Into Turkey-- Part Thirty

The little museum in Yalvac (aka Pisidian Antioch) is well worth seeing. It has a room dedicated to Paul and the remains of his period, though sadly they’ve misidentified the Sergius Paulus inscription stone as about Paul of Tarsus. More on this below. It’s a stone Mark Wilson and I found out in the courtyard beside the museum and asked them to put inside, which they did and then somebody from Ankara involved in antiquities decided it was a Byzantine inscription about St. Paul. Were that right, it would have been in Byzantine Greek. In fact it is in Latin of the sort we find all over the Empire in Paul’s day. Here’s the stone without misidentification… and then below it, with the wrong label on it…

There is behind it a nice chart of Paul’s journeys, and there is this…

This depicts the ancient city gates and forum from Paul’s time.

At the end of the first century this city suffered severely from famine leading the Emperor to do something to help the town.

Here’s a depiction of the original city gate…

Here below are some fascinating miniature altars of various descriptions. These would be used in homes for small grain or wine pouring offerings. It is unlikely these were used to sacrifice animals, even small birds.

Here below is an honorific inscription in Greek (notice the scripta continua, a continuous flow of Greek letters which it took reading skill to read.

Here is an absolutely fascinating piece….

What is this? A lineup for kindergarten graduation with one tike deciding to take off his clothes. Inquiring minds want to know. Below is Fido enshrined in marble no less… and I thought modern people were extravagant in their love of their dogs…

Here is a Cybele statue…she was a healer, protector goddess, and a goddess of fertility as well…

Below, a beautifully executed statue of Athena, followed by a statue of the god Men

The god Men below…

This might be a representation of Alexander and his beloved horse Bucephalus…

As a Roman colony city, there were numerous statues and inscriptions honoring Caesar…. This one has the image of Caesar chiseled out of it… damnatio memoriae perhaps….

After all this, it’s good to sit under a eucalyptus tree and have some ice coffee…