Stephanie Larson is an associate professor of classics at Bucknell University who received her Ph.D in classics from the University of Texas at Austin. She has great interest in the modern histories of both Greece and Turkey.

In April, Stephanie led a group of Smithsonian travelers on a voyage around Legendary Turkey and the Turquoise Coast. 

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As the Smithsonian Study Leader on the April 2012 Legendary Turkey program, I was thrilled to meet another fascinating group of Smithsonian travelers who had worked in such varied fields as nursing, education, medicine, law, geology, physics, neuropsychology, computer science and epidemiology. It is not every day that I have the opportunity to travel around the ancient Aegean and Mediterranean coasts with people who are so interesting in their own rights and also who are so interested in learning more about the history, archaeology and modern culture of the region. The variety in the Smithsonian travelers’ experience lent itself to stimulating questions and really deep and fascinating discussions, both on-site and during afternoons we spent relaxing on the gulets, beautiful Turkish wooden boats.

The western coast of Turkey. (Photo courtesy of flickr user audi_insperation.)

For example, as one travels down the western coast of Turkey and learns more about Greco-Roman antiquity, one cannot help but think of all the influential people that have come from this region who have influenced the later development of fields like philosophy, art, religion, history, and medicine. As a group, we talked and learned about Heracleitus, St. Paul, Galen and the Pergamene School of ancient sculpture. But as we considered all the great strands of these movements that either started or were influenced by ancient people from the west coast of the Aegean, we found ourselves concentrating on Herodotus, the so-called “Father of History,” who came from ancient Halicarnassos, now modern Bodrum, on the southwestern Turkish coast.  Having just visited the site of ancient Troy, our group was particularly fascinated by how Herodotus explains the origins of the Trojan War and why the Greeks sent a huge fleet against Troy in the second millennium BCE.

Ephesus, ancient ruins on the west coast of Turkey. (Photo courtesy of flickr user eleephotography.)

In the opening section of his History, Herodotus gives a different version of the war’s beginning than the usual story of the Judgment of Paris. For Herodotus, there are no goddesses involved; Aphrodite is not an anthropomorphized deity descending to earth from Olympus to make trouble with the humans. In Herodotus’ version, Paris, the prince of Troy, steals Helen from Sparta because other men had been stealing women throughout the Aegean and had not been punished for it. So, Paris figured that he too could get away with stealing himself a wife, and so he went to Sparta and carried Helen away. At least this is how Herodotus explains it. Our group talked about this story for quite some time, and we concluded that by taking the gods out of the narrative, Herodotus could indeed be rightly called the “Father of History,” as he attempted to reconcile a mythical story with a war that was thought to have happened seven-hundred years before his time. One of the best parts: we were having this discussion about Herodotus on the deck of a beautiful gulet, over a glass of wine and with the warm Aegean sun on our backs!

The traditional Turkey gulet. Photo by Matanya, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Read more about Smithsonian Journeys’ Legendary Turkey and the Turquoise Coast tour here. 

Jodi Magness holds a senior endowed chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. in archaeology and history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her Ph.D. in Classical archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania.

In May, Jodi lead a group of Smithsonian Journey travelers around the Ancient Worlds of Anatolia.

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The Euphrates River: the name evokes images of the earliest civilizations, mighty ancient powers such as Assyria and Babylonia, and modern Middle Eastern conflicts.  And here we were, driving from the town of Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey to the Euphrates River for a boat ride!  I had the good fortune of accompanying The Ancient World of Anatolia, a tour of southeastern and central Turkey. As we drove, I craned my head for my first glimpse of the fabled river. Finally, we reached the river, driving along its banks until stopping at a spot where we all boarded a boat.  I chose to sit with about half of the group on the boat’s roof, for the best view of the river as we made our way upstream.

I thought about how this river provided not only vital drinking water in this arid region, but served as a main transportation artery for all of the peoples along the hundreds of miles alongside its banks.  And I thought about how millennia ago, humans began to utilize the river to irrigate agricultural fields.  Thanks to irrigation, farmers were able to produce surplus crops, which led to the rise of specialized crafts and industries, as not everyone had to grow food just to survive. As a result, hierarchical or stratified societies developed – that is, centralized forms of government – and with them, the need for writing to keep official records. All of these thoughts swirled through my mind as we glided along the Euphrates River.  Suddenly, I realized this was a “Kodak moment.”  Everyone agreed, quickly assembling on the roof of the boat for a group photo.

Smithsonian Journeys group exploring the Euphrates River. (Photo by author.)

After about an hour, we returned to the dock and disembarked.  I stepped down to the river bank and dipped my hand in, so I could say that I have touched the waters of the Euphrates River.  We drove back along the river bank the way we had come, stopping for a delicious Turkish lunch at a restaurant overlooking the water.  The meal began with bread served hot out of a traditional oven, followed by a delicious salad of fresh, locally grown vegetables.   For the main course, I enjoyed fresh grilled trout; other members of the group chose lamb kebabs or Euphrates fish kebabs.  This was one of the many highlights of our tour of southeastern and central Turkey.

Read more about Smithsonian Journeys’ Ancient Worlds of Anatolia tour here.

Janet Jones is Professor of Classics at Bucknell University. Janet is an active field archaeologist specializing in Greek and Roman art and architecture, ancient urbanization, ancient technology with a focus on ancient glass production, and ancient environmental issues. She has published widely on the history of technology and is a frequent lecturer at universities and museums. This summer, she led a Smithsonian group around some of Turkey’s landmark classical sites and remarkable coastline. See her post from the trip below:

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A loggerhead turtle gets a morning meal. (Photo by the author.)

Visits to Turkey always include astonishing cultural treasures, impressive archaeological sites, extraordinary landscapes, delectable meals, and friendly people. But loggerhead turtles? I hadn’t expected them. But there they were, four of them the morning we visited, getting a morning meal as we watched from the flat bottomed boat that had brought us down through the marshes from Dalyon to the platforms of the blue crab fisherman who share some of their catch with the local turtles to the delight of visitors.

Dalyon, in the Mugla province of southwestern Turkey, is named for the fishing weirs that guarantee a steady supply of bass, mullet, and sea bream to local markets. It’s a comfortable little town with a big statue of sea turtles in the main square and a beautiful park running along the Dalyan Cayi, the small river that flows down through the marshes to the sea. In ancient times, this river was known as the Calbys and marked the boundary between the ancient kingdoms of Lycia and Caria.

On a day trip from our four day cruise on gulets in the Bay of Fethiye, our group arrived at the Dalyan riverside to the sight of a flotilla of gaily decorated and Turkish-carpeted flat bottomed boats, waiting to take groups of visitors on a tour of the local marshes. Our boat passed alluring riverside cafes on the way to our first photo-stop, a cliff with imposing rock-cut tombs. Our boat then wound past the beautiful ruins of the ancient seaport of Kaunos. As we neared the mouth of the river, our boat passed through a gate in one of the fishing weirs (lowered for passing boats by an attendant) and emerged into an open lagoon in the lee of the barrier island. This island, Iztuzu Beach, serves both as protected nesting area and as an award winning eco-friendly beach. The island is home to a research, rescue, and rehabilitation center that studies the loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and cares for injured turtles from the entire coast region.

The founding of this protected area is a heartening story of the victory of conservation over what had been minimally controlled development along this coast. In 1986, when plans for a resort hotel complex on Iztuzu Beach surfaced, the international outcry together with the request of Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, who was then President of the World Wildlife Fund, resulted not only in the suspension of the hotel project, but in the prohibition of construction and the establishment of a Special Environmental Protection Area (SEPA) covering 461 square meters in the region. This was the first protected area of its kind in Turkey, and it has since been joined by 13 other such protected areas. The wider Köyceğiz-Dalyan SEPA provides safe haven not only for loggerhead turtles but for, among others, the Nile turtle, a variety of herons and egrets, the European glass lizard, the rock nuthatch, the blue rock-thrush, the European roller, the Eurasian reed warbler, and sections of Turkish sweetgum and pine forests.

That day in the marshes was a bounty for the senses as we gazed at the enormous loggerheads gliding around our boat, breathed in the fragrance of the salt marsh, and listened to the wind in the reeds and the roar of the ocean beyond the narrow strip of sand.

Life in the marshes. At the fishing weirs in Dalyon. (Photo by the author.)

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Learn more about Smithsonian Journeys’ Legendary Turkey and the Turquoise Coast trip here, and check out Janet Jones’ upcoming trips.

Travel is a unique way to bring the entire family together like never before. Children who travel have the chance to engage with the world in a whole new way, indulge their interests and develop new ones, and learn about new people, places, and concepts firsthand.

We’ve worked with our partner Longitude Books, to find some of the best books for families getting ready to travel together. Authors Laurie Krebs and Anne Wilson bring us the colorful We’re Sailing Down the Nile, taking readers young and old to the land of the Pharaohs, mummies and Great Pyramids.

If you’d like to take your family to Egypt, now is a great time to experience the country at a unique time in history. Click here to learn more about our Egyptian Family Odyssey. Our next departure is this December.

Smithsonian Study Leader Karen Britt is Professor of Byzantine Art at the University of Louisville and has excavated in Turkey, Greece, and Israel. Here, shares her thoughts on exploring Ephesus with Smithsonian Travelers, which she did on our recent tour through Turkey.

The Library of Celsus at Ephesus. Photo: Amy Kotkin.

Each time I visit Ephesus, I am surrounded by people: those visiting the spectacular site today and those who lived in this bustling metropolis centuries ago.  Undoubtedly, a vivid imagination—something I have had since childhood—led me to archaeology.  As a young girl and later, as a teen, I read alot and almost exclusively books about people who lived in the past (think: Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Laura Ingalls Wilder and biographies for kids).  Consequently, the people who lived in the past were real to me, so real that I thought of them as my friends and their enemies were mine.  Although older, the past remains real to me; historical figures still seem like friends and enemies except now they sometimes switch sides!  As an archaeologist, I am fortunate to be able to dwell in and on the past a good deal of the time and to have acquired the tools necessary to reconstruct past cultures.

Smithsonian Travelers at Ephesus, Turkey. Photo: Karen Britt.

 As a specialist in Late Antique and Byzantine archaeology, when I walk through the streets of Ephesus today, it is not difficult to envision the past: it is a remarkably well-preserved site.  As I stroll down the colonnaded Curetes Street with its mosaic-paved sidewalks, I enjoy the breezes from the harbor and imagine the cooling sounds of water splashing in fountains (nymphaea) adjacent to the street.  I can picture the upper and lower markets (agoras) full of shoppers bargaining for supplies with vendors.  When I close my eyes, against a backdrop of temples, mansions, the Library of Celsus and countless public statues, I see men moving along bustling streets as they make their way to the theater and women rushing to take advantage of their limited hours in the baths. 

 Walking towards the Double Church of the Virgin, I am transported back to the important ecumenical Church Council of 431 that occurred here.  I envision robed bishops, from near and far, heatedly debating, for months, the nature of Christ.  Was he truly man and truly God simultaneously?  And if so, how should the Virgin Mary’s relationship to Christ be defined?  Weighty matters, indeed, were decided in this place, matters of enormous consequence for the future development of the Church.

 On a glorious spring morning, as I sit on a fallen column in the atrium of the church and gaze towards the well-preserved apse of the sanctuary, I cannot imagine ever tiring of Ephesus.  Each and every time I visit, the stones speak to me.

If you’re ready to see Ephesus for yourself, click for more on our Legendary Turkey and the Turquoise Coast tour. Karen Britt will be traveling with you next to Anatolia, and click here for more information on this tour.