Turkey 2016 Part 14– Knidos

One of the advantages of doing the Gulet boat is you can go to places along the undulated coast of Turkey which are difficult or impossible to reach by land. One such place is the port called Knidos which St. Paul harbored off of according to Acts. 27.7. When we arrived we discovered a spectacular double port, both on the Aegean and on the Mediterranean, and it does indeed appear to be a safe haven for small boats, but also its a remote site, and there was this warning sign when it came to the one local shop near the site— You needed cold hard lira to get a guide book here. Here’s the shot from the boat as we came into the Aegean side port, a shot of the theater….

Yes there are boats that still harbor here…. Here’s a closer look at the theater, as usual carved out of the rock on the side of a hill… This shot gives you a sense of the double harbor with a little piece of land in between….it also shows you Dr. Mark Wilsom and our intrepid guide Meltem….. This was not only a small town but a religious site as well, not surprisingly since sailors needed to have the protection of their deities before sailing, and would be making offerings…. notice the niche in the stone near the harbor, perhaps for a statue of a sea deity like Poseidon….. I didn’t actually expect to run into any Greek deities while on the site, but there is the ruins of the temple of Aphrodite, and lo and behold, I found an Aphrodite like figure, in an Aphrodite pose as well, (actually this is good friend Sarah Yeomans of the Biblical Archaeology Society posing here).
The site was clearly inhabited into the Byzantine era, and typical of the Byzantines they reused pieces of these temples to build their churches…..

Among the more interesting items high up on the site above the theater is an ancient Hellenistic sundial—-see the lines in the bowl shaped feature at the top of the sundial…. There was however nothing for the sun to shine off of leaving a proper shadow, so Majit, another Tutku guide, provided his shining dome… let’s see it seems to be about 10 in the morning depending on the angle of the sun on his golden dome…. Here’s the sundial from the side….
Here is the view from the top of the hill above the theater back to the Aegean harbor where our two Gulet boats were anchored….. Here’s the view from the agora below up towards the theater and the top of the hill…
And the view back towards the Mediterranean harbor…. The remains of the circular temple at the top of the hill, perhaps the temple of Aphrodite, are quite beautiful, as is the Corinthian column nearby.

The temple complex of Apollo is much larger,perched on this hill…. The ancients of course were not just interested in fishing, worshipping, and eating, they also played games, and here is an ancient backgammon board carved into the rock near the agora… Not a lot remains of the ancient agora…., but clearly it was once grand…. but the view out to sea is still spectacular from any angle. This is the very picture of ancient ‘shelter from the storm’