Efes: It's Not Just a Turkish Beer

Ruins of the Temple of Artemis once
the size of a soccer field

One of the most interesting places we visited in Turkey was the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus.  In Turkish the name is Efes. (Efes is the name of the the local beer.) It was a beautiful fall day.  The air was brisk. The sky was cloudless and a light shade of cobalt blue. The sun was brilliant, making the reflected light from the ruins almost blinding. This city is one of the most famous in the ancient world, having its beginnings around 6000 years before the birth of Christ and over 300,000 inhabitants at its peak. You enter the site at the high part of the city, and your first view is the sprawling metropolis below you. There was once a harbor here, but silt deposits over thousands of years have relocated the harbor six miles away.  Every major empire has ruled Ephesus under various names.

One of the first places you see among portions of fallen columns is a theater.  It's a small one, only seating 1500 people. It was a roofed theater; the roofs were usually of canvas and removable. The masonry of the structures always amaze me.  So much of the stonework is mortarless. "Isn't this theater a lot like the one in Vaison la Romaine?" I asked.

"Yes," said Claudette, "but the one in France is still being used."

Ionic and Corinthian capital

She and I left the theater and ventured through the agora, marketplace, lined by columns. On one of the capitals, the top of a column, we spotted something quite interesting.  "Look at this capital," I said, "It's  weird."

"It sure is," said my architecture fan wife. "It's a combination of Ionic and Corinthian styles."

We continued our walk down the paved street with the ruins of ancient buildings on either side.  On the left we saw a large relief carving of the goddess of tennis shoes, Nike. It is a beautiful piece of work.

The city of Ephesus relates prominently to the spreading of Christianity. The Apostle Paul was here for three years, and John was here as well. The book of John was probably written here. It is believed that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was here also. History is littered with the names of the people who have walked these streets: Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great, Emperors Hadrian and Constantine. Today Claudette and Tony were here.  We stopped to take a good look at the Temple of Hadrian. This was the second structure in our travels we had seen with the Roman emperor's name on it.  The other was Hadrian's Wall in England. The Roman Empire was indeed vast, from the British Isles to Asia Minor and North Africa.

Looking down the main street of Ephesus

The street is of rough paving stones as we continue downhill with the white stone of ancient structures all around. We stepped into an ancient restroom.  The ancient toilets still exist.  They are communal, with no privacy, and with a fountain in the center.  Fragrant shrubbery tended to camouflage any offensive odors. There is one thing I don't understand about toilets. Over two thousand years ago the Romans had sit down toilets,  but today in much of Europe and Asia we see squatter toilets. Did they not learn anything from the ancients?

As we continued walking we found ourselves at a narrow gate. Claudette stood and measured the width with her outstretched arms.  She could barely touch the vertical posts of stone decorated with a relief of the ancient Hercules. This gate served to render the street pedestrian only, since no vehicle would be narrow enough to enter.

We continued our walk with the tourists of many other lands. The sounds of many voices in many languages rendered a cacophony of sound. It was almost musical.  Little groups were clustered around guides carrying different colored flags.  People were posing for pictures in front of the ruins. There were Americans in baseball caps, Moslem women with heads covered, Indian women in saris, and an unbelievable variety of hats worn by Japanese women.  At the bottom of the hill the street ends in front on the Library of Celsus.

Our tour group.  Our guide has an umbrella rather than a flag. 

It is a great restoration of its former glory.  It once held 12,000 scrolls in the large room behind the huge Ionic and Corinthian columns. It was the third largest library in the ancient world. The building faces east to provide the morning light for readers. Celsus, a Greek, had been a governor of Asia and counsel to the Roman government. His son completed the library in his honor. The library entombs Celsus.  It was extremely rare for someone to be entombed in a public building or even inside the city.  Supposedly, the building facing the library was a brothel and there was a tunnel leading from the main reading room in the library under the street to this building. Neither the apostle Paul or John would have visited this library because it was finished some eighty years after their visits. But there is the image of a minorah carved at the base of one of the columns. Our tour group lingered here long enough to have a group photo taken.

We walked through the ruins of another  agora with many toppled columns and then climbed a small hill.  From the shade of some olive trees we had a great view of the Grand Theater. It was one of the largest and best preserved of the ancient world and had seats for 24,000. It was the site of gladiator fights and theatrical productions, many of which were pornographic.

The apostle Paul may have spoken here during his three years in Ephesus.  We do know that he was jailed here for preaching against the pagan religions of the day. Paul caused a riot led by the silversmith Demetrius, because the silversmiths believed Paul was hurting their business of making small statues of the goddess Artemis.  Paul was imprisoned in Ephesus before continuing his third missionary journey.

We left the best preserved classical city of the eastern Mediterranean and were soon back at our hotel overlooking the Aegean Sea.  We were were ready for an Efes of the liquid kind.