Humanly Possible

In the end we did all that was humanly possible. Infinite time and patience were necessary, first to reduce the filling laid against the face of the walls to a mere skin; then to remove what remained with such implements as razor blades and porcupine quills, so that the paint could be fixed and preserved for recording.

What emerged, is today fairly well known;
particularly the altar frescoes with their spotted guardian lions on either
side or the altar front painted like a little miniature temple. However, the
upper parts of the men and animals in the processional scenes were
unfortunately lost forever.

So here at Uqair was a situation exactly
resembling that at AR Ubaid itself; a settlement of the “’Ubaid” period on the
larger hill and beside it a temple which had been repeatedly rebuilt in later
times. Our greatest curiosity was to know what, at both sites, would have been
the character of the original AL ‘Ubaid period temple, contemporary with the
settlement.

For Sir Leonard Woolley had familiarized us
with the idea that the makers of the AL ‘Ubaid pottery were a primitive marsh
dwelling people who built only in wattle and daub. It was at Tell Abu Shahrein,
the ancient city of Eridu that I was later able to solve this problem; and it
is to that site, perhaps the most extraordinary from a technical point of view
ever excavated, that we must now turn.

Beginning Eridu

From the beginning Eridu seemed a likely source of information on such subjects, if only because of its historical reputation for extreme antiquity. The Babylonian “Legend of Creation” in the “bi lingual” version simply states “All the lands were sea: then Eridu was made.” There is much else in Sumerian literature to confirm the traditional priority of the city, since it was the home of Enki, God of the Abyss, who was also the source of human wisdom.

Here he dwelt in his shrine upon the shores
of the “deep” which, like the so-called “waters” in Genesis, was divided as a
preliminary to Creation. The site as one sees it today certainly seems a
perfect setting for such a legend. The mound stands about fourteen miles south
of Ur, in a very isolated wilderness of dust and camel thorn. It takes the form
of a platform, about three hundred yards square, with the ruins of a ziggurat
tower rising above it at one end.

TOPKAPI PALACE

The famous Ottoman historian Evliya Celebi describes the Topkapi Palace (Topkapi Sarayi) as “the loveliest sultanate palace that human skill could have created. One can not help doing anything but ruling if living in here! If you can come out of this complex game that is made of terraces, corridors, stairs and interior courts; you find yourself in the world of Arabian Nights again. The palace once Ottoman Sultans lived is visited by thousands of visitors from all parts of the world, is the most splendid monument of Istanbul.

The palace had a concept peculiar to the East, accommodating several qualities in it: The residence of the Sultan and the center of a world empire, the religious center of half of the world and the stage that incredible intrigues displayed, the focus of cruel murders and the cradle of breathtaking successes. Once, 4,000-5,000 people used to live in Topkapi Palace. This was a city in the city. Fatih Sultan Mehmet decided to have a vast palace built to the ridges of old Byzantium Acropolis.

The reason Sultan Mehmet chose this place was not only the beauty of the ridges. He was planning to have a residential fortress built where Istanbul could be protected best. A high city wall, extending from Golden Horn as far as the Sea of Marmara, separating Topkapi Palace from the rest of the city. The Byzantium walls, beginning from the corner of the palace and stretching to Theodosian Walls through the shores of Marmara were protective against a possible sea attack.

The First Court

This front court that is connected to the main entrance with Bab-i Humayun (the Imperial Gate), once the Janissaries used to accommodate, serves as the parking area for the buses and cars bringing thousands of visitors today. On the left are Defterdar Dairesi (the Financial Department) and ig Cephane (the Interior Arsenal, the former Haghia Eirene Church); while the Archaeological Museum and Cinili Kosk (the Tiled Pavilion) that Mehmet U had built are located at the back.

The Second Court

The entrance to the palace is through the next gate, Bab-us Selam. Everybody had to get off his horse at this gate, but the Sultan since he was the only authorised one to pass through this gate on horse. When the foreign ambassadors would be welcomed, this court used to be crowded by the notables of the empire, the Janissaries and court guards used to gather here with their showy costumes.

The participants of these welcoming ceremonies could be up to 10,000 and the foreign guests mostly expressed their bewilderment against the silence that was dominant during the ceremonies. In the court, visited by thousands of people today, once gazelles, deers, goats and peacocks used to stroll under the cypress trees.

This court, the garden of silence and peace, and where the great and carefully planned ceremonies took place, used to reflect the spirit of the empire. The Divan (council of the state) used to gather at Kubbealti on the left. This domed, rectangular, plain place has low sofas (“divan”, in Turkish) covered with carpets, extending along with the walls in three sides of it.

The legendary grilled window above the Grand Vezir’s place is still there, the Sultan used to watch the discussions in Divan behind this window. Generally, the Divan used to gather four times between Sunday and Tuesday, and all sort of decisions relevant to administration were taken here. Orders were given, feudal fiets (timar) were delivered, complaints were listened, the decrees (firmans) were signed and the negotiations with the foreign ambassadors; all these used to take place here in Divan.

It was easy to understand the status of the officials and notables by looking at the arm shape and colour of their costumes or even linings, the fur, but first of all the turban and the style of their beard. The vezirs used to wear green, muftis white, mullahs light blue and ulema purple; while the ones relating to the court used to be distinguished by their red costumes, the colour of sheikhs was blue. Across Divan, the East of the second court, were the Dolap Ocagi and the kitchens. Meal for the ones living in the palace, which means thousands of people, was cooked here. It was one of the important porcelain collections of the world due to the variety of kitchen tools made of Chinese, Japanese and European porcelains as well as copper pots, bowls and cups.

Behind the third gate, Bab- tis-Saadet, was the Throne Room (Arz Odasi) where the Sultan waited for notables, ambassadors and foreign guests. In this room, furnished Ottoman/Turkish style, the Sultan used to accept his visitors sitting on showy pillows and precious carpets. The world beyond it, Enderun, was close for them too.

It will be helpful to see some part of the Harem before going this section. Harem was directed with strict rules and great care, and this director was never a man, it was the mother of the ruling Sultan, Valide Sultan. As a concept, Harem means the forbidden or holy place. There were many women slaves and eunuches in Harem along with the women taken into by the Sultan for their beauty. The most powerful one in the Harem was the Kizlar Agasi. That was the third important person of the Ottoman Empire, after the Grand Vezir and Sheikhulislam.

The Third Court

The walk in the Harem ends at its actual entrance in the Third Court. This lovely building, built in the 18th century is The Library of Ahmet III. The buildings that are arranged in an order where the thrones, valuable costumes, ornamented weapons, miniatures and the legendary treasures of the Sultans are exhibited today used to be the palace school. This school was probably the most important official institution of the East and one of the best educational institutions that survived in a feudal system. 48 of the 60 Grand Vezirs whose lives are well known were educated here, including four vezirs of Suleyman the Magnificent. The costume collection of the Sultan can be seen in the Turkish bath located to the East of the Third Court: Turkish fabrics woven of silk and artificial fiber, silk caftans, the Sultan’s garments and precious prayer rugs. In the four rooms of the world famous Treasury, also the first residence of Fatih Sultan Mehmet in Topkapi Palace, the legendary treasures that were collected by Ottoman Sultans for centuries are exhibited.

Helmets, daggers, the candlesticks made for the tomb of Prophet Mohammed and also an elephant-shaped play box made of gold are exhibited in the first room. In the second room is the famous Topkapi Dagger that has three emerald stones as well 12 big and 124 small diamonds on its handle; this dagger has become world famous after the movie that Melina Mercouri performs a skillful burglar. In the third room is the biggest emerald of the world, and the Harem, a separate world isolated from the rest of the palace, was composed of corridors, secondary courts, small gardens, stairs and various places around 300 in total.

Kasikci Elmasi (The Spoonmaker’s Diamond) that is 86 carats and ornamented with 49 diamonds. The name of the diamond comes from the incident that it was bought by a junk dealer in charge of three wooden spoons in the 17™ century. Each of the two candlesticks made of pure gold and weighs 49 kilograms and has 6666 diamonds.

Sultan Abdulmecit had them made for Kaaba at Mecca. The gold plated throne that is decorated with 954 emerald and ruby stones, is the one the Sultans used to sit during their admissions in Bab-us Saadet. The passage to the fourth room is through a terrace with a perfect view of the Sea of Marmara. A part of the Iran and Turkish miniature collection that has very much importance in terms of history of art, is exhibited in the building next to the Fourth Court.

The Turkish miniature art was at its peak in the 1sthand 161’1 century. The volumes of manuscripts were decorated with flowers, buds, the sky, clouds and people. The variety in the way that the nature, animals, rocks and architecture, drawings and the usage of gold are the indicator that these creations were made by several artists.

Although the Turkish miniatures look like Iranian and Arab miniatures at the first glimpse, generally they reflect the daily life; and it is possible to come across with the traces of romanticism and decorative examples. There is partial perspective in the miniatures as well as no lighting and shading. The remains of the holy Muslim personalities are exhibited in Hirka-i Saadet dairesi. The overcoat, a piece of beard, flag and sword of the Prophet as well as the sword of the first four caliphs Abu Bekr, Umar, Othman and Ali are here. Also, the holy objects from Mecca are here: The keys and locks of Kaaba, the solid gold covering for the black Hacer ul-Esved stone that is holy for the Muslims.

The Fourth Court

In the adjacent garden stepping down in form of terraces are the fountains, Revan Koskui636), Bagdat Kosku (1639), an arbor from 1641 and Sofa Kosku from 18th century. Ending the visit to the Saray at the terrace of Mecidiye Kosku or at Teras Cafe at its lower floor. You can enjoy the wonderful panorama here.

Source: https://ensaristanbul.com/topkapi-palace/

Deluges excavations

Woolley’s Ur excavations ended in 1934: but
three years later some new light was thrown on the problems, which he had,
encountered at AL ‘Ubaid by a further short investigation of the site, in which
I myself took part. We have spoken in an earlier chapter about Deluges’
excavations of the so-called Oval Temple at Khafaje and regretted
that only its plan could be recovered, owing to the denuded state of its
foundations. The central problem regarding the character of the temple itself
remained unsolved.

 The
oval teens, with its double line of outer walls, enclosed an open courtyard;
and in the center of the courtyard, a rectangular brick platform was found with
a stairway leading up to it. In his search for some clue to the reconstruction
of such a building, Deluges was reminded that almost the only parallel was to
be found in the similar, though much better preserved temple platform of the
Early Dynastic period, found ten years earlier by Hall and Woolley at AL ‘Ubaid.

Here, though once more the temple itself
had not survived, something was to be learnt about its architectural character
from the rich facade ornaments which, as we have already mentioned, Woolley
found stacked against the base of the platform. But, in excavating and removing
these, he had covered much of the surrounding area with dumped earth and no
further investigation had been made of the platform’s immediate surroundings. Deluges
now developed a conviction that further significant parallels between the two
temples could be established. So in 1937, with Woolley’s willing agreement, he
and I returned to the site for ten days to make a further short examination.

Oriental Institute excavations

Our discoveries during this small
“posthumous” excavation at AL ‘Ubaid could almost be described as dramatic and
were certainly most satisfying to Deluges. He and I had taken with us our most
competent wall tracers from the Oriental Institute excavations.
These two men were first employed in cleaning the brickwork on the summit of
the platform, in the hope that some vestigial remains might survive of the
temple foundations.

They did indeed discover, at the head of
the stairway, brickwork of two different types, as though some building had
been more than once reconstructed. However, unhappily the denudation caused by
the weather had completely defaced the shapes of the walls. Next, therefore, we
transferred them to the pavement at the foot of the platform on which the great
bronze lintel, copper bulls’ heads and other architectural ornaments had been
found by Woolley and Hall, and which was still easily recognizable.

Bulgaria Trips Tour

Since antiquity different tribes and peoples have inhabited the territory of Bulgaria. The country’s many ancient settlements and burial mounds are a proof of that. Present-day Bulgaria was also a cradle of some of the earliest civilizations in Europe. Evidence of that is the oldest gold ornament people have ever discovered. It was unearthed in the Chalcolithic necropolis near Varna. Certainly these are all also available to be visit in your Bulgaria trips.

From the age of Ancient Thrace we have inherited valuable cultural monuments, including tombs such as the Kazanlak tomb, the Aleksandrovska tomb, and the Sveshtarska tomb. We have also inherited treasures (the Panagyursko, Rogozensko, and Valchitransko treasures, among others). Last but not least are the sanctuaries and temples that remind us of times long gone. The holy places at Perperikon, Starosel, Kozi Gramadi, Begliktash, and elsewhere.

Let us arrange your Bulgaria trips

Although Bulgaria is a small country it offers many places to see and many things to do while on Bulgaria vacations. These range from the “Kukeri” Festivals to monasteries, from coastal resorts to golf resorts. Let’s not forget the rose fields and Rose Festival, as well as the ‘UFO’ building and so on. Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, with its Sofia sightseeing tour that reveals the secrets of this ancient place. Then Plovdiv, the second biggest town. Or Varna – the sea capital of Bulgaria. Or the smallest Bulgarian town, Melnik. Almost every place in Bulgaria has its own festival or celebration. Some of them are very popular, others people celebrate in the villages or towns only. Plan your Bulgaria trips and check with us for any festival to come.

Delougaz recognised

One astonishing accomplishment in this
respect is illustrated by two photographs in the report. The first shows a
stairway of mud brick, approaching the north east entrance to Temple 7.
Included in it are two distinct occupations of the building, which are marked
“a” and “b”. The floor in the foreground and the three bottom steps belong to
the first occupation. The floor of the second occupation has been cut away, showing
the corresponding wall face, slightly over hanging that of the first.

Delougaz recognised that this overhang was caused by successive replasterings of the walls during the second occupation. He had already observed locally that, in any important mud brick buildings in use at the present day, the plaster deteriorates rapidly and the walls are therefore conscientiously replastered each year, usually in the autumn before the winter rains.

He accordingly realised that, if the number
of replasterings could be counted, a corresponding number of years could
probably be attributed to the occupation period concerned. This, as can be seen
in the second picture, he was actually able to do, and approximately sixteen
years could be estimated as the duration of occupation No. 2 in the seventh Sin
Temple.

Sixteen years corresponded

Having seen that these sixteen years corresponded to a rise of seventy five centimeters in the floor level, he was able to correlate this with the total accumulation of debris in each of the temples: and since these, by the character of the objects found in them, could already be attributed to the successive phases of the Early Dynastic period.

It became possible, allowing a fairly wide margin of error, to estimate the length of the Early Dynastic period for the first time on archaeological evidence. The ingenuity and exemplary care with which this experiment was conducted may, it is hoped, in itself serve to refute any general imputation of ineptitude in the “methodism” of Near Eastern excavators.

During the years that this work was in
progress at Khafaje I myself had been working with another gang of Sherqati
workmen at the headquarters site, Tell Asmar.

Like Delougaz, I had found a small Sumerian
temple and traced back its architecture through all three phases of the Early
Dynastic period to an original, very small chapel, about contemporary with Sin
I. One of these temples had three separate shrines; and it was beneath the
pavement of one that I found the cache of twenty one Sumerian statues,
including the so called “cult statues” of the God Abu and his consort, which
have today become familiar in books on Sumerian sculpture.

Earth disposal

Then there is the matter of earth disposal.
In Anatolia, the gang, which supports the packmen, consists partly of men with
long shovels, which can be used if necessary for throwing earth up from an
excavation to a remarkable height; and partly of men with wheelbarrows or
working a Decauville railway.

In Iraq, the earth used to be carried away
in straw baskets, which were filled by a shovel man attendant on the wall
tracer. However, today it is done much more economically with a kind of bag of
coarse material, looped at one end round the neck and thrown over the shoulder.

There are many other methods, including
donkeys with pannier baskets in Syria, or even small “kamyons” which are used
by the French in Asia Minor. The economy of an excavation depends on such
devices, but its effectiveness depends entirely upon the skilled digger,
whether he be a trained local artisan or the archaeologist himself.

Egypt and Iraq

To turn then to the actual process of wall
tracing: first, a wall face must be located, and this is done by scraping the
surface of the ground vehemently. With a dragging tool of the hoe type, such as
is used either in Egypt and Iraq, or with a shovel as is more usually done
elsewhere, until the loose soil is removed. Under certain circumstances, the
actual pattern of the brickwork then appears, but more often one can see a
difference in texture and coloring between the wall and the filling; and a
clear line of mud plaster separates the two.

The packman then cuts down into the filling
until he has a hole in which he can squat, in order to approach the wall face
horizontally. The strokes of the pick or knife, with its point towards the
wall, then become increasingly delicate, until the last crust of filling flakes
away of its own accord, leaving the plaster almost undamaged. This process is
continued progressively from wall to wall until the chamber or compartment is
almost completely encircled, leaving what modern builders call a “dumpling” of
filling in the center.

The trench thus created will, if possible,
have penetrated only to within six inches or so of the original pavement level
and the “dumpling” will now also be removed down to this level. The last few
inches of filling, in which objects are likely to be found lying upon the
pavement, is finally removed by the most skilled workers, using the more
sensitive knife rather than a pick. All objects are of course preserved in
their exact setting for photography and recording.

City of Khorsabad

Curiously enough, when we came to start work in Iraq, the ruined city of Khorsabad, which Frankfort had chosen as the scene of our first tentative experiment in Mesopotamian archaeology, had something in common with Amamah, in that it also had been built and occupied by a single generation only. One even suspected that Frankfort himself had borne this fact in mind: for we were a very inexperienced party and might well have found the complicated stratification of a more normal mound beyond our capacity to deal with. Let us then consider the circumstances with which we were faced at Khorsabad.

The site lies on a small tributary of the
Tigris, fourteen miles north east of Nineveh, and its history in the records of
archaeology began in 1843, when Emile Botta, then French Consul at Mosul, had
recently begun excavating at Nineveh itself and had, rather surprisingly, so
far met with very little success.

One of his workmen drew his attention to
the mounds at Khorsabad, and, in the manner of excavators at the time, he “put
a gang of men to work there”, visiting them every few days to check their progress.
After a week’s work, it became clear to him that what he had discovered was, to
use his own words “a huge Assyrian palace, containing a large number of
chambers and corridors all the walls of which were lined with slabs, having
sculptured representations of gods and kings, and battles, and religious
ceremonies.

Side by side with these representations
were long inscriptions in the cuneiform character.” In fact, he felt justified
in sending off to the Louvre his famous dispatch, simply saying “Ninive est
retrouve.” It was not of course actually Nineveh, but the palace of King Sargon
II of Assyria in the city of Dur Sharrukin, which he built as his new capital
during the fourth quarter of the eighth century B.c.

Kurdish villagers

At Khorsabad we were living in an empty farmhouse built by Kurdish villagers on the highest part of the main mound. From the roof top one could see the whole conformation of the city’s ruins; an enclosure just under a mile square, surrounded by mud brick walls eighty feet thick, with seven gateways, most of them ornamented originally with winged  bull portal sculptures.

Where one stood, level with the centre of
the city on the north side, a vast platform of solid mud brick had been raised
to the full height of the walls, no doubt taking advantage of a more ancient
mound which already existed at that point. It was upon this that Sargon built
the great palace which, with its royal apartments, private temples and
miniature ziggurat tower, forms the basis of the familiar reconstruction
afterwards made by the French excavators.

Bulgarian Language

The majority of Americans who wrote on
Bulgaria or visited the country showed energy, curiosity, sense of wonder, and
faith in the future of Bulgaria and mankind even when they were disappointed in
some particular aspect of their travel experience. They considered knowledge,
and their travel experiences important, their individual responses and
reactions significant and worth preserving. Although they were usually
unfamiliar with the Bulgarian language, history and customs, their
comments on the Bulgarian character were generally positive.

It was difficult for the American traveler,
who knew little about the country, to come to terms with the complex cultural
milieu of Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks, etc. and to resolve the difference
sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant between the Balkan mind cushioned on a
multi-layered rich past and a modern American mind formed in the New World free
from the burden of the past.  The
Bulgarians, busy with their struggle to free themselves and maintain their
independence, thought little about and did even less to attract tourists.

American tourists in Balkans

For the American tourists the Balkans were
on the periphery of their travel plans. Most of those who visited the country
went there as passers-by and caught only a glimpse of Bulgaria. Bulgaria in the
view of the American traveler was either a peasant society or a society in
transition with many Oriental traits still present.

The Bulgarians were described as simple,
natural, methodological, disciplined, and diligent. There were, of course, some
descriptions which were tendentious and even misleading. The Orthodox Church
was criticized, in part, in the belief that this would make Americans come to
the support of the American missionaries working in Bulgaria.

However, the commentaries of these pioneer
American travelers are not without merit. Through sharing their travel
experiences with their countrymen, the American travelers contributed toward
making Bulgaria known to Americans. Although most of the descriptions were brief,
they nonetheless were good enough to create an image of a country with a long
history, a relatively heroic past and a people struggling to free itself, and
modernize its country.