Here is a random list of completely historical
characters/events took place in Turkey. See
how many you knew!......
Mount
Ararat where Noah’s
arc is said to have landed as the floods subsided is in Turkey. The story of the flood and Noah being
commanded to build a ship also feature in the Quran. There is a pudding in Turkey called Asure – a
surprisingly tasty sweet mix of grains, beans, fruit and nuts – that is said to
have been created from the provisions left on the arc!
Troy,
site of the Trojan Wars and the famous wooden horse of
Greek mythology, is in north west Turkey, near the Dardanelles Straits. Troy was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.
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| remains of the city of Troy |
And another war story...those famous
words ‘I came, I saw, I conquered!’
were said by Julius Caesar after his victory at Pontus, a kingdom in the Black
Sea region.
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| Julius Caesar at the Battle of Zela |
King
Midas – he of the golden touch - was King of Phrygia in
central Turkey over 3000 years ago. Legend has it that a grateful god granted
him a wish and he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold, which
obviously seemed like a good idea until he got hungry and found that even the
food he tried to eat turned to gold. The
myth is a warning against greed!
On the subject of stories with a
message, did you know that Aesop –
he of the fables – was born on the Black Sea coast of what is now Turkey? He was a slave who was later freed and though
he probably didn’t write most – if any – of the stories today collected as
‘Aesop’s fables’ – he was a great story teller.
Unfortunately his stories don’t seem to have impressed the people of
Delphi , who accused him of theft and threw him off a cliff!
Homer
– writer of the epic poems ‘The Iliad’ (recounting the Trojan War) and ‘The
Odyssey’, central to Greek literature– is associated with an area on the Aegean
coast, though there is actually much debate about whether the poems were
written by one person or a group of people.
By contrast, Herodotus is a well-documented figure who is known as the Father of
History because his investigations of the past were more thorough than any
before. Living in Halicarnassos
(modern-day Bodrum) in the fifth century BC, he wrote about ancient Egypt and
Persia.
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| Ephesus - it is said Cleopatra and Antony walked along here while on their honeymoon |
And finally, though there are many other
stories that could be told about Turkey, Antony
met and fell in love with Cleopatra
in the city of Tarsus, on the eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey, after
which they travelled to Ephesus. Four
years later they were married in Antioch.
