Day 12: Bodrum, Turkey

Black Sea Navigation: BULGARIA: [Nesebar] [Varna] ROMANIA: [Constanţa]
TURKEY: [Sinop] [Bodrum] [Istanbul: Basilica Cistern] [Istanbul: Topkapi] [Istanbul: Haigha Sophia]
GREECE: [Limnos] [Meteora] [Thira] [Athens: Acropolis and Plaka] [Acropolis Museum Highlights]

A really lovely day.

The Bodrum Castle / Bodrum Museum Of Underwater Archaeology reminded me strongly of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, mostly due to the seemingly random (but exquisite) bits and pieces of architecture and statuary that littered the place.

More after the jump!

Ticket to ride! Er, I mean, to visit.

They had an extensive and informative exhibit on amphora.  Many different locations had their own tell-tale style, but the one that seemed easiest to remember was the Egyptian, where the handles are above the main body of the pot so that it can be suspended from a horizontal pole.

Egyptian amphora - recognizable by handles which allow them to be carried on a pole carried horizontally

My elder niece's reaction to this exhaustive educational exhibit was: "NO MORE CLAY POTS!!!" So of course her sister and I made a point of pointing out amphora to her for the rest of the trip.

Several fruit trees were helpfully labeled as well, with information about the uses or associations of the plant, as well as its origins etc.  For example:

Quince.
"It is said to strengthen the heart, when drunk
as a mixture of quince flowers and honey."

These segments were placed into a well to keep
it from collapsing in on itself.

Aslan!!!
(absolute truth, since "aslan" is Turkish for lion)

This Roman governor rather lost his head, I'm afraid.

There was a very cool exhibit of glass.  No flash was allowed, so I put my camera on the museum no-flash setting.  One of the guards kept glowering at me, though, because my camera emitted a red glow of some kind.  Apparently he thought that was just like a flash.  Except of course that there was no flash - I used only the lights that they had used to illuminate each item on display in the darkened room.  Sigh.

14th Century glass ingots

Aslan #2!
"Becker [sic] with engraved lions.  11th c. A.D. (Islamic period)"

Wavy crenelations 

One of the buildings housed the magnificent treasures recovered from a Bronze Age shipwreck.

Top row consists of tin ingots (quite rare) from a shipwreck.
(Described  as "bun" type, "wedge" type, and quarter ox-hide.)
Middle row is various copper ingots (not rare).
Bottom row includes glass ingots with "rare purple color (manganese colorant)"

Ivory recovered from shipwreck - mostly derived from
from hippopotamus teeth, rather than elephant tusks.
The duck-shaped item is a cosmetic box.

In the lower left corner, ostrich eggshells, "a luxury item" imported from
Egypt or the Near East, and would be likely be "made into vases by the addition
of bases and spouts"

The Gold Scarab of Nefertiti

A stone scarab

"Together, these artifacts form one of the largest collections of Canaanite jewelry from any site."

The archaeologists have deduced that there must have been at least two Mycenaean Greeks on-board, and "they probably were not merchants" because they didn't have weights and scales.   The museum suggests they might have been traveling as envoys, and may have been the ones carrying item #9 here:

 "a mysterious Bulgarian or Romanian stone mace-head"

On the way into another building (a banquet hall showing the evolution of the Turkish flag), we saw a peacock:

Fire when ready! Wait, what?

Assyrian Sphinx

Well preserved mosaics

Grimaces

 After we left the castle/museum, we went to a cafe to wait for the next tender back to the boat.  The girls, as always, gravitated to the cats! cats! cats! and dogs!!  But we were unexpectedly witnesses to the drama of a dog chasing a cat up a tree.  L blamed the dog, while C's loyalties were somewhat torn.

Treed!!!

Finally, something worth taking a picture of!

Farewell to Bodrum Castle

Black Sea Navigation: BULGARIA: [Nesebar] [Varna] ROMANIA: [Constanţa]
TURKEY: [Sinop] [Bodrum] [Istanbul: Basilica Cistern] [Istanbul: Topkapi] [Istanbul: Haigha Sophia]
GREECE: [Limnos] [Meteora] [Thira] [Athens: Acropolis and Plaka] [Acropolis Museum Highlights]