ANTALYA DAY 2: ANTALYA MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Our second day in Antalya started out rainy, but since we were to spend it in a museum, the rain did not bother us.   

 Our guide, a lecturer really, was local professor of archaeology, Gul Isin, who gave an enthralling tour through the museum as well as local ancient history.  After seeing the broad shapes of the ancient city of Perge, it was even more interesting to see the artifacts left by the people who lived nearby through the millennia.  

 Below is an interesting shape of very ancient pottery, which we still see today in the local shops. 

 These are reconstructed burial sites, with the bones left inside.  The bones are from multiple individuals. 

 

 These bottles are from our lecturer's own excavations and doctoral thesis. 

 There were several rooms of statues, mostly of gods or human heroes.  This one, of the three muses, shows the same woman in three poses. 

 This statute is not of extraordinary importance in its own right, but was given a place of honor and its own display based on its recent history.  A local archaeologist had discovered an arm of the statue in an excavation.  When she visited The US, she saw the rest of the statue and recognized it immediately.  She took photos and measurements, and proved that this statue belonged to the piece she had found.  The statue was ultimately returned to Turkey. 

We heard similar stories throughout our tour, of art and artifacts that had been removed from Turkey, and the difficulty of arranging for their return. 

 

A large hall was given over almost entirely to sarcophagi.   The boxes were made close to the quarries.  Most people bought them with ready-made generic carvings along the long sides, and generic, unfinished figures on the top, with personalized carvings to be made on the ends.

This one was my favorite.  The sarcophagus was made for a woman with her own money.  Instead of finishing the carving of her husband, she left instructions that she was to be buried alone, and his face never finished.  

 

Another wing of the museum contained artifacts from various groups in the area.  Below is a case for a calligraphy pen and ink, a design common even today.