ITCHY FEET TRAVELS

Konya, Turkey

July 5, 2023

It seems like the city of a thousand mosques, so many are they, around every corner, of all ages. Known to the Greeks as Iconium, most know Konya as the home of the poet Rumi. His final resting place is the mausoleum and it is this turquoise tomb that many come to visit. Konya has another claim to fame though: it is the center of the Sufi Mevlevi order of Islam – maybe better known as the whirling dervishes.

I spent a couple of days wandering the sights – the Mevlevi museum with beautiful decorations and illuminated manuscripts, the Attaturk House Museum with wooden balconies that are reminiscent of Siberia, the spruced up shops of the original covered Bedestan bazar, and the Aladdin Mosque atop the hill in the center of the city.

I had come to Konya though to see if I could get to the digs in Catalhoyuk. Designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site, this is a Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement from 7500-6400 BCE. Not merely a settlement, this was a proto-city with individual homes built next to each other. Just imagine – this was one of the very first precursors to cities. I so wanted to see it! The excavations begun in 1958 are still ongoing despite fits and starts and the occasional scandal over the years. Word from some locals in town was, there was a dig team there now that I could contact. That turned out to be a rumor.

And getting there proved to be more problematic than I thought. The closest town is Cumra and there is no transport beyond that. Despite my best efforts I did not manage to get to the site. I turned to the archeological museum in Konya which has a few of the artifacts from Catalhoyuk.

A few fragments of wall murals lie in their glass case. The paint is so fresh, they might have been painted yesterday. But these are more than nine thousand years old! I marvel at the geometric patterns, almost modern in their designs.

The white marble figure of an aging woman found here was thought to represent a mother goddess but more current theories suggest a priestess or a woman of high status. Typical of Catalhoyuk figures, this too shows an obese figure with disproportionately small hands and feet. It reminds me of the Fat Ladies of Malta but those are believed to be several thousand years younger than these. Nor were they all indisputably female.

Excavation at this site has shown that the houses were built on several levels more or less atop the previous ones. The peculiarity is the houses were flush with each other, with no doors or windows. Entry is thought to have been through the roof via a ladder through the vent over the cooking stove. Under the floors were found burial chambers. Some of the skeletons found buried are also housed here, almost intact.

Some of the potteries, necklaces of beads and tools found at the site dot the small room in the museum but the vast majority are in the large museum in Ankara. This glimpse has whetted my appetite and I cannot wait to go see them!