Thursday, November 29, 2012

Gaziantep and the Euphrates River

On the first weekend in November, ARIT took a trip to Gaziantep in Southeast Turkey.  It is interesting that I keep going to SE Turkey to see cities I had never heard of, but somehow I keep missing the one place in that region I really want to see.  One of these days I will get to Nemrutdag...

Gaziantep is directly up from the S in Syria
Gaziantep is known for mosaics and baklava.  It wasn't as different from Istanbul as Mardin or Midiyat was a few weeks ago, but it was warmer and dryer and more conservative than here.  It is a pretty big city and there is significant metal working industry and of course ancient civilizations.  It is not too far from the Euphrates river and therefore part of the fertile crescent.  

My flight was at 5:15, so I didn't have to miss my last class, but it was going to be close.  Sibel called a cab to come and meet me behind the science building at 3:15 and I walked out of class right as the bell rang, picked up my bag, dropped off my computer and went out the door.  I had considered taking the cab just as far as Taksim and taking the airport bus from there, but I knew I wouldn't catch the 3:30 and I worried that the 4pm bus would be too late.  I took the cab all the way to the airport and even though there was Friday afternoon getting out of school traffic, we still made it in just over an hour.  Tony and August took a cab from Arnavutkoy at about the same time, but I didn't know about it until it was too late to rearrange my transportation.  I got there and it was fine, I just don't like spending 70TL I don't have to spend.

We arrived to a very nice but generic hotel and had time to freshen up before meeting to go to dinner.  Dinner was fine, lots of mezes then a cold yogurt soup and then mixed grill sis for the main course.  Baklava for dessert of course.  The restaurant was big and empty, clearly a touristy place in the low season, but it serves alcohol.  I had noticed before, but hadn't really thought about the connection between ARIT events and alcohol.  For some people it is very important to be able to have wine, beer and/or Raki with dinner.  For this reason, only restaurants that serve alcohol are chosen for dinner.  In a Muslim country, especially in a more conservative region, not all restaurants will serve alcohol, in fact the best restaurants probably wont.  If I was given the choice between the best food in a region (especially a region known for its food) and the chance to have a glass of wine, I would pick the food and I dont think it is just because I don't drink that much.  I wish a poll could be taken or rational heads could prevail on this because it seems like a waste.  I guess the alcohol at this place was very expensive anyway and so even the people who drank were upset.  
From left to right: assorted flavored butters, roasted red pepper paste, mixed cucumbers, pepers and cheeses, green salad, filled eggplant and yogurt with sun dried tomato.  All served with bread of course.
We had a fairly leisurely morning followed by an unexpected surprise.  Scott, who was our leader, did not expect the Gaziantep archaeological museum to be open.  It used to house the mosaics, but since they moved to their own museum (better to show them off) they have been closed for reorganization.  I felt kind of bad for them, it would be like if a ok sort of team had one really good player which made them a pretty good team then had their star recruited away to another team, leaving a hole in the line up.  They will get their act together again eventually, but it takes some thought.  Anyway, it was open and they still had some cool stuff, so we went in.
This was a simulation of a burial cave from Roman times.  The sarcophagi are real, but the walls are fake.  We learned that the carvings on the the sarcophagi are to make things festive when you have death parties.  You dress the dead up in their best so they fit in with the rest of the crowd there celebrating.  

I thought this was very interesting  not only can you see what things cost, but you can also see how things got more expensive over the centuries.  It is hard to read, but the 3rd line from the bottom shows the single day wage for a school teacher.  With my two coins I could buy four liters of oil or 3 kg of meat in the 5.4th century BC.

Taking my daily pay as a school teacher from above, I could only buy 1.4 kg of a nails or half a ladder.  But even taking into account the time interval, I would still make more that twice what a slave made.  
I am glad we went to the archaeological museum before the mosaic museum, because in the other order it would have been quite a let down.  The Zeugma Mosaic Museum was fantastic.  It was well laid out, well signed and magnificently presented.  Selcuk asked me what grade I would give the museum when we got back on to the bus.  I replied an A-.  He asked what was wrong with it and I replied I wish they had more of the technical information.  How were mosaics made by the original artists?  And how were they preserved/transferred by the archaeologists to this site?  Laura thought an American museum would have included this information and I am not sure it would have, but it would have been cool.  I did ask Scott about how they are moved.  He said back in the day, they had to cover a mosaic with plaster and then break it into pieces, transfer it to the new position and remove the plaster.  Now, he says they have a polymer resin they basically paint over the top which keeps them in place and then you can roll up the mosaic like a rug and unroll it in a new location.  This sounds cool, and much easier than before, but I am still unclear on how you get the little rock pieces off the surface they are stuck to in the original location.  Here is an exerpt from an article I found on moving mosaics:

Archaeologists and conservators thoroughly clean and dry the mosaic, then use animal glue to attach a strong linen or canvas cover to protect the top. After the glue dries, firmly attaching the pieces of the mosaic to the cloth, a layer of jute netting is affixed with animal glue to the surface. When this has dried, part of the original plaster footing of the mosaic is undercut. If the mosaic is small, a board larger than the mosaic is slipped under it to support it. Larger mosaics sometimes have to be moved in sections. In one case, archaeologists moved a large mosaic by skillfully wrapping it around a long log.
When it is time for the restoration work to begin, a new plaster bed is prepared in a wooden frame that is slightly larger than the mosaic. With the fabric side up, the mosaic is set into its new footing. Approximately one week later, after the plaster has set, a solvent is painted on the fabric. Workers can then detach the fabric slowly and carefully.
This article is adapted in pan from A Complete Manual of Field Archaeology: Tools and Techniques of Field Work for Archaeologists by Martha Joukowsky (Prentice-Hall, Inc.. Englewood Cliffs. New Jersey),! pp. 255-266.

A combination of mythological scene and geometric patterns in this huge mosaic that would have been someones dining room floor.
The mosaics here were incredible.  They were very well preserved and largely complete.  The color range was amazing and the detail unbelievable.  (and the superlatives in that last sentence, out of control) I liked the mythological pictures and they were very detailed and artistic and all that, but I really liked the geometric patterns.  I could see having a giant mosaic in my living room instead of a rug, but it would be kind of cold on the feet in the winter.  Perhaps I will learn how to make mosaics and tile my kitchen...

Close up of some of the geometric shapes.

It looks like a tapestry or painting from far away.  

I wonder what it would look like with furniture in it...
This is perhaps the most famous of the mosaics of Zeugma.  It is actually a piece of a mosaic that was stolen.  The rest of the picture has been lost.  It is called the 'Gypsy Girl' but there is some speculation that it is actually a young Alexander the Great.  What is really amazing is the shading and the life like position of the hair.  
In a region known for its baklava, it is all good, but there still has to be a best.  We made a special stop to visit Kocak to buy from the best.  I accidentally got kuru baklava, or dry baklava, which is not what they are famous for, but it was still the best baklava I have had.  I think I like the dryness of it better than soggy baklava.  It stayed crisp and flaky even for several days.
The baklava experts at Kocak in Gaziantep
At lunch we were joined by a local expert who told us about the area and the products in the bazaar.  She was very friendly and knowledgeable and introduced us to several shops and answered our questions as we walked through the market.
Dried red peppers and dried okra on strings saved up for the winter.  

The area is known for its metal working, specifically copper.  

Perhaps it was for show, but many shop keepers were working on things as we walked by.  I really liked this guy's smile.

This was a good twofer picture.  One, it has a gozleme maker at work and two it has the weird snake woman we saw all over Mardin.  I still don't know what her story is.  But I do know what gozleme is - a tasty snack kind of like a quesidilla.  A flat circle of dough with melted cheese or potato or patlican or, my favorite, sugar and lemon.  Yum! 

This was at the same cafe were we stopped to get the pistachio coffee.  Locals playing tavla.  The next table over was smoking the nargalie water pipe, but I didn't get their picture.
The light was fading and we were given the option of hanging out in the bazaar and finding our own way back to the hotel, or going with Scott and Tony to the fortress on the hill.  Of course, Scott was deep in conversation so we had walked most of the way around the fortress before he realized that we had passed the entrance 90 degrees back.
There had been some sort of building on this site for thousands of years, all built on top of each other, making excavation very difficult, but also very interesting.  

On the way up there were a series of memorials to martyred Turks after some conflict with the French.  Folks gave Michel a hard time about it (him being French and all) but I didn't ever get the full story of what happened. 

There are lots of possible captions to this photo.  I'll let you use your own imagination.
Dinner this night was some better, but instead of the place being dead, it was very loud and hard to hear our neighbors.  I was startled to find out that the woman sitting to my left, who I had maybe met once before on a similar trip, was from Palo Alto.  In fact, we had gone to the same elementary school, although not at the same time.  She was a graduate of Cubberly and her mom still lives on South Court.  That makes three Palo Altans I have met on ARIT trips.  It isn't even that big of a town.

Zeugma, on the Euphrates River. 
On Sunday morning went out to the site on the Euphrates that the mosaics came from, a place named Zeugma, which means connection or bridge, where there had been a Roman settlement that spanned both sides of the river.  Several years ago the Turkish government built a dam on the Euphrates and flooded the river valley north of it along with all the rivers edge villages.  The villas that the mosaics were originally in are now under water.  There are a few other villas that were up the hill and they are still in the process of excavation not unlike the Terrace houses at Ephesus.  It was cool to see where the mosaics came from and to see other examples in situ.  Looking at this and at other archological sites overwhelms me when I think too hard about all the work that comes with finding, uncovering, understanding and reassembling what is found.  You want to do it carefully, but if you are too careful, you will never get anything done.

More mosaics where in their original setting.
Getting on the boat the unconventional way.
From the excavation we were supposed to get on a boat to go up the Euphrates for the afternoon.  It took us a bit of time to find the boat and then to figure out how to get onto the boat since it wasn't really docked at an official iskele.  We had to walk along the top of this wall and then onto a tin roof before hopping onto the boat.  There were a couple of folks who didn't feel comfortable walking the plank, so I walked along side holding their hand for balance and reassurance until they got to the roof.  Everyone made it and everyone was fine.

The boat trip itself was amazing.  The water was calm and the day beautiful.  We cruised for about 4 hours, going up the river taking in the sights.  We could see the effect of the flooding in several villages that are now half under water.  In some of the towns there were still people living in the upper parts of the villages.  The water was not clear enough to see very far into, so we couldn't see the submerged buildings, but the reflection off the water was really amazing.  My favorite picture of the trip is the one below with the minaret all you can see of the mosque above the water.

A flooded town and its reflection in the Euphrates River.

The light on the water as the boat created a gentle wake.

A viable town farther up the river.  I don't know if it was flooded, or if it was high enough to begin with that it just now has more beach front property than it did. 
Our final destination was a Rum Kale (Roman Castle) way up the bank of the river.  Apparently it was a way post for folks ~2000 years ago in one form or another.  I did feel a bit like James Bond, climbing up the side of this mountain to get to a door to a castle.

The stairs to the door in the wall.  Cool entrance to a castle from the water.
From the bend in the river, a view of the castle.  Some of these look like the sky cells mentioned in the Game of Thrones books, but the fall wasn't as far and I think it was just that the balconies were missing. 


Laura waits patiently before going through the archway so I can take the picture.

View from the Rum Kale down on the river. 
Pistachio and olive trees. I am not a big fan of pistachios, but they were everywhere. 
The return trip from the boat to the airport was not as exciting as in Diyabakir, we made it in plenty of time.  I even got to spend a few minutes in the VIP lounge because a friend with a business class ticket could bring in two guests.  We were back in Istanbul ~9pm and I elected to take the bus back to campus since the timing was perfect and I had already splurged on a cab in one direction.

Looking back on this trip, I recognize that the pace was fairly relaxed and the information was relevent and interesting.  I really liked the boat trip, more than I expected to.  At first I thought spending 4 hours on a boat wouldn't count as seeing anything, but I feel like I really have seen the country side there, more than I would if we had visited half a dozen mosques or tombs.  I know there isn't the same level of history in California, at least not that can be visited or remembered, but I wish something like this group existed there.  A big enough association of interesting people willing to spend a weekend going somewhere and seeing something.  Of course I also wish that there was a science oriented tour group...perhaps I will have to start one.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Heather, workin' my way through your excellent blogs. Gaziantep -- I agree with you about the museum -- I so wanted background info, particularly on the process of coloring the stones, if indeed that was done. Interesting that the alcohol fans guide ARIT hotel choices. And -- the dry baklava is definitely the best!

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