Into Turkey– Part Twenty-Eight

The new museum in Antioch is beautiful and unlike the old one, climate-controlled.

The two major reasons to go to the new Antioch museum is to see the Alexander the Great exhibit, featuring his victory at nearby Issos (less than 4 miles up the coast from Antioch. The place is now called Iskenderun).  The second good reason is the large amount of Hittite and related holdings.  November 5th, 333 B.C. was a big day for Alexander, for Issos was where he first encountered and fought the Persian ruler Darius III. The result was a victory of Alexander and his Macedonian troops.  It was the second great victory he had in Anatolia.  So let’s see the display about this–

Alexander had first landed on the west coast of Asia and then headed east along the coast…

There was a major battle north of Antalya, but this didn’t slow down Alexander’s progress.

Of course Alexander had taken lessons in rhetoric and philosophy from Aristotle when he was a lad.

The Persians in their chariots were limited to where they could fight well. They needed flat ground.

But there are tales of other warlike peoples who lived or passed through the region, including the Hittites…

This is Zeus and his lightning bolts…

Here are a couple of altars, first a basalt one, and then one that oddly has a man’s head on the side of it, presumably the patron who had it made, not the man who had his head chopped off there!

The mosaics in this museum are mainly hanging on walls and come from various sites in Antioch and the surrounding area… They reflect the usual mythological figures and scenes.

Here’s the description for the one below…

Its time to move on to that other Antioch of Biblical significance— Pisidian Antioch, but I will stress there was much more to see at this new museum.