Ruins of the big Egyptian temple

This morning, we were ready for another ancient site. Leaving the tent up for now, we started early and rode to the Red Hall in town. These are the remains of a giant temple to the Egyptian gods Serapis and Isis. It is so big, in fact, that it hasn’t been converted into church, instead a church was built inside the temple.

When we arrived, after a pleasant ride through a picturesque village, no one else was around. Approaching, the big scaffold around many of the walls were visible. Another site being renovated at the moment. Good for it, bad for us. Since it also costs an entrance fee, we took a look from the outside and left again for the acropolis.

There is a cable car going up to the acropolis, although it didn’t seem to run this morning. All the cabin were hanging motionless on the cables. So we rode Rocinante up the steep street to the entrance. Again, except for the staff of a café, a souvenir shop and the ticket booth, no one was around. By now it was 9am and the site was definitely open. Flo decided on an audio guide this time and didn’t regret it: Different information than on the signs and all in British English.

Nice look-out point

We followed the audio tour for the most part. Starting with a walk past the remains of palaces with a great view of the valley below, we came to the barracks and the arsenal. Here, the remains of an aqueduct could be seen in the valley. It is very impressive; they used pressure to get the water from the mountains up into the hill of the acropolis. Around the bend of the hill, we came past the library which is just a faint outline of the foundation now to the Temple of Trajan.

The biggest reassembled part of the temple

The Temple of Trajan is partly reassembled. The work had been done by Germans and there is a lot of documentation around about how they worked, how the deduced what it must have looked like and how they secured the site in case of another earthquake. It is art historian porn, really. Luckily, Flo was also interested in it. Two things made the re-imagining difficult: First, Byzantines had used and repaired the site, using marble pieces randomly in brick walls and second, locals burnt marble pieces lying around to get chalk. That seems unimaginable now but, I guess, marble ruins were useless at that time.

Found built into a Byzantine wall

We spent quite some time here, reading and looking at things. When we moved on, the path leads you down below the platform with the temple on it and you realize for the first time that the area you’ve been standing on is actually artificial. There are vaulted tunnels underneath trying to extend a level area out from the hill slope. Here, all of the metal links have been taken out of the walls… another case of ‘this is more useful than an old wall’. You can’t enter the vaulted section but a row of arch leads you along them.

The next highlight is the Hellenistic theatre carved into the hill side. It is incredibly steep but must have been awe-inspiring at any performance. The Temple of Dionysus is off to one side but we didn’t feel like going down all those steps in the sun just to have to climb them back up again.

The theater with the Temple of Dionysus at the bottom

The Altar of Zeus is not a lot more than rubble with trees on it as most of it is in Berlin now. The Ottomans made very generous deals with the German archaeologists, allowing them to take it to Germany.

At 11am, we were ruin-ed out. It was also time to call my mum so we hurried back to the camp ground. Flo prepared lunch while I called and afterwards, we packed up. Our next destination was Troy. Very tired again, we weren’t sure if we would make it today. Once on the road though, we pushed through.

The camp ground was about 700 meters from the archaeological site which would give us an early start tomorrow. For today, we showered, made dinner and wound down before cheering for the German football team. The game ended at midnight and we dropped into be like dead.