Day 7 - Ephesus from port Kusadasi, Turkiye

Kuşadası is a municipality and district of Aydın Province, Turkey. Its area is 265 km2, and its population is 130,835 (2022). It is a large resort town on the Aegean coast. Kuşadası is 59 miles south of İzmir, and about 37 miles west of Aydın. The municipality's primary industry is tourism.

Antiquity

The area has been a center of art and culture since some of the earliest recorded history and has been settled by many civilizations since being founded by the Leleges people in 3000 BC. Later settlers include the Aeolians in the 11th century BC and Ionians in the 9th. Originally, seamen and traders built a number of settlements along the coastline, including Neopolis.

An outpost of Ephesus in ancient Ionia, known as Pygela was located in the area between the Büyük Menderes (Maeander) and Gediz (Hermos) rivers. The original Neopolis, is thought to have been founded on the nearby point of Yılancı Burnu. Later settlements were probably built on the hillside of Pilavtepe, in the district called Andızkulesi today. Kuşadası was a minor port frequented by vessels trading along the Aegean coast. In antiquity it was overshadowed by Ephesus, until Ephesus' harbor silted up. From the 7th century BC onwards, the coast was ruled by Lydians from their capital at Sardis, then from 546 BC the Persians, and from 334 BC, along with all of Anatolia, the coast was conquered by Alexander the Great. From that point on the coastal cities in Anatolia became a center of Hellenistic culture.

Rome and Christianity

The Roman Empire took possession of the coast in the 2nd century BC and made it their provincial capital in the early years of Christianity. Saint John the Evangelist and (according to Roman Catholic sacred tradition) the Virgin Mary both came to live in the area, which in the Christian era became known as "Ania."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku%C5%9Fadas%C4%B1

https://www.turkeyexpert.com/blogs/a-short-history-of-kusadasi

Christianity in Ephesus - Apostle Paul

Ephesus is mentioned multiple times in the New Testament, and the biblical book of Ephesians, written around 60 A.D., is thought to be a letter from Paul to Ephesian Christians, although some scholars question the source.

Paul had a two-year ministry and where the disciple John and Jesus’ mother, Mary, are buried. With a population of more than 250,000, Ephesus was the fourth-largest city in the world. We viewed the Library of Celsus, originally built in 125 AD, which once held nearly 12,000 scrolls. We visited the temples of Hadrian and Domitian and the great theater, where Paul witnessed. We visited the Terrace Houses, which provided great insight into family life during the Roman period.

Temple (model) of Artimes

Goddess of the hunt and the wild

Not every Ephesian was open to Paul’s Christian message. Chapter 19 in the Book of Acts tells of a riot started by a man named Demetrius. Demetrius made silver coins featuring the likeness of Artemis.

Tired of Paul’s attacks on the goddess he worshipped, and worried that the spread of Christianity would ruin his trade, Demetrius plotted a riot and enticed a large crowd to turn against Paul and his disciples. Ephesian officials, however, protected Paul and his followers and eventually Christianity became the city’s official religion.

Ephesus played a vital role in the spread of Christianity. Starting in the first century A.D., notable Christians such as Saint Paul and Saint John visited and rebuked the cults of Artemis, winning many Christian converts in the process.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is thought to have spent her last years in Ephesus with Saint John. Her house and John’s tomb can be visited there today.

Ephesus was a city in Ancient Greece on the coast of Ionia, 1.9 miles southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital, by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists. During the Classical Greek era, it was one of twelve cities that were members of the Ionian League. The city came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.

The city was famous in its day for the nearby Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), which has been designated one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.Its many monumental buildings included the Library of Celsus and a theatre capable of holding 24,000 spectators.

Ephesus was recipient city of one of the Pauline epistles; one of the seven churches of Asia addressed in the Book of Revelation; the Gospel of John may have been written there; and it was the site of several 5th-century Christian Councils (see Council of Ephesus). The city was destroyed by the Goths in 263. Although it was afterwards rebuilt, its importance as a commercial center declined as the harbor was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River. In 614, it was partially destroyed by an earthquake.

Today, the ruins of Ephesus are a favorite international and local tourist attraction, being accessible from Adnan Menderes Airport and from the resort town Kuşadası. In 2015, the ruins were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephesus

https://explorekusadasi.com/your-complete-guide-to-ephesus-kusadasi-turkey/

Water pipes

Marble streets

Sewer drains

The Library of Celsus is an ancient Roman building in Ephesus, Anatolia, today located nearby the modern town of Selçuk, in the İzmir Province of western Turkey. The building was commissioned in the years 110s CE by a consul of the Roman Empire, Tiberius Julius Aquila Polemaeanus, as a funerary monument for his father Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, former proconsul of Asia, and completed during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, sometime after Aquila's death.

The Library of Celsus is considered an architectural marvel and is one of the only remaining examples of great libraries of the ancient world located in the Roman Empire. It was the third-largest library in the Greco-Roman world behind only those of Alexandria and Pergamum, believed to have held around 12,000 scrolls. Celsus is buried in a crypt beneath the library in a decorated marble sarcophagus. The interior measured roughly 2,000 square feet.

The interior of the library and its contents were destroyed in a fire that resulted either from an earthquake or a Gothic invasion in 262 CE, and the façade by an earthquake in the 10th or 11th century. It lay in ruins for centuries until the façade was re-erected by archaeologists between 1970 and 1978.

Agora (market place)

Brothel on distant hilltop

The Ephesus Great Theatre is located on the slope of Panayir (Pion) Hill, opposite Harbor Street, and is easily seen when entering from the south entrance to Ephesus. The theatre is cut into the west slope of Mount Pion upon which the Acropolis was located. Hellenistic theatres are generally built on a natural slope of a hill in order to benefit from the gradient of the hill. The best example is the Acropolis Theatre of Pergamum which was constructed in the 3rd century BC, almost at the same time with the Ephesus Theatre. The excavations of the Great Theatre reveal that it was first constructed about 250 B.C, during the reign of Lysimachos. During the Roman period, it was enlarged and formed its current style that is seen today.

Ephesus was laid upon a grid system such as any other Hellenistic ancient city. According to this layout, major public buildings are located along the principal streets. One of the major streets of Ephesus, Arcadian runs between where the Harbor and the Great Theatre. Of all the archaeological remains from Antiquity, the Ephesus theatre is the most magnificent structure in Ephesus' ancient city.