Gulhane Parki and the Archaeology Museum Complex (Istanbul part 2 of 7)

While the Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque dominate Sultanahmet by virtue of being highly visible, Topkapi Sarayi (Topkapi Palace) is perhaps Sultanahmet's most impressive sight. The palace is tucked away within high walls, hidden until you enter into it. But Topkapi is a post (or three) in itself; here I'm going to focus on other things of note within these walls.

Immediately after passing through the high stone walls and pass through a bunch of food carts and then through a wrought iron fence, one comes upon Gulhane Parki, a public park that once served as the grounds and gardens of the sultans living at Topkapi.

The park is a great place for some downtime between hectic sightseeing, and plenty of trees provide some much appreciated shade during the heat of the afternoon.

I thoroughly enjoyed parking my tired self on a bench and munching on baklava and people-watching for an hour. There are also several museums within the huge sprawl of the park, most notably the Archaeology Museum Complex. 10 TL gets you into the Archaeology Museum itself, as well as the Museum of the Ancient Orient and the Museum of Turkish Ceramics.

The three musuems are centered around a "column garden" courtyard (also a good place for some shade) and are open until 7 pm, a bit later than most places.

The Archaeology Museum is the best of the three in my opinion, and has some really neat stuff you won't find in most museums. Sure they've got your basic Greco-Roman style sculpture:

and some mosaics:

and some Roman soldiers:

But what is really cool about the museum is their Sidon collection. Sidon was a major Phoenician city way back in the day (you can thank them for the alphabet), now in modern Lebanon. Excavations in the 19th century turned up some fantastic tombs and sarcophagi reflecting a broad range of artistic styles and influences, and showcasing just how cosmopolitan the Phoenicians and Sidon in particular were. 

This is the Alexander Sarcophagus, named for its depictions of Alexander fighting the Persians on one of the long sides and hunting with them on the other. The tomb was originally thought to have housed Abdalonymus, king of Sidon appointed by Alexander, but that has since been challenged, so it may have belonged to a Persian noble & governor of Babylon instead. But what's great about it is how much of the original pigment survives.

You can still make out the orange in the hair of the man riding the horse, along with the yellow of his cloak and the red in the cloth on the arm of the man behind him. In fact, enough paint has survived to allow a reconstruction of what the image might have looked like to be created. The recreation is from the opposite side of the sarcophagus.

(G.dallorto derived from MatthiasKabel derived from Marsyas via Wikipedia)

The Lycian tomb, above, also comes from the necropolis at Sidon, but less is known about it. Basically, it is monumental, belonged to somebody important, and features the pointed arch lid characteristic of Lycian tombs.

The museum's collections continue upstairs, with artifacts from Istanbul through the Ages, and more material collected from throughout what used to be the Ottoman Empire, including a number of finds from excavations at Troy. They also hold the Kadesh Peace Treaty, believed to be the oldest surviving peace treaty in the world, dating back to 1258 BC and signed by Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and Hattusili III of the Hittite Empire. The archaeologist in me appreciated this shot:

What do you do with the massive amounts of pottery sherds dug up in excavations? Stick them on the overhang between two floors of the museum! 

Definitely worth a visit, and since it is open late, can be combined with a visit to Topkapi Sarayi no problem, especially if you take a break to enjoy a snack and relax in Gulhane Parki.

The British Museum (London, part 4 of 9)

It occurred to me that I need to hurry up and get London entries out of the way this week before I disappear off to Turkey (assuming Iceland doesn't launch part 2 of its nefarious plot to take over Europe by grounding all air traffic again) and then bury myself into dissertation work. So, here we go.

Ta da! I've said this before, but regardless of how awful colonialism was for the colonized places, having an empire nets one a fantastically awesome national museum. And while the archaeologist in me shudders at the thought of all the sites destroyed by looting so that museums can buy all these fantastic objects off the black market/one of the big auction houses (auction house, black market, same thing really), there's no denying that it is really cool to see so much awesomeness in one very large building. I'd rate the BM up there with the MET in NY, but I'd give the edge to the British Museum for having several really notable objects.

Upon entering, you emerge into this gigantic enclosed court. The biggest in Europe if I'm not mistaken. Exhibits are in galleries arranged to on the sides of the Great Court. The big round thing in the middle is the Reading Room. It used to hold the British Library, but the library moved years ago to its own building to accommodate all of its titles. The reading room holds special exhibits sometimes and still holds reading desks and some books, along with some visitor information materials.

The BM's Egyptian and Greek/Roman collections are first rate, and even if you're one of those people that thinks if you've seen one giant marble sculpture of a naked Greek, you've seen them all, there's still a lot of really interesting things that I guarantee you haven't seen at any other museum.

Second semester freshman year I took an honors (I totally spelled that honours at first and had to go back and change it. The Brits are eating away at my American spellings!) course on Lost Languages and Decipherments. In the honors portion, we were supposed to be learning hieroglyphics. The only thing I retained from that was to just assume the inscription reads "An offering which the King gives to Osiris, Lord of Djedu..." followed by a list of what he's offered, especially if it's a funerary monument of any kind. We translated this doorway as a homework assignment. And yes, that is how the inscription starts.

And here is Ramses II, snagged from Thebes in the early 1800s by Giovanni Belzoni, circus strongman turned antiquities hunter hired by Henry Salt, the British consul to Egypt, to organize the removal and transport of the statue back to England. Ramses here was the inspiration for Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" and another poem originally of the same title by Horace Smith.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

—Horace Smith

So there's your English lesson for the day!

I thought these guys were really cool. There's two of them, but I couldn't even get one into a picture because they're so big, but take my word for it. They originally flanked an entrance to the citadel at Dur-Sharrukin, modern day Khorsabad, the Assyrian capital under Sargon II. Confession: all Medieval things all the time kind of makes me miss Mesopotamia. There needs to be peace in the Middle East like now so I can go tour.

I think this was actually my favorite part. This is one side of the Nereid Monument, the tomb of Erbinna, the ruler of Lycian Xanthos (in modern Turkey). I wanted to get the people in for a sense of scale.

Ah, the Parthenon Marbles (also called the Elgin Marbles), one of the BM's biggest draws, and one of its biggest controversies. Greece has been petitioning to get them returned practically since Elgin dragged them off the Parthenon in Athens. To make a long story short, they were acquired by Elgin when he supposedly got permission from the Ottoman Turks, who controlled Greece at the time, to do some digging around the Parthenon and to take away sculpture. But as far as anyone knows, he did not have permission to physically remove sculpture from the building itself, which is exactly what he did. And the whole thing is complicated further because the original "firman" obtained from the Turkish government no longer exists; only an Italian translation survives, and the language of that translation seems to indicate Elgin was little more than an antiquities looter. The British Museum has always maintained that the marbles were acquired legally under the laws of the day and have been _preserved_ at the BM in a way they would not have been had they been left on the Parthenon. You might think that argument has a certain validity to it, until you realize that as part of their "preservation" of the marbles, the BM had them "cleaned" by scraping off the top layers to reveal whiter marble underneath, thus removing any traces of paint (yes, they were likely originally painted with bright colors, just like most Greeco-Roman statuary) and a great degree of the detail in the carving. It's debatable whether or not they would have been better off out in the elements on the Parthenon.

There's a brand new shiny museum in Athens built overlooking the Acropolis and designed to showcase the Parthenon sculptures in as realistic a manner as possible (the top floor of the museum is even oriented & sized like the Parthenon) with lots of glass windows to look out over where the marbles originally came from. While they do hold some of the sculpture, they've long been trying to get the bulk of the marbles back from the BM. I almost started laughing out loud when I read the BM's plaque on the marbles. Apparently Elgin's removal of the sculptures has "long been a matter of discussion" and we should all thank him for "saving" the marbles from pollution and weathering and for bringing them down so they can be put in a museum at eye-level so people can see them better than they could hanging up on the Parthenon. That's funny, because obviously LONDON was MUCH less polluted than Athens in the middle of the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. And clearly a Greek museum couldn't hang them up at eye level. That's just crazy talk. Right. Anyway.

The actual display of the marbles is kind of uninspiring. They've been set up at eye-level around the walls of a big open room and with very little description of what they portray or its significance.

Here's possibly the most discussed scene from the friezes. The frieze has often been interpreted as a depiction of the Panathenaic Procession, the most important festival for Athenians and celebrated Athenia, their patron goddess. As part of this festival, a group of virgins would spend months weaving a giant sacred peplos (a sort of ancient Greek dress) and this peplos would be put on a statue of Athena as part of the ritual. This scene is taken to be one of the virginal weavers presenting the peplos to a priest of some kind before it is to be given to Athena. 

The metopes showcase something a bit different- lots of fighting. Humans versus monsters, gods versus monsters, etc. Here a man dukes it out with a centaur.

Another big draw for the BM is the Rosetta Stone. Sorry the picture's only so-so; between the reflective glass and the hoards of people swarming around it trying to take pictures and flashes going off everywhere, it's hard to get a good shot in. The Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs- it contains 3 versions of the same text in Greek, hieroglyphs, and a simplified Egyptian script called Demotic.

And here's Mithras slaughtering the bull. The cult of Mithras was big with the Roman army, so his iconography and "temples" for lack of a better word can be found throughout Europe- pretty much everywhere the army went, so did devotion to Mithras. I've always found his cult interesting because it combines elements and symbols from a number of different god-stories into one somewhat mysterious cult.

This is the helmet from one of the ship burials at Sutton Hoo. Cool cool stuff there. I like that it has eyebrows! Sutton Hoo was the site of a couple of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and included a giant giant ship burial thought to be one of the Anglo-Saxon kings from early medieval England as well as several smaller ship & non-ship burials for other important people.

And I couldn't not sneak in Franks Casket. This little whalebone box has been perplexing people _forever_. An interpretation gaining ground is that it was a riddle box. Each side is carved with a scene and inscriptions in runes and Latin show up on various sides of the box. Each scene is thought to provide a clue of some sort and when combined with each other reveal some sort of secret. The scenes themselves come from Christian traditions, Germanic legend, Roman history and Roman mythology. The combination of languages and iconography makes for one very confusing little box.

So there you have it! The really brief highlights tour of the British Museum. Go there and spend at least an afternoon. It is well worth it. (And admission is free! Always a plus.)

Spring! (Thank goodness...)

Today I thought I'd do something a little bit different. Instead of my customary whining about the lack of good mac & cheese or Mexican food, I thought I'd talk about some of the things I love about living in York/England. That, and gush about how happy I am that spring is finally here. I don't think I could've stood the constant cold, windy, rainy winter days much more. I now understand why they advocate those sunlamps for people who live in areas that don't get much sun over the winter months.

First up: Jumbo Chinese Buffet. I only recently (read: yesterday) tried out this wonderful, wonderful restaurant, but that was enough to propel it onto the list of awesome places. For 5.99, you can enjoy an all-you-can eat lunch buffet of deliciousness. Dinner costs more, but you get more options. You can enjoy all kinds of rice, noodles, entree dishes, soups, veggies, and appetizers. Plus, these amazing pineapple-fried dough ball things. So good. So I finally found good Chinese in York. Only downside is that it is pretty much just a buffet and as far as I know, doesn't do take out. Alas.

Next up: Bootham Bites. I didn't think to take a picture of the restaurant, so instead you get a picture of my favorite option there- the Yorkshire Ham & Mature Cheddar (or as I call it, the ham & cheese) panini. I'm pretty sure I've already waxed poetic elsewhere in this blog about chicken and bacon sandwiches, but these are quickly growing to rival the chicken & bacon for my affections. And I don't even normally like ham. But they don't really do ham lunchmeat like we do in the states, instead you get slices of real ham on a sandwich. After living here, I've come to the conclusion that it was never the ham that I disliked, it was the honey-baked hams that I disliked. I prefer ham to be kind of salty rather than sweet. Congratulations, England. You've overcome my dislike of ham, mayonnaise, and onion (although after a certain point I start picking them out of my food again. So maybe I've only sort of gotten over my aversion to onions.) In a country where sandwich shops rule the streets, Bootham Bites makes some excellent ones (the bree, bacon & cranberry sauce one is also really good).

Nom nom nom

Boots' sparkling blackcurrant apple juice: This is to England what Club Orange was to Ireland for me. So good. And for the record, my love for it has NOTHING to do with the fact that the bottle is purple. That's really all I have to say on that front. :)

Street food: I have yet to have bad street food, with the possible exception of the kind of cold paella I had one time (but to be fair, it was the first week of February so I totally blame it on the weather. Oh, and the Brits insist on pronouncing the l's. I made a point of pronouncing it properly and the vendor guy gave me the biggest smile ever). I love the international market that pops up on Parliament Street every so often. Yeah, its the same stuff all the time, but its yummy. Danish pancakes with Baileys & whipped cream? Yes please. Baklava? Heck yeah. Polish potato pancake things? Yum. But even when that's not running, there are all kinds of stalls with crepes, "kinky donuts" (I have yet to try those but they're on the list!), sausages, etc. And the ice cream carts have recently reappeared!

You can't see him in this picture, but the crowd gathered be hind the ice cream cart is watching a street performer juggle & do balance tricks. It isn't Faneuil Hall, but it'll do :)

I just liked the slogan on this one :)

Now let's talk pasties. That's "past" like something that has already happened + ie, not like the glue. These flakey pastry envelopes of delicious filling are classic inexpensive British eat-on-the-go, or eat on a bench watching everyone in the square, whatever floats your boat. The traditional pasty is steak & onion, but I tend to prefer the varieties with a bit less onion. Cheese & bacon is delicious when you can find it, other good choices are pork & apple and ham, brie & cranberry. 

While it isn't a food, I'll stick the Gap on this list. I _never_ shopped there in the States because I tend to be a "Can I find something comparable elsewhere for less?" kind of shopper. But England has this great thing called the "Midseason sale" when ALL of the stores have big sales. So I wandered into the Gap one afternoon and emerged with like 5 layering shirts and a navy jacket that I love and adore (and for 18 pounds! That's like $27 for a jacket! And from Gap! Who knew?) I think part of why I'm more open to the Gap here is because pounds are smaller #s. 6 pounds for a t-shirt feels like a deal (even thought its like $10 and that's about the most I'd spend on one at home). Either way, I got some much needed layering pieces for spring. At home I usually go straight from light sweaters to t-shirts, but we've got a bit more of spring here.

Which is a perfect segue to my next topic: spring time in York. The endless rain is mostly gone (although we still get the odd rainy day/s) and temperatures are up in the high 50s/low 60s. Sunglasses have been worn 3 times now (oooh, aaaaah!). But more importantly, flowers are springing up everywhere. Daffodils are up in pretty much every patch of grass in the city:

along the walls,

 in the alley off my street,

Museum Gardens in the ruins of the abbey  

and in front of the Yorkshire Museum,

even among the gravestones in church graveyards.

I love all the daffodils. Yellow flowers are my favorite because they just seem so cheerful. They help make the city a bit more sunny, especially on overcast days. Sadly I think my little yellow rose plant has bit the dust after a month. I probably should have bought it a real pot instead of leaving it in the plastic one it came in. Oh well. On Friday, I'm taking the "Harry Potter train" to "Hogsmead," but in the meantime, I have paper writing to do (boo!). See you next post.

Wearmouth-Jarrow, or Kicking it with Bede

On Saturday, I headed up to Tyne & Wear to visit Wearmouth-Jarrow. But first of all, remember those pictures I posted from along the river? Well this was what that path looked like on Saturday.That's right, that would be it UNDER THE RIVER by the trees. Crazy flooding. Also, I just like this picture because I think the haze is kind of cool. Just ignore that weird spot towards the bottom left; sometimes my camera puts weird spots on things and I can't make it go away.

Right, so back to Wearmouth Jarrow. Wearmouth is home to St Peter's monastery, while Jarrow is home to St Paul's. They were both founded by the same guy and are considered to be essentially two branches of the same monastery. They also happen to be the UK's nominee for World Heritage Site 2010. We went to Jarrow in particular, because the World of Bede, a museum dedicated to arguably the UK's most famous medieval scholar and author, is housed nearby. Also, they were having a Christmas Fair. And that is exciting :)

To get there, we took the train from York up to Newcastle and then the metro out to Jarrow. While signs helpfully directed us the right way out of the metro station, the signs stopped abruptly right outside the metro station. So there was a bit of wandering in what we hoped was the right direction to find the place.

Here's a shot of a portion of the Wearmouth/Jarrow Way, a 12 mile trail connecting the two monasteries. They're only about 6 miles apart as the bird flies, but the roads meander a bit. I still can't believe how green everything still is.

Before hitting up the Christmas extravaganza and free admission to Bede's World, we stopped off at St Paul's and the church there. Ta da! Not terribly impressive from this angle, but then again, churches this old were kind of small, squat, thick-walled things, so that's only to be expected.

The front part is a Victorian addition to the original church dating back to 681. 681! The Anglo-Saxon church (pictured) now forms the chancel of the modern church, but originally seems to have been a chapel to Our Lady, obviously used by the monks of St Paul's. The Anglo-Saxon chapel includes 3 original windows and a tiny stained glass window has been reassembled from fragments found in excavations.

Around to the right are the extant ruins of the monastery, mostly dating to the 11th century. Bede lived at St Paul's in the late 7th, early 8th centuries, but alas that incarnation of the monastery was largely destroyed by the Vikings in 794.

I'm going to refrain from putting up more pictures of the ruins; I really ruins. I think its the archaeologist in me. But moving on.

We then headed up to the World of Bede for some craft/food/toys/etc stall browsing and some "edumacating."

Hee hee!

They had some nice replicas of Franks Casket, illuminated Bibles the size of a bed pillow, monks habits, etc. Can you imagine transporting this thing? I know there's nothing to show the scale, but take my word for it that it is about the size of a pillow, just thicker.

 

The Codex Amiatinus was produced in Northumbria (the medieval kingdom in modern day northern England) in the style of Roman illuminated Bibles as a gift to the Pope (and as a way to show off the skills of the Northumbrian scribes.) The real one is still in Italy and was actually only recently identified as a product of Northumbrian scholarship because the scribes did such a good job imitating Roman styles. It is unusual in that it is a manuscript of the entire Bible. When everything is handwritten on vellum, you can see how big a complete Bible gets. A collection of the Gospels or individual books of the Bible, such as a psalter, were much more common. The Codex is actually believed to be the earliest complete copy of the Vulgate Latin Bible. Go Northumbria. The reason they showcase it at the World of Bede is because it was commissioned and completed at Wearmouth-Jarrow, and it appears that Bede was likely involved in its compilation. Cool stuff :)

After wandering around there and buying Christmas gifts, we ventured out to the Anglo-Saxon replica farm, where they attempt to showcase how farming worked back in the day. Of course it was raining and muddy and most of the animals were taking cover, but it was kind of neat to walk around.

 

After successfully completing our medieval dork pilgrimage to Jarrow, we headed back to Newcastle in search of dinner and hung out at the pub until it was time to catch the train back to York. <3 cheap yummy fish and chips. Advantages to towns along the coast!