High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.
From, "The Story of Mankind," by Hendrick Van Loon, published by Boni & Liveright, Inc., 1921. Page 1.
The Crusader Castle at Simena was constructed by the Knights of Rhodes, probably in the 14th Century, on the foundation of an ancient (even then) Greek acropolis.
We arrived in the village of Gocek on Turkey's Mediterranean coast to find our "gullet," a handmade, wooden, two-masted sailboat, about 85 feet in length, that would carry the two of us and eight other passengers on our seven-day exploration of what remains of Lycia, an ancient civilization on Turkey's southwestern coast. Lycia thrived for thousands of years, but faded away about 1,500 years ago. Our plan was to sail along the coast, drop anchor each day, then hike sections of the Lycian Way to find the ruins of long gone Lycia. The Lycian Way is a 330-mile hiking trail that traces along the Teke Peninsula on Turkey's Mediterranean coast and connects ancient Greek, Roman, and aqueduct routes. The Lycian Way was conceived and developed by British expatriate Kate Clow, and opened to hikers in 1999.
Our gullet, the Sun World IX.
Gocek is a busy little harbor town catering to tourists who arrive by air and sea to enjoy its beach and easy, relaxed culture. Its harbor is packed with yachts and super yachts from all over the Mediterranean and beyond, giving its waterfront a feel of international swankyness. The local population, totaling about 5,000 people, own and staff scores of small hotels, highend restaurants, and beautiful shops that make Gocek’s waterfront an attractive Mediterranean destination. Just a block inland from the harbor, Gocek feels like a small, bustling Turkish community.
We spent the night in Gocek and set sail on our gullet the next morning.
Gocek's tidy town center features shops, a mosque, and a kid on an e-bike.
Some rich guy's yacht anchored in the Gocek harbor for the weekend.
Dozens of restaurants line Gocek's waterfront.
Brief History of Lycia
Lycia was an ancient territory on what is now Turkey's Teke Peninsuala. Its recorded history stretches from about 1,500 BCE to about the Sixth Century ACE, or for about 2,100 years. Originally part of the Hittite Empire, Lycia was flooded with wave after wave of invaders and new immigrants, including Persians, Greeks and Romans. Over time it developed a rich, militarily powerful, and artisitic culture. In 334 BCE, Alexander the Great invaded Lycia and, with the help of Lycian military formations, pushed the Persian Empire out. With the death of Alexander about ten years later, his empire slowly collapsed. In 43 ACE, Rome established control over the region, but allowed Lycia's Greek speaking population to form its own democratic confederation, the Lycian League. By the Sixth Century ACE, most of the Lycian population had succumbed to plague and Arabian pirates, and Lycia faded away. All that remains are the ruins of Lycian cities.
The Lycian Way (in red) traces the coast of Turkey's Teke Peninsula.
The map is by Kate Clow.
Patara, Lycia's Capitol
Patara was one of the largest cities in Lycia, and in 196 BCE replaced Xanthos as Lycia's capitol. Shortly thereafter, in 168 BCE, the Lycian League was formed. The League was a confederation of 23 independent cities and one of the earliest democratic unions in history, if not the earliest. Each of the League's cities was represented in the Lycian Council and participated in governance of the League by means of a weighted representative system. Each city had a set number of votes allocated to it, based on the size of its population, not to exceed three votes, and they would vote on matters of concern to the League. Patara had three votes in the Council.
The League's republican brand of democracy and strong federal government were inspirational to Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, both of whom were contributing authors to the United States Constitution (1787); and also to the Federalist Papers, a series of essays advocating ratification of the Constitution. (See, Federalist no. 9 (Hamilton) (describing the Lycian confederation and its republican democracy); no. 16 (Hamilton)(“[O]f all the confederacies of antiquity . . . the Lycian and Achaen leagues . . . were accordingly those which have best deserved, and most liberally received, the applauding suffrages of political writers"); and Federalist 45 (Madison)(describing the Lycian league and the respective responsibilities of its federal and member-cities' governments)).
Hiking along the aqueduct to Patara.
Although Patara is accessible by automobile, we hiked to it by an aquaduct route that has been incorporated into Ms. Clow's Lycian Way. We approached Patara from high ground, which allowed us to view the entire city from an elevated vantage. What remains of Patara today is mostly from its years as a Roman province. The first thing I noticed from the trail was Patara's East Gate. It stands about three stories tall and features three arches. The gate was completed in 100 ACE, during the reign of Emperor Trajan, and was incorporated into the city's aqueduct, which was completed 45 years earlier during the reign of Emperor Claudius. The aqueduct carried water to Patara from a spring 15 miles away. As the aqueduct entered the city, it was routed over the top of the gate (from the left in the photo below), and its water cascaded into a cistern on the other side. It must have been a welcome sight to weary travellers arriving from the hot, dusty countryside on this same trail.
Today, Patara's gate stands next to a moderately trafficked two lane road leading to Patara Beach, a popular modern day destination. The beachgoers speed past the gate and other ruins and pay no more attention than they would to a pile of rocks. We had to exercise caution while crossing the road to visit the ruins.
Patara's city gate was built in 100 ACE, during the reign of Roman Emperor Trajan.
Significant sections of the aqueduct remain today, including a bridge that carried it over a valley. There are pieces of ancient pipe laying around at the base of the bridge where laborers left them over 2,000 years ago. The engineers who designed and built the aqueduct were able to maintain a predominantly downward slope from the source to the city, allowing gravity to move the water. But the terrain is mountainous and rolling, so there are stretches where the aqueduct had to carry the water up hill, defying gravity. As the aqueduct approached the inclines it angled down causing the water pressure in the pipe to build up and push the water up and over the hill. The whole system was completed in three years and worked flawlessly. A few years after the aqueduct was completed, an earthquake damaged it, depriving Patara of its water. Repairs took one year to complete.
The engineers who designed and supervized construction of the aqueduct are known today because their names are etched into a stone next to an opening at the base of one of the bridges. It's rare to find this kind of information. The engineers were most likely educated in Rome and sent around the empire to design and supervize a number of water projects.
In addition to being Lycia's capitol, Patara was a thriving commercial center and port. Remains of the city center are still discernable and evoke an image of a modern day shopping mall. The wide, paved avenue flanked by stone columns would have been lined with shops under shaded walkways behind the columns. Crowds of people would have strolled in and out of the shops and met their neighbors to gossip and converse about whatever neighbors converse about - the high cost of grapes and goat meat; bothersome Roman taxes; teenagers' latest preoccupation, and so on.
Patara's commercial neighborhood. Shops would have lined the shaded walkways behind
the columns. The lighter colored plinths supporting the columns on the left are evidence of relatively recent preservation.
This bas-relief was displayed outside one of the shop entrances. It was NOT an
advertisement. It was a goodluck symbol. Lycians had different standards of
Patara's theater, pictured below, is a typical Roman theater. It was built in the 1st or 2nd centuries BCE, and could accomodate about 6,000 people. Back in the day, there was a removable cover, called a velarium, that provided shade to the entire stadium on hot, sunny days. Wealthy patrons donated the money and resources necessary to maintain and upgrade the theater periodically. At some point, a low wall was added between the stage and the seating area to protect spectators during bloody gladiator and wild animal fights.
The most expensive seats would have been closest to the stage. However, the cheap seats at the back had a wonderful view of the city. On a comfortable evening the cheap seats would have been just fine. A theater patron could have enjoyed the view if the show was monotonous. If the show was not a play, but a public execution, I would have enjoyed the cheap seats, or not bought the tickets in the first place. If the show was a fight-to-the-death gladiator contest, or a wild animal fight, more expensive seats close to the action might have been pretty interesting. All of these things happened in Patara's theater.
Patara's theater as seen from the cheap seats. The building just beyond the theater,
with the brown door and the arch on the right side, is the Council Chamber, where
the Lycian Council met to vote on issues of the day.
Sidyma
No one really knows when Sidyma was founded, but there is some evidence of settlement from the early Classical period of Greece, sometime after 420 BCE. There is no written reference to Sidyma before the 1st Century BCE, but Sidyma was one of the cities included in the Lycian League and it was represented in the Lycian Council. There is virtually nothing left of the town itself, except for a large necropolis and most of that is from the Roman Imperial Age, beginning in about 43 ACE.
While it is disappointing that nothing much remains of Sidyma, its necropolis and its many sarcophagi provide interesting information about its citizens. One of the more interesting is that of Flavia Nanne, one of the first priestesses of the Roman Imperial Cult. She lived at the end of the 1st Century ACE. The monumental design of her sarcophagus and its location indicate that she was a person who warranted respect and special privilege (Cevik, Nevsat, translated by Peter Klempner. "The Book of Lycia: Archaeology, Culture and History in Western Antalya." Publications of Turkish Historical Society (2022) page 216). Flavia Nanne was married off by her family when she was eight years old, and she passed away at the age of 28. During her life she gave birth to eight children.
I don't have the best photograph of Flavia Nanne's sarcophagus, so I have included a drawing of it, below, by Charles Fellows, a 19th Century British archaelologist famous for his discovery of Sidyma and his exploration of Lycia.
Flavia Nanne's sarcophagus. (Image from page 195 of "An account of the discoveries in Lycia, being a journal kept during a second excursion in Asia Minor" (1841). Author: Fellows, Charles. Publisher: London, Murray).
My bad photograph of Flavia Nanne's sarcophagus. The backlight from the
sun gives it a kind of dramatic effect, don't you think?
My photograph of the coffered ceiling in Flavia Nanne's sarcophagus. There are 25 engraved panels in the ceiling, including eight portraits of different people, possibly relatives. All of this would have been enclosed in the sarcophagus, but was opened and exposed by thieves.
We found the twin sarcophagi, pictured below, of Epagathos, a renowned physician, and his son, Livianus, also a renowned physician. Epagathos was the personal physician for Emperor Claudius, who reigned over the Roman Empire from January 24, 41, ACE, until he died on October 13, 54 ACE. A lot of people think his wife, Julia Agrippina, poisoned him. That story would proabably make a great Netflix miniseries. But Claudius suffered from many physical ailments. He had bad knees that would occasionally cause him to collapse; his head trembled and shook uncontrollably; he had a strange voice that one contemprary said should not belong to any animal; he stuttered, and on and on. Claudius's own mother, Antonia Minor, thought he was ugly and stupid and she said so. So, Doctor Epagathos was probably pretty busy with his patient. Antonia eventually committed suicide.
The twin sarcophagi of Epagathos (left), and his son, Livianus.
All of the sarcophagi have been terribly damaged by thieves. Typically, the theives busted into the stone vault in order to gain access to the body and possessions to be found inside. Every sarcophagus we saw had been vandalized and robbed of everything. The thefts most likely occured many hundreds of years ago by invading immigrants who had no connection or affinity for the preceding cultures in Lycia. But, we did happen across possible evidence of a more recent burglary. While hiking through the countryside, we came across the remains of a vandalized sarcophagus that was a few miles from Sidyma's necropolis. The stone coffin had been knocked off its pedestal and was resting on top of a pile of rocks. The stone lid had been pried open,removed, and shoved aside. One of our fellow tourtists scrambled up the rock pile to get a glimpse of what was inside. He found a heavy iron crowbar and an iron lever tool resting in the open coffin. These tools had been there for quite a while, but probably not for more than a few years. There was a lot of speculation among all of us, including our guides, as to what the tools were used for and why they were there. Were the tools left by some goatherd, of which there are many in that region, who needed the tools to work on stone walls? Or, were they left by a recent grave robber? To all of us, they looked like a burglar's tools.
Abandoned Levissi
Lycia's historical pattern of forced migration persisted in the region until relatively recent times. The Orthodox Christian (later known as Greek Orthodox) community of Levissi, founded during the 7th Century ACE during Byzantine times, was located in what had formerly been Lycia. In 1923, at the end of the Greco-Turkish War, in which Turkish authorities killed upwards of 4,000,000 Christian Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians, the surviving Christians were ordered to leave Turkey. The Greek Orthodox Christians of Levissi were ordered to leave for Greece despite that they had no connection to Greece other than the name of their religion. They didn't speak Greek and they had no family or friends in Greece.
The remains of the Greek Orthodox village of Levissi, forcibly abandoned since 1923.
I was unable to find much information about the forced evacuation of Levissi. But, there is an abundance of information about the forced evacuation of Greek Orthodox Christians from Smyrna (now Izmir), just a four to five hour drive north of Levissi on the Aegean coast. Most of the Greek Orthodox refugees forced to leave Smyrna were women and children because the men were taken away and imprisoned or shot. (Ureneck, Lou. "Smyrna: September 1922." HarperCollins Publishers 2015.) There is no reason to believe the forced evacuation of Levissi was much different. This occurred at a time when European powers, including Greece, were seeking to gain possession and control of the collapsing Ottoman Empire and erase the Turkish borders as they existed at the time, leaving only a very small amount of territory, including Istanbul, for Turkey.
The interior of an abandoned Greek Orthodox church. Imagine the terrified congregations that gathered here for services during the early 1920s.
Conclusion
We ended our seven day exploration of Lycia at Fethiya, a modern city built on the ruins of the ancient city of Telmessos, which was the largest city in Lycia. When our gullet glided into its slip on Fethiya’s quay, we hopped off to walk around town and see what was there. Fethiya is a lively, modern party town on Turkey's southwestern Mediterranean coast. During the evening, tourists from all over Turkey and Europe stroll down noisy, brightly lit streets. Happy revelers crowd bars, restaurants and city parks. It's a lot of fun.
We slept on the boat that night and flew to Istanbul the next day, itself a timeless, beautiful place with a long history. That will be the subject of another blog article.
Istanbul's Hagia Sophia was completed in 537 AD.
Our tour was organized by Peter Sommer Travels https://www.petersommer.com/, and our guide was Dr. Richard Bayliss, an archaeologist and historian focusing on the rise of Christianity in the Roman cities of Asia Minor.
Additional Photographs from Our Exploration of Lycia
Hiking to Patara
This woman lived near Sidyma. She approached our group and wanted to
show off her little farm.
Our guide, Richard Bayliss, has lead us to Patara's East Gate and is telling us about it.
Ruins on Kekova Island, a long narrow, coastal island that forms a near perfect harbor.
The town of Dolchiste occupied the island until it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 2nd Century, ACE. Dolchiste was rebuilt and remained a functioning harbor town until the 7th Century when Arab incursions forced it's abandonment. Kekova Island is unoccupied today.
Ruins on Kekova Island.
Harbor ruins on Kekova Island. The light blue rock shelf beneath the surface is an
ancient wharf. Over the millinea, the wharf has sunk beneath the surface,
mostly due to sinking land rather than rising sea level.
We encountered many of these ancient portals to some long lost structure. This one was on a farm on the Lycian Way. To the local population, these structures are just a part of the landscape.
We found a few of these ancient wells along the Lycian Way. They are still in use today, mostly by local goatherds and shepards, and local picknickers. The water is drinkable. I didn't drink it. In this well, the water was about 15 feet down.
The Crusader Castle at Simena was constructed by the Knights of Rhodes, probably in the 14th Century, on the foundation of an ancient (even then) Greek acropolis. By the time this castle was constructed, Lycia was long gone. The castle was intended to fend off coastal raids by pirates.
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