In the second picture, now really, you can't tell that fork is holding a meatball, can you? So, I don't need to tell you the Turks love their meatballs (this was in the city of Bursa).
To the right is a statue of a 700 year old defender of the Ottoman Empire and below is a Turkish soldier from the Turkish war of independence in the 1920's at the spot where the Greek invaders were stopped just west of Ankara.
At the end of February we took a day-long drive with our new friends from Church to Gordion and Polati. It was a 1.5 hour drive southwest of Ankara.
The artifacts collected in this area covered about 2,000 years of history starting in 1,000 BC.
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| 7th century BC safety pins for cloaks/tunics |
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| Tile mosaic of Alexander the Great |
Across the road from the museum was this manmade "hill" (called a tumulus). It is thought (there is some controversy) to be the tomb of King Midas, but is probably his father Gordion. This is the King Midas of mythological fame with the 'golden touch', but he was a real King who ruled Phrygia (a part of Turkey) in the late 8th century BC.
In 1957, Rodney Young and a team from the University of Pennsylvania opened a chamber tomb at the heart of the Great Tumulus —53 metres in height, about 300 metres in diameter—on the site of ancient Gordion (modern Yassihöyük, Turkey), where there are more than 100 tumuli of different sizes and from different periods.[25] They discovered a royal burial, its timbers recently dated as cut to about 740 BC[26] complete with remains of the funeral feast and "the best collection of Iron Age drinking vessels ever uncovered".[27] This inner chamber was rather large: 5.15 metres by 6.2 metres in breadth and 3.25 metres high. On the remains of a wooden coffin in the northwest corner of the tomb lay a skeleton of a man 1.59 metres in height and about 60 years old.[28] In the tomb were found an ornate inlaid table, two inlaid serving stands, and eight other tables, as well as bronze and pottery vessels and bronze fibulae.[29] Although no identifying texts were originally associated with the site, it was called Tumulus MM (for "Midas Mound") by the excavator. As this funerary monument was erected before the traditional date given for the death of King Midas in the early 7th century BC, it is now generally thought to have covered the burial of his father. (wikipedia)
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| Inside the burial chamber - all of the artifacts have been removed. |
A large Anatolian Shepard Dog doing his job. The dogs are excellent protection against feral dogs and there are large lynx in the area that would love a mutton dinner; also, in eastern Turkey wolves are still common. The sheep dogs wear large sharp metal studded collars for protection.
Besides being famous for King Midas this is also the location where Alexander the Great cut the Gordion knot, which indicated to the people he would become ruler of Asia. There is only a small village in this area today and it is seldom visited.
After a nice picnic lunch (thank you Marie), which we ate inside the car due to the above mentioned Brrrrr cold wind, we stopped at the city of Polati to see their large market - vegetables, fruit, fish, baked goods as well as clothing. One stop shopping! Very good prices and lots of free samples (Mary would love this) - again we were the only foreigners here, but everyone is very friendly, even when we don't speak Turkish, and we felt very safe and it was a fun visit.
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