Walking on Marble Streets

On the 2nd of August the group and I went to Ephesus. This was basically a dream come true for me. I am totally an ancient history buff and to be able to stand in the fourth richest and largest city in all of the Roman Empire was a real treat. The streets where paved with Marble stones. These stones had holes drilled into them so that the rain would drain away leaving the mrble a lot less slippery. Brilliant! There where also side walks made of small tile squares, creating some sort of cool designs. Then to top off this picture the roads where lined with columns that led straight into the middle of the city. They would use these columns for lights and would also have the option of attaching a tarp and covering the sidewalk from the sun and other elements. The artistic talent of these people blew me away. I honestly had no idea that they where so talented.

Ephesus was not nearly as relaxed as the other ancient sites that I had visited. We were still aloud to climb on some of the ruins but at the same time it was frowned upon. The leader of our group hired apparantly the number 1 rated tour guide that Ephesus has to offer, and boy was she a wealth of knowledge. Once she started talking she didn't stop until the tour was over. She told us everything we wanted to know about the temples, the culture, the land, the art, and anything else that you could probably think of. There was one thing that she pointed out to us that really intringued me. It dwelt with the Chri.stians of the time. At the begining of the road she pointed out a secret symbol that declared that there were a body of believers living within the city. It was an Icthys. An Icthys is basically greek acroustic. It compiles to read, "Je5u5 Chri5t, G0.d's son, savior." Now the letters are all laid ontop of eachother creating a special design that looks like a wheel. It was made of the letters IXOYE (there would be a horizontal line the O). I also saw it on several other locations.

Ephesus's large ampatheatre is still used today as a venue for concerts and things. It even housed a concert for the group Sting a few years back. However the concert caused some problems to the structure and even some surrounding structures that took two years to fix. It mainly now holds classical concerts and things of that nature. However they have allowed Elton John to play in Ephesus even after the Sting catastrophe.

There was also this one section that we toured that cost only an extra 5 lira, but it was totally worth it. The archeaologists have excavated and rebuilt 6 different houses of what they thought the typical ephesian house looked like. It was absolutly amazing. There were two houses to each building. They were somewhat like apartments. They were two stories buildings. Each floor was a different house. There was also a community area for dining and hanging out between all three building (6 houses). The time and effort that was put into each one these houses is totally mind boggling. There where murals painted all over the walls and floors. Each mark with whatever artistic tool they used called for so much precision i wouldn't have been able to stand it. I will post some pictures here soon so that you can see what I mean.