I was ready for my Ephesus tour at the appointed pick up time of 9am the next day, but the tour guide didn’t arrive. I waited for 30 minutes and he still had not arrived, so I was not too pleased. With time passing and a bus for Ephesus about to leave from my hotel, I decided to catch that, and I texted my contact in the tour company to say that I wanted to have a talk with him that evening but that I was off to Ephesus now.
I had a nice visit to Ephesus, which was a very interesting site in a fairly good state of preservation. The Jerash site I saw in Jordan was probably a bit better preserved, but because of its connection with St Paul and the early history of Christianity, Ephesus had more significance for me. Among the places I saw in Ephesus was an impressive monument known as the ‘Library of Celsus’.
On the steps outside the Library of Celsus, an image of a Jewish menorah has been etched into the stone. This is probably because the Library was used at some stage as a Jewish synagogue.
It is intriguing to think that this might have been where Paul met with the Jews of Ephesus, and for a period of 3 months (until opposition grew in the synagogue because of the number of people being influenced by Paul), spoke to them about the Messiah. After that, he met with believers and enquirers in the lecture hall of Tyrannus, a location that has not been identified. Paul and his companions were so effective in their evangelistic ministry that it threatened the market for statues and shrines of the goddess Artemis. (The local Temple of Artemis was considered one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and many tourists visited Ephesus because of it.) Acts 19:23-41 tells of a riot that took place in the city, led by silversmiths who were concerned about their livelihood with the decline in the number of worshippers of Artemis. A silversmith, Demetrius, blamed Paul for the threat to their livelihood, and so they began to riot and dragged a couple of Paul’s fellow-workers, Gaius and Aristarchus to the huge theatre, shouting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians”.
For two hours the mob shouted this same chant, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians”, until they were warned to disperse by the city clerk.
From the theatre I went to the ruins of the Church of the Virgin Mary, which is on the Ephesus site. (I overtook this little fellow on the way.)
The church was huge, and was the setting for the Council of Ephesus in 431. Here we are looking from the courtyard (atrium) beyond the entrance to the nave. The apse is right up the far end where you can see two columns and the top of a third.
I went from this great church to another great church – the Church of St John in Selcuk, built in the grand style by Justinian over a smaller Constantinian church. The Justinian church is in the shape of a cross and measured 130m by 65m.
As with my photo of the Church of the Virgin Mary, this photo is taken from the atrium beyond the main entrance to the nave, looking towards the apse. Before the eye reaches the apse there are some columns. These surround the tomb of St John.
Once I had finished here I went into Selcuk town and visited the Ephesus Museum. In this museum were some fine artefacts from Ephesus. One of the items I liked most was this small picture of Socrates.
There was also a statue of Artemis of the Ephesians with the protuberances on her front probably meant to be eggs as a symbol of fertility.
After this visit and after buying a couple of presents, I headed back to my hotel. I received the phone call I had requested from a manager of the Tour company, who explained that he had phoned the hotel to advise them the guide would be coming at 9.30am. The staff person in the hotel whom he spoke had not passed the message on. In the end the manager offered me a substantial refund on my tour costs. He obviously did care about the various muck ups and made what I thought was a generous settlement. I was glad that I had sorted this out myself rather than waiting to get back to New Zealand and trying to sort the matter out from there.
I enjoyed my time in Turkey. I found the people extraordinarily friendly and helpful, even if in Istanbul after being helpful they wanted you to buy something at their shop! In other parts of Turkey it wasn’t like that. People just went out of their way to help if they could speak any English or German and I looked confused or was obviously trying to find somewhere on a map. I never felt unsafe and thought that Turkey was a great place for a holiday.
After all the time I had spent studying Greek culture, I found it a little odd that the custodians of so many wonderful classical sites (more than in Greece, they claim) are Turkish! But that was my issue, not theirs. The problem with the Tour came, I believe, from the tour company’s idea that public transport was an acceptable alternative for a guided tour, without even discussing it with me. But the tour manager was open to admitting that they had got it wrong, and I felt that he sorted the matter out quite generously.
While I did not have in Turkey the sort of amazing experiences I had in Jerusalem and Mt Athos, I still thought that it was a very worthwhile place to visit.
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