The phrase ‘built to last’ gets thrown around a lot in our time, but frankly we ain’t got nothing on the ancient Romans. When they built a bridge or a road, or an aqueduct, or a theater or a coliseum, well at least some of it is still around in most cases. As for us, we can’t even make asphalt last three years without cracking and potholes. You get the picture. One such bridge is the bridge pictured above which... Read more

Without question, the mosaic depiction most commented on by scholars, and rightly so is the so-called Zeugma Mona Lisa, or more commonly called the gypsy woman. So celebrated is this mosaic that it garners its own dark room for display. Look for a while into these eyes… what do you see? Many of the other mosaics are less skillfully rendered than this one, but they are still impressive whether depicting a god like Dionysius, or Helios riding his sun chariot... Read more

I flew directly from Istanbul to Gaziantep to meet my friend Meltem Chiftchi (my usual superb guide) and a couple of others to tour the new Zeugma museum there with its fabulous mosaics extracted from Roman villas in Zeugma before that part of the land was submerged by the new Attaturk dam waters. What was Zeugma? Actually it was twin towns on the Euphrates (on which more anon). A zeugma is actually a term for a rhetorical device, but there... Read more

Yep, those are faux camels headed down the traffic median in Gaziantep, just outside the famous Zeugma mosaics museum (on which see the following post). Why are they there, you may ask? Well Gaizantep was on the spice road which came from the Middle East through Jordan up the King’s highway into Turkey and then west across Anatolia (note what the wise men brought from the east to give Jesus— spices like frankincense and myrrh). So, as one would expect... Read more

For better or worse, it was the practice of Muslim conquerors to: 1) take over churches and turn them into mosques (e.g. Hagia Sophia) which unintentionally helped preserve some of these churches and their features, and 2) alternately, they would build on top of such structures, which is what happened with the Byzantine Palace the remains of which are under the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. To be fair, the Palace was mostly in ruins due to an earthquake, so this... Read more

Why is this man staring at you? Well, because he is offering you the opportunity to come and be photographed as a regal figure in the Ottoman and pre-Ottoman style. Really it should be called the Osmanli style, but the British screwed that up, just like they did the name of the country which is Turkiye not Turkey (three syllables not two, and named after turquoise not the bird). So people come to the great Osmanli palace to see many... Read more

According to church historical evidence, there were three ‘first’ churches of Byzantine Christianity– one named for holy peace (St. Eirene which becomes St. Irene in English), one for holy wisdom (St. Sophia), and one other for holy power (St. Dynamis), which has not been found. St. Eirene is in fact the mother church which was dedicated by Constantine himself no less. It dates to the fourth century A.D. It has not been open to the public before 2014, but it... Read more

Sometimes archaeology is just a matter of pure luck. Take for instance the case of the discovery of the wrecks of numerous ancient ships near Istanbul. It was all over the news. and rightly so. But the dig in progress was for the new tunnel under the Bosphorous providing another way to get from the European to the Asian side of Istanbul, not to mention a new subway station. What to do about this find? Well, they weren’t going to... Read more

There is a one to 25 scale replica park in Istanbul called the Miniaturk Park, presumably for families and especially those who can’t afford to travel and see the sites in Turkey. It’s a fun place, and in fact it’s the only place you are going to find several sites of Biblical import— for example the temple of Artemis (of which only one column still remains in Ephesus), or the tomb of Mausolus (from which we get the word mausoleum).... Read more

The word Chora in Greek means ‘country’ and once upon a time the Chora Church in Istanbul, now a museum, was out on the country. This church is the source of various of the famous iconic mosaic images you see of Christ Pantokrator, rather than Hagia Sophia. It has been under repair for some time, and I arrived on May 22 to discover it even more under repair, both outside and in. Here is what the outside now looks like—-... Read more