Like many of the other ruins we visited, Hierapolis had a museum with various stonework and statues recovered during the excavations.
Leaving the museum, we walked as travelers would have along the main road towards the exit of the city.
Stoa, those markets and stalls we have come see in numerous other places.
Another Latrine:
The Frontinus Gate, dating from the 1st Century A.D.
The Roman Baths:
Unlike modern graveyards, ancient graveyards were put at the entrances to cities. Partially, of course, this helped reserve living space for living space. It also gave rise to the fact that one could advertise the glories of one's life in one's tomb as visitors entered the city, as well as to give those in the afterlife visibility to the physical world. The Necropolis of Hierapolis has over 15,000 tombs.
That's a lot of tombs! I'm guessing that a lot of the artifacts in the museum were found in the necropolis.
ReplyDeleteLeigh, it is a stunning number. Even the video does not really show the distance one walks through the tombs.
DeleteAs our guide pointed out, as a center associated with medicine and healing, it is probably not surprising that there were a lot of tombs as there likely a lot of former customers there.
For the artifacts, both the necropolis and the city itself. I suspect - given the location - the stonework was perhaps a bit less prone to being reused simply based on the amount of effort to get it down the mountain.
Man, those sculptures.......some talent there to work stone like that TB.
ReplyDeleteNylon12 - Indeed. And almost consistently throughout the "ancient world" (so much as we have traveled it), we see the same thing.
DeleteIt does worry me a bit that so much of our art now is in perishable forms, especially electronic. What happens when the power goes out or the servers are destroyed?
My medium of choice is wood and often it requires me a half dozen trips to tighten up a joint just right. I'm carrying a board that maybe weights less than a half pound. I can't imagine all those stone cutters that moved those heavy stones back and forth trying to achieve those very tight looking joints.
ReplyDeleteEd, it boggles the mind, does it not? And yet place after place we went, the stonework was just as you described it. We have a lot of technology, but in some ways we have also lot a great deal of knowledge.
Delete