Blue skies in Turkey

The summer season is coming to an end.  Many hotels have closed already and it is quiet everywhere.  At Poppy we have twelve rooms of students along with our last guests.  The weather, though, is glorious with cool evenings and early mornings but daytime temperatures of around 25.  It was perfect weather for the Race for Life yesterday which Cem, Kaan and I all completed (yes all you doubters - Cem REALLY walked 5km, this time without a stop for tea or a cigarette!)

 It’s also great weather for sight-seeing so I had a trip out with my friend Annie to see...more old stones!  This time it was Xanthos and Letoon, two important centres in the ancient civilization of Lycia.  They are about forty minutes drive from Fethiye (just off the road to Kalkan) and jointly form one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  I’ve seen them many times before – Cem used to visit both every day when he was doing jeep safari.  But the great thing about these places is that as they are still being excavated there is always something new to see.

I have written before about the Lycian people.  They were unique at the time for having the first democratic system – a system that allowed each city its freedom (including the city of Telmessos on the site of Fethiye) but saw them join together under a government consisting of representatives from each city for larger matters such as protecting the region.

According to one source I read (and I love this), the contemporary image of the Lycians was like that of the Swiss today – rich, hard-working, conservative and independent.

 

Xanthos theatre

Xanthos was the capital of Lycia.  Some of its warriors took part in the Trojan War and twice when threatened with invasion, the population chose mass suicide instead.

It was chosen as a heritage site for the way it demonstrates the combination of Lycian and Greek styles and particularly for the impressive tombs found here.  These include the Harpy tomb, the original frieze of which is in the British museum and the beautiful Nereid tomb, the whole of which is in the British museum.

These tombs, built for people of a certain class, demonstrate the quality of Lycian stonemasonry.  Their position close to the theatre, also shows that in Lycia the dead were not relegated to cemeteries on the edge of the city but kept close to the centre.

 

Harpy monumnet (right), Xanthos

Letoon was a sacred religious centre and the place where political decisions were announced to the public. It includes three temples dedicated to Artemis, Apollo and their mother Leto and excavations uncovered a plinth (now in Fethiye museum) inscribed in Lycian, Greek and Aramaic, which helped in the understanding of the Lycian language.

 

Letoon

On the subject of old stones, Cem reminded me the other day that the Turkish writer and artist Cevdet Sakir once wrote to our Queen asking for the return to Turkey of pieces like the ‘Xanthos marbles’.  They belonged, he said, under blue skies and could not be properly appreciated under the grey skies of England.  The letter was apparently passed to a curator of the British Museum who thanked him for pointing this out and said that as a result of his letter, the ceiling of the room housing the pieces had been painted blue!

Nereid Monument in the British Museum