the site looks like (which by the way takes a ski lift to get to, normally). Let’s focus on the theater hanging on the side of a cliff first…. To make matters worse,  the god of wine, Dionysius had his... Read more

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Modern day Izmir is in fact Biblical Smyrna, where Polycarp was martyred and died in about 155 A.D., and before that we hear about the troubles of the church there in Rev. 2.8-10 speaks already in the 90s A.D. about the suffering of this church which is financially strapped, but spiritually rich.  Today, the most important dig is at the ancient agora, and we will visit it now. Izmir today is a large port city of about 4.5 million people. ... Read more

There are plenty of other things to see in the Istanbul Museum besides sarcophagi.   There are massive column heads, this one is Ionic… There are interesting bas relief on stone, like this one with women riding horses… There are cupid like figures preparing their roosters for a cockfight… We have incredibly decorated columns…. We have grave steles which would have been erected by mausoleums, presumably this sailor died at sea, and perhaps his body was  not recovered so the family... Read more

In the courtyard of the Istanbul Museum there are various things to see, including Aslan!  Yes, the Turkish word for lion is aslan, and C.S. Lewis used it in his Narnia tales. In fact this is a Sam’al lion statue, from 10,000 B.C.  Made of dolemite, it comes from near Gaziantep. One of the major kinds of the some 60,000 holdings this museum has is sarcophagi.  This one is interesting not only for the family scene on its side, but... Read more