When I did get home I found an interesting comment about Arsinoe in my email. Check out this website http://www.art-video.us/artvideo_014.htm from a teacher in the US who is doing a video production about Arsinoe! He asked about DNA testing. Here is my response:
I took a look at your website and read the story of Arsinoe. It looked like what the archaeologists had told me except for the last statement. Hilka Thuer, one of the archaeologists at Ephesus, suggested in an article in the late 1990s that the octagonal tomb near the terrace houses was for Arsinoe and it was her bones that they found here. I suppose that either Encyclopedia Britannica did not know of the article OR that it chose not to put that information into the article because it was not 100% sure. Although the archaeologists that I talked to at Ephesus said that they could not prove that it is Arsinoe for certain, they were pretty sure and said that there was no reason to think it was not.

They have tried DNA testing on the bones to confirm for sure where the skeleton was from, but there was not enough DNA material left in the bones to give them a reading. The first time the tomb was open they took the skull and teeth out because at that time they didn’t care about the bones. In the meantime the skull and teeth have gone missing. It is unfortunate because there are some new tests for teeth that can show information that would be helpful. Who knows, maybe it will be found someday!

It used to be that bones were not considered to be important and archaeologists just threw them away! Now that there are scientific tests that can be done to tell us more information it is difficult to find bones that have been well preserved with information about the context where they were found.

Here in Selchuk there is one large Mosque which is historic called the Isabey Mosque. It was built in the 1300s and has been partially restored recently. We were able to take time to go inside the Isabey Mosque and it is beautiful inside. I think that the mosques in other cities are even more beautiful. We were able to meet the Imam (like the priest) in this mosque and talk with him. He was very nice and reminded me of other Islamic friends that I have because he was so kind and sincere.

This will be my last posting for this blog since tomorrow we begin our travels home. See you next trip!

Janice

1. A few days ago I connected a map to this blog which records the number of visits to the page. Either it isn’t working… or I am the only person visiting it! I guess that it is still a good record of what I am doing and seeing. There were comments from my sister, Susie and also my friend Trish which do not show up on the map, so maybe it is not working???

2. Leo and Urban, I wish I could see you swimming, splashing and laughing in the Rock Quarry! We have swum several times in the ocean in Greece and yesterday Steve went swimming in Turkey. The ocean water is a nice temperature for swimming, not too cold, but not too warm.

3. TWINS!! Actually, Artemis is a twin! Her twin brother is Apollo, who is known as someone who gives advice to people based on his knowledge of the future. Yesterday we went to a big temple dedicated to him in Didema. It was about a 2 hour drive from Selchuk where we are.

4. Here are a few pictures that I forgot to include earlier. One is of a few amphora that were found in the terrace houses. It shows how they were buried to keep the wine in them cool. The other is of some ancient graffiti in the terrace houses. I am baffled why someone who had beautiful paintings done on the wall would allow people to scratch things into it, but the graffiti is thought to be from the same time as the paintings and not modern.

Now for a little bit about Turkey as a country. Here is a link to a site with a map of Turkey and pictures of different areas. It is a huge country. Here is a map from the Perry-Castaneda Map Collection at the University of Texas.

You can see from the red line that we have only seen a very small part of the west of the country. Turkey is a country that is really between the Arabic east and the West. On the far east border is Iraq which we have been hearing a lot about in the United States. Turkey is trying to become part of the European Union which is a group of countries that has decided to use a common currency (the Euro) and also has many other economic and political agreements.

There are many Turks who would like to be more like the west and there are many who feel this is not good and want to be more like the Arabic east. Some feel the connection with the European Union would be a good thing and others feel like it is denying a big part of important national identity.

There is one statue that I saw that described one view of Turkish identity in an interesting way. It has many statements on it like “I am for an Independent Turkey”, “I am a Secularist.”, “I am enemy of fanatics, thieves, opportunists and exploiters”, and “I am a follower of Ataturk”.

Ataturk is a very important figure in Turkish history. He is sort of like our George Washington. Everyone knows who he is and there are pictures and statued of him everywhere. He lived in the early 20th century and brought Turkey from the time of royal dynasties to the modern age. He wanted Turkey to be a bridge between the West and the East. You see statues and pictures of him everywhere.

Today I visited one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. You can read more about them at Wikipedia The one I visited today was the Artemis temple in Ephesus. Artemis was Greek goddess of the hunt. The Romans had a similar goddess that they called Diana.

Look at these two pictures. They are both statues of Artemis. The one on the right is the Ephesian Artemis. People think that maybe the Ephesians combined the traits of an earlier local goddess to Artemis to create this different looking goddess. This represenation of Artemis is known as the Ephesian Artemis and was recognized by people all over the ancient world. The one on the left is the way that the Greek Artemis was shown. It is the more familiar image of Artemis.

Here are pictures of the temple. If you come to Ephesus today you will see the temple looking like the picture on your left. The picture on your right is a model of the temple that you can see in the museum. It shows what the temple looked like in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. It stood for several centuries. The temple is built in a place where the water table is low and so now it is like a pond. You can see ducks, storks and a lot of turtles here.

This is the place where Arsinoe tried to hide, but in the end was killed. Here is a picture of the octagonal tomb they found and a diagram of what they whole thing looked like.

You can also look at another of the seven wonders in my earlier blog. [link to other blog entry] It is a huge statue of Zeus found in Olympia where the Olympic games were first held.

I haven’t written much about the huge archaeological site here at Ephesus, or about the museum. There is just so much to see it is hard to know where to start. If you do come here it is worth paying extra to see the terrace houses. There is a lot preserved to give you an idea of at least how rich people lived in ancient times. The rest of the site is HUGE also and full of interesting buildings and fountains. There is just SO much to see.

Archaeologists feel the same way. Now they dig very carefully recording and drawing EVERY little thing that they find. However, about a hundred years ago when the field of archaeology was young the archaeologists dug very quickly and were always looking for BIG things like statues that they could take to museums in their own countries. In doing this they destroyed lots of clues that would help us to learn about history. In Ephesus the early archaeologists dug HUGE areas to find whole streets and stadiums, but in doing so they did not record many details that would be helpful to know.

Today I will end with a few small things. At the Austrian Institute (where the archaeologists eat, work and stay when not out at the excavation) there is the cutest little kitty named Yo Yo. I thought you might like to see her picture.

Also, my mother is always interested in what I am eating, so I thought I should try to explain a bit. Every morning we have breakfast at the hotel as part of staying here. They give us a plate with a piece of cheese, some peeled tomato slices, olives, a slice of orange and then a basket of bread with things to spread on it like jam, honey, butter and cream cheese. They also server us coffee (in a little pot at the table, similar to what we drink at home) or tea.

For lunch and dinner we have been eating with the Austrians at the Austrian Institute. They always start their meal with a bowl of soup. This is an Austrian custom, not a Turkish one. Then there is usually some kind of rice and a dish with some meat and vegatables that was probably cooked in the oven. The unique things about eating here are that there is always a thin yogurt drink at the table that looks like thick milk. This is Turkish. At the table besides salt and pepper there is always a glass of lemon juice that you can add to your soup, or the water you are drinking or anywhere else you want more flavor. There is also a bowl on the table with red pepper flakes for the same reason. They are not too hot. After lunch they serve some fruit (we have had watermelon and cherries) and then we retire to the outer courtyard and we are brought esspresso.

It seems like dinner is about the same. A few times we have eaten at restaurants and the main foods are shish kabob (meat grilled on a stick) or stuffed peppers and tomatos. They have stuffed grape leaves as an appetizer along with many other things. There are lots of stores that sell Turkish Delight. It is pretty good. They also have lots of places where ice cream cones are sold. The ice cream is a little different, but good. We will probably eat out more this weekend and I will see what I can find out!

Arsinoe was a younger sister of Cleopatra and they were princesses in the royal family of Egypt. People did not know whether Arsinoe or Cleopatra would be the next queen, so they were both treated very specially. When she was about 10 the people who were advising her opposed Julius Caesar and they lost and she was paraded through Rome as an enemy who had been conquered. She was then put in jail for several years. When she was released she feared for her life. She was afraid of people who opposed her but also afraid of Cleopatra, who she thought might like to get rid of her to have a claim to the throne. In order to hide she went into the temple of Artemis in Ephesus. In the temple she was protected and no one was allowed to harm her.
Unfortunately, this only lasted for a few years when Cleopatra decided she should be killed. No one knows how this was done. What we do know is that there was a monument to her with an octagonal building over it and inside the crypt were found bones of a 16-year old. In her short life she had incredible adventures. This is a picture of the ruins of her monument. It is hard to tell that it was octagonal and so I am going to look for a better picture to add to the blog.

The project that Steve (my husband) is working on involves finding bones of rich and poor people and doing chemical analysis on the bone material. From that analysis he is hoping to find out more about their diets and about their lives. Arsinoe is important in this because she was definitely a very rich person.

Here in Ephesus they have also found many identifiable bones of Gladiators. They were not rich people, but they had a very specific diet and so the chemical analysis of their bones would be interesting also.

One other rich person was Celsus. He was governor of the province and was honored with a huge library. The picture shows the front (façade of the building) and there is a sarcophagus for him built right into the ground. Until yesterday no one knew if there were still bones in the sarcophagus. Several problems had to be surmounted to find out if the bones were there. The door to the small room under the library was locked and no one had the key. After the lock was broken there was another problem. There was a film crew making filming and they would not let us into the monument to get to the sarcophagus. They said it would be another 15 minutes. An hour or so later a small group of us were allowed to go into an area that is closed to the public and to look inside the sarcophagus.

A picture taken with a digital camera held into the crack between the top of the sarcophagus and the box showed that THERE WERE BONES! This boy standing near the hole is the son of one of the archaeologists who work here.

Now they hope to open the sarcophagus and take the bones out for the project. Archaeology can be pretty exciting.

Here are some things that have surprised me as I walked around. Outdoor markets. Storks. Carpets

One of the things that many people do in Turkey is to buy Carpets. Turkish carpets are known world wide for their beauty. Today I visited Ali who sells carpets and kilim close to the Austrian Institute here in Selchuk. He He talked to me about the carpets and showed me many carpets. Ali showed me how a good carpet is made and also showed me some carpets made for sale and others that were made for use by a family. He also explained that kilim are more simple rugs and do not have the thickness of a wool carpet. What impressed me the most was that Ali is most interested in building trust and a good relationship with the people who buy carpets. Of course he wants to sell his carpets, but he first wants to have a good relationship with the people he sells to. He offered me tea and told me stories about selling carpets and his family also. Ali introduced me to his mother who is pictured here. f you ever go to Selchuk you should look him up at Agora Carsisi No 8/9 or email him at centralanatoliacarpet@yahoo.com.

Each archaeological site is controlled by the country that it is located in, but often the people who have been digging in that area for a long time (hundreds of years) come from a certain country or University. The dig in Corinth is an American Dig and is run by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (ASCSA). The Austrians are in charge of the dig at Ephesus.
One of the first things that we did when we arrived here was to make contact with the person Steve is working with named Fabian Kunz. He is an Anthropologist who specializes in bones. He can take small pieces of bones and figure out all kinds of information about where they come from. He can tell the difference between an animal bone and a human bone and even separate lots of small pieces of bone to figure out how many people they represent. He works with some other guys who are actually veteranarians who work on animal bones. One of them is a specialist in fish! One exciting thing he showed me was the skull of a lion.
Tomorrow I will tell you more about these bones. They are of Arsinoe who was a sister of Cleopatra! She was banished and there is more you will want to hear about her death! I will also tell you about a new find of bones that surprised even the archaelogists today!