Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
With these words Percy Shelley famously damned the legendary Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and his vainglorious dreams of immortality through architectural achievement. As I wander the ruins of Troy, Pergamum, Ephesus, Hierapolis, and Aphrodisias, and survey what little remains of some of the greatest civilisations in human history, I am constantly reminded of Shelley's biting irony. As I stroll between the piles of rubble, decapitated statues, and precarious-looking columns that represent the only physical legacy of the great empires of antiquity, it's difficult not to wonder what will remain of modern Western civilisation 2,000 years from now. In future millennia will people stroll down Picadilly or Fifth Avenue and gaze upon a few tangled metal girders, some piles of broken glass, and fragments of a green and white coffee mug and ponder about their by now semi-mythical forebears and their worship of the great god Starbuck?
Ancient cities always fascinate me, not just for their aesthetic beauty and historical resonnance, but also because I can't help but be amused by the often ludicrous assumptions presented as fact by archaeologists. Just as their colleagues in paleontology blithely assure us that from the four fragments of leg bone they have found they are certain Tyrannosaurus rex was olive green, could run at 28.72mph, and generally liked to eat rare roast pheasant accompanied by a starter of quail's eggs, so too do archaeologists offer ridiculously unprovable claims about the everyday lives of our ancient ancestors. For this reason, I tend to prefer visiting archaeological sites alone rather than with a guide, thus allowing me to silently admire the spectacle, be awestruck by the unanswerable questions, and generally take in the very special ambience of ancient places, without some well-intentioned halfwit blathering on about the imagined culinary preferences of Roman/Greek/Inca peasants. At a couple of sites here ın Turkey I have been able to indulge my no doubt idiosyncratic tendencies and wander unmolested through ruins of staggering scale and resonance. The spectacular location of Pergamum in particular, sitting high on an exposed peak with staggering views over the windswept plains below, will live with me forever.
Quite why this particular gem is not overrun with busloads of tourists I'm not sure; I'm certainly not complaining, however. One site which is rather 'blessed' with a bounty of visitors is Ephesus, arguably the most famous of Turkey's archaeological treasures, and generally regarded by most authorities on the matter (though not by me I might add) as the most spectacular. By happy coincidence, Ephesus is located just a short hop from the major port and tourist resort of Kusadasi, thus allowing all manner of cruise ship passengers to disembark and venture inland. While the ruins are admittedly quite spectacular, for me the real spectacle was the other visitors. (Particularly once I learned that by far the most notable part of the complex, the Library of Celsus, was actually rebuilt from bare rubble by a team of German archaeologists in the 1970s. This revelation, while disappointing, did at least clear up the nagging doubt ın my mind as to where the Romans had sourced their concrete in 200AD.)
Confusing my ancient history just for a second, Ephesus today is a veritable Tower of Babel, with every language under the sun audible on a casual saunter around the mammoth site. Each linguistic grouping, each nationality, seems to bring its own idiosyncracies to the party. It gives me no great shame to admit the Brits are among the most heinous of the visitors, dressed uniformly in badly fitting beach attire, with a skin colour that closely resembles either freshly driven snow or a recent victim of napalm and a physique that recalls nothing so much as a hippo wallowing on the banks of the Limpopo. Yet the Brits are far from alone. The Americans wander around gaily in their knee length white socks and khaki shorts, pointing at things and loudly saying "aww gee" and "shucks"' while quietly wheezing as their aged respiratory systems prepare to give out. Indeed, most of the American tourists I've seen in Turkey appear so ancient that one might reasonably assume they're returning to visit old haunts, rather than touring the remnants of long-gone ancient civilisations. One particular specimen I witnessed staggering down a once-colonnaded Roman street, portable dialysis machine/colon/heart trailing in his wake might perhaps better have stayed at home. Then there are the parasol-toting Asians, some of whom wear something highly akin to a Nuclear Biological and Chemical warfare suit in a desperate attempt to prevent their skin colour lightening even a shade darker than ice. I could go on: the fat middle aged Russians and their whores, the totally obnoxious French, superior and condescending despite their inherent ugliness and lack of style, or the Italians chattering excitedly on their mobiles while their guide drones manfully on in the background; but I won't.
Why is it that tourists always revert to being tired cliches of their nationality? Actually, I don't care. All that matters is that Turkey, or at least the Aegean coast and Cappadocia, is full of tourists. While the language barrier clearly doesn't help, I feel the overwhelming presence of fellow tourists and the near impossibility of seeing any of the sites without using a tour guide leaves me totally incapable of making any kind of connection with the Turkish people or of understanding the country at all. Every interaction I have is purely on the basis of tourist-native. Of course this is always the case to some degree, though less so when language is less of an issue, and especially when there aren't so many fellow tourists. In this respect it's probably a good thing that I finish this post to board an overnight bus bound for Aleppo, Syria's second city, and supposedly the most conservative place in the country, complete with what is reputedly the greatest medieval souk in the whole region.
Turkey has been great, but the Middle East starts now. Er, that is unless the Israeli Defence Force crosses the border before I do:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6981674.stm
Why is it that tourists always revert to being tired cliches of their nationality? Actually, I don't care. All that matters is that Turkey, or at least the Aegean coast and Cappadocia, is full of tourists. While the language barrier clearly doesn't help, I feel the overwhelming presence of fellow tourists and the near impossibility of seeing any of the sites without using a tour guide leaves me totally incapable of making any kind of connection with the Turkish people or of understanding the country at all. Every interaction I have is purely on the basis of tourist-native. Of course this is always the case to some degree, though less so when language is less of an issue, and especially when there aren't so many fellow tourists. In this respect it's probably a good thing that I finish this post to board an overnight bus bound for Aleppo, Syria's second city, and supposedly the most conservative place in the country, complete with what is reputedly the greatest medieval souk in the whole region.
Turkey has been great, but the Middle East starts now. Er, that is unless the Israeli Defence Force crosses the border before I do:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6981674.stm
