Day 5: Pamukkale and the Meander Valley — Molly Hunt

The Pamukkale area is famous for its geological rarities. It has a series of hot springs, which, over time, led to the formation of a layer of white rock, called travertine, on the side of a mountain. Pamukkale means “cotton palace,” in reference to the color of this landmark.

The white mountain.

This valley has been an important point of human settlement for millennia, drawing civilizations with its fertile soil, marble deposits, and healing waters, as well as its strategic location as a crossroads between various ancient trade routes. Many important ancient cities were build here, and we toured two of them today. 

First, we went to Laodicea, a wealthy trading city that often draws Christian tour groups today, because of its shoutout in the Book of Revelation in the Bible. Much of the city has only recently been excavated by archeologists, and we were able to see the progress they have made on the site recently, as well as piles of recent things they had excavated.

It was a little rainy as we walked down 

the center street of the city.

The archeologists at Laodicea are reconstructing the city as they excavated it, which is controversial in the field. We had a discussion about this as we walked, considering the reasons why this might be so. Rebuilding the city might be good for education and tourism purposes, but not necessarily benefit scholarship. These kind of hidden motivations are also present when thinking about what gets excavated first. For example, possibly because of the Christian tour groups that visit the reading, much effort has been put into the reconstruction of the church, which is one of the earliest known churches, built after the Milan edict in the 4th century A.D..

The mosaic tile on the floor of the church,

which archeologists pieced back together.

The Greek theater was also newly 

excavated. It was huge.

Our next stop was Hierapolis, another Greek city, known for its hot springs. We took a brief break from academics to walk down the Pamukkale terraces, dipping our feet in geothermally heated pools.

Hierapolis was a large city, and so there were tons of ruins  to explore. We walked through the city, stopping to talk about the city’s relationship to death, in what we call “deathscapes”. We saw this literally, in how the dead were buried outside the city walls, either in mounds, sarcophagi, or family rooms with inscriptions, depending on a person’s social status.

Tombs just outside the city.

We also saw this with the city’s special feature, the Plutonium, one of the ancient “gates to the underworld,” where people would bring sacrifices to Pluto, the god of death. The Plutonium was an important part of the city, showing how attitudes towards death influence daily life in a civilization.

The Plutonium, featuring a hot spring, a gate, 

and a reconstructed statue of Pluto.