Istanbul, Archaeological Museum

Tuesday March 15

This morning I decided to go to the much touted Archeological Museum. It's a short walk from the hotel, following the Palace wall around the corner. It is a large museum with many rooms, floors and artifacts. They have things from about 8,000 years ago. This part of the world has been settled since the beginning of civilization. The problem for me is I don't know enough of their history. There are so many different ancient civilizations that have lived here, and so many different important people that I just don't know them all. Of course there are the Greeks and the Romans, but there are also many others including the Byzantines. The city is like a big onion, in that when they dig down through one layer of civilization they find another laying under it. They have the same problem here that they have in places like Athens and Rome, every time they dig they find another archeological site and they have to stop.

As for the marble statues, it's amazing the amount of time and effort that the artisans put into carving the them and the sarcophagi (burial tombs) that their leaders commissioned them to do. The workmanship is amazing. The one in the picture I have posted is from the side of the tomb of Alexander the Great.

I went for a walk through the area of the city near the hotel and had a couple of pieces of fruit for lunch. Then I came to the Basilica Cisterns. After paying the admission you descend some stairs into the underground of Istanbul. It is dark and damp down there but absolutely amazing. This is a cistern where they collected water for the city above.

Ancient texts indicate that the 4^th century basilica contained gardens and faced the Ayasofya Mosque. They claim that 7000 slaves were involved in the construction of the cistern. The cistern provided a water filtration system for the Great Palace of Constantinople built by the Byzantines and the Topkapi Palace after the Ottoman conquest in 1453 and into modern times. Today it is full of large carp and koi.

The cistern is cathedral sized and approximately 453ft by 212ft, and capable of holding 2,800,000 cubic feet of water. The ceiling is supported by a forest of 336 marble columns, each 30ft high, arranged in 12 rows of 28 columns. It is huge! Right after descending, there was a short power outage and it was pitch black.

At the base of two of the columns at the far end, are two large carved heads of Medusa. One is upside down at the base of the column and the other is sideways. No one knows where they originated or why they are positioned this way.

I made my way back to the hotel and discovered that Cemil had come back to have dinner with us one more time. It was great to see him. So, the six of us headed out and had a great dinner on the third floor of a restaurant facing Ayasofya. That's Krys and her husband Brian from London Ontario.