Andante Travels

Introduction

The history and prehistory of central Anatolia has been an extraordinarily rich pageant. At times this was the home of her own culturally distinctive kingdoms and empires. At other times it was part of the Hellenistic world, the Roman Empire or at the centre of Turkish Empires. Some were led here by the Silk Road and the Spice Route, whilst others came from the Mediterranean.

Our programme provides the framework for a journey through a massive sweep of time starting with the earliest Neolithic city in the Near East at Çatal Höyük, and follows the story through the superbly-sited Hittite capital city of Hattusas, to the capital of the Phrygian realm of King Midas at Gordion and Kerkenes Dağ, a remote and utterly spectacular forgotten mountain city, which has been excavated for many years by your Guide Lecturer.

We discover hidden early Christian churches and monasteries cut into the strange rock formations of eroded volcanic tuffs - a fairytale landscape. Isolated cells were carved out of the pinnacles by ascetic monks and entire settlements were created underground. The elegant monuments of pre- Ottoman Seljuk Turkey we see as we travel provide a final chapter to our story through the millennia.

This year we fly into Konya, saving one day-long journey and enabling us to begin the story with the earliest site.

Itinerary

Some of the sites are very rough underfoot and there are some long walks over rugged terrain.

Day One
Fly to Konya via Istanbul and drive to our hotel.

Day Two
Çatal Höyük, one of the largest and strangest sites of the Neolithic period. First excavated in the early 1960s, work has recently resumed, and the large mound has been shown to be closely packed with houses representing occupation for 1000 years or more, from 7500-6500BC. Some rooms had wall-paintings, or modelled animal heads protruding from the wall, and the interpretation of these structures has caused much debate. The stone tool industry here is based on volcanic glass, obsidian. Return to explore Konya, including the Mevlana Museum of the ‘whirling dervishes’.

Day Three
Across the Konya plain to the foothills of the Taurus mountains to see the neo-Hittite rock relief at Ivris written in Luwian hieroglyphics, showing King Warpalawa of Tuwanuwa standing before the god Tarhunta. Continue to Göreme.

Day Four
The Ihlara Valley is a most beautiful, verdant gorge occupied by a fast-flowing river. Early Christian communities worshipped here in their rock-cut, vividly frescoed churches.

The impressive Neolithic mound of Aşikli Höyük with 9 building levels from which excavations have revealed closely packed buildings. One special building appears to have held a special communal function.    

Day Five
Visit the extraordinary underground city of Derinkuyu. This is one of the largest and most accessible of many such Byzantine settlements, but little is known of their true function. However, with such a geology at their disposal, it may almost have been as easy to dig down as build up. After visiting the museum at Niğde we continue to visit the rock-cut monastery at Eski Gümüsler.

Day Six
In the shadow of snow-capped volcano Mount Erciyas, visit Kültepe. This capital of the ancient kingdom of Kanesh was a centre of international trade in the early 2nd millennium BC. Burnt palaces and temples can be seen on the citadel and merchants’ houses, where thousands of written tablets were found, in the Karum of the lower city. After lunch tour the Seljuk fortifications of Kayseri, ancient Caesarea, and the mosque of Huant Hatun.

Day Seven
Göreme, a fairy-tale landscape of eroded volcanic tuffs, full of rock-cut churches of devout Christian communities, above. Free afternoon.

Day Eight
Visit the museum at Yozgat, which contains the finds from Kerkenes Dag, forgotten mountain city, which has been surveyed and excavated by Geoffrey and Francoise Summers since 1993. Kerkenes is a strongly fortified mountain-top city of Iron Age date. Long before the city was built, Hittite kings had performed rituals at a shrine that was later enclosed within the city walls.

Day Nine
A day devoted to the Hittites. First see the open-air shrine of Yazilikaya (‘the Inscribed Rock’), partly built, and partly natural, with carvings showing two processions of deities, one mainly of males and one mainly of females. At the end, the scene depicts a meeting of the two major deities, the weather god and the sun goddess. The shrine lies at the end of a sacred way which led from Hattusas, the Hittite capital. After touring the major monuments of the Hittite capital we go on to Alaca Höyük, site of an important late Hittite walled settlement with palatial buildings, but best known for the series of royal tombs dating to the early Bronze Age.

Day Ten
Gordion, known as the Phrygian capital of King Midas, where excavations over about 50 years have revealed large parts of the citadel with its impressive stone gate. It is most famous for the large number of tumuli surrounding the site, and excavations from three of them produced spectacular results.
National Archaeological Museum in Ankara for an overview and summary of the story area we have been exploring. The treasures on display complete the visual picture.

Day Eleven
Return flight from Ankara via Istanbul.

NB wild flowers are abundant in this area and form a real feature of our May tour.

Included

WHAT’S INCLUDED

• Flights Scheduled flights with Turkish Airlines London/Istanbul/Konya; Ankara/Istanbul/London
• Transfers private coach provided to coincide with group flights
• Local Travel Private a/c coach
• Meals All meals included; drinks (except water) are not
• Guide Lecturer (A local guide will acompany the tour throughout) Not to be confused with "guest lecturers"!  The guide lecturer will be with you from breakfast to supper, and probably even a drink in the bar afterwards.  There is the occasional site where they may not be allowed to guide because of local regulations (we normally manage to circumnavigate these) but otherwise the guides are just that.  They will have been chosen because of specialist knowledge and their ability to communicate and interest you.  After 22 years of making tours worldwide, we are highly appreciative of the attributes of a good guide, and intensely critical of people who do not possess them.  If you would like to know more about Dr Geoffrey Summers, please click his name.
• Tour Manager We never know how best to call the very special people whom we choose to accompany you on your tour.  They are usually employed in this capacity only by us, and have been trained to do things in the Andante way - unobtrusive, friendly and quietly efficient.
• Local Guide
• Fieldnotes written for the tour
• Entry & tips Entry to all sites in programme; tips included.

Flights & Visa

Airline: Turkish Airlines

TK1980    London Heathrow/Istanbul   11:25/17:20
TK 2038   Istanbul/Konya                       20:35/21:45
TK2117    Ankara/Istanbul                     10:00/11:05
TK1985    Istanbul/London Heathrow   13:10/15:15

Please note these flights are an indication of what the flights are likely to be. Please contact the office for exact details

Visa and Passport Requirements (for British passport holders only)*

Passport must be valid for 6 months on entry into Turkey. Visas can be purchased at the airport on arrival on production of a valid passport and a £10.00 note (Scottish currency is not accepted)

Hotels

2 nights in a hotel near the Mevlana in Konya (best available);
5 nights in a hotel in the town of Göreme;
1 night in a simple hotel in the Yozgat National Park;
2 nights in a large modern hotel in central Ankara in the diplomatic area;

Comments

What Did You Enjoy Most About This Tour?

"Breadth of sites visited ranging from Palaeolithic to early Christian Churches. Wonderful walk in Gorge. Visit to Obsidian mountain and finally chance to see Catalhoyuk and Hattusas, which I have longed to visit.

Discovering Turkey. As a first time with little knowledge I am fascinated and will return. When I had taken in as much history as I could absorb I photographed the wild flowers. Fields of poppies.

The revelation of four millennia of history in a region hitherto unknown to me was an unforgettable and very precious experience. Having studied and lived in a classical and then Chinese world, this was something completely new which in a curious way provided a link between East and West. I also thoroughly enjoyed the lectures and the company of the other tour members. It was a very happy, cheerful trip.

The range of landscape and the enormous amount we learnt about, a previously relatively unknown period of history. Also discovering the warmth and humour of the Turkish people and the richness of their culture. I would love to explore more!"

Reading List

 

This list is no more than a guide to some books that you may find useful to read in advance of the tour, or when you return. Although they may be out of print, some older books are included in the hope that you may find a copy in a good public library. Talks given on the tour will fill in the background to what we are seeing, so no prior knowledge or pre-tour cramming is expected or needed.

NEW

Antonio Sagona, Paul Zimansky (2009) Ancient Turkey (Routledge World Archaeology). Covering the entire span before the Classical period, fully illustrated with over 160 images and written in lively prose, this text will be enjoyed anyone interested in the archaeology and early history of Turkey and the ancient Near East.

General

Ekrem Akurgal was the doyen of Turkish archaeologists, and has enjoyed an international reputation. His Ancient Civilisations and Ruins of Turkey (Istanbul 8^th Edition 1993) has a useful historical introduction, and seeks to illustrate the story by reference to the major sites.

John Freely is an American academic who has lived many years in Turkey and built up a deep knowledge of Turkish archaeology, especially of the Classical period. His Companion Guide to Turkey (London 1979), and Classical Turkey (Viking/Penguin Architectural Guides for Travellers,  Harmondsworth 1991) are very readable, and much more than site guides.

Seton Lloyd, (1967) Early Highland Peoples of Anatolia. (Thames & Hudson).  A slim, illustrated book, using text and many colour pictures. It was derived from a large coffee-table book, The Dawn of Civilization, edited by Stuart Piggott, which was contributed to by a string of eminent experts of the mid-20^th century. Seton Lloyd's text is particularly useful as a short introduction on the peoples like the Hittites and their contemporaries, the Phrygians, Lydians and Lycians.

Seton Lloyd, (1989). Ancient Turkey. (British Museum Publications, London). Seton Lloyd was once Director of the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, and he had lived and worked in Turkey for many years. If you can find a copy, this is a simple, straightforward text, illustrated with many of Lloyd's own photographs, and it covers from the Neolithic to the Byzantine periods.

Roger Matthews (editor) (1997), Ancient Anatolia. (British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, London). Roger Matthews was Director of the BIAA when it celebrated its 50^th anniversary. For the occasion, he collected contributions by archaeologists, linguists and historians about British work on ancient Turkey - including a chapter by Ian Hodder on the new programme of research at Çatalhöyük.

Richard Stoneman (1993), A Traveller's History of Turkey (Orion Publishing, London) is particularly useful in providing a concise and simple synopsis of the whole history of the country from prehistoric times to the present day - and it is in print.

Particular periods and subjects

Bryce, Trevor (1999). The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford University Press. The author is now the senior academic writing on the history of the Hittites. This is a serious, scholarly, detailed discussion of Hittite history.

Bryce, Trevor (2002). Life and Society in the Hittite World. Oxford University Press. By the same author, a companion to the history text, this book has chapters on the king and court, people and the law, scribes, farmers, merchants, warriors, the gods, etc.

Gurney, O. R. (1990). The Hittites. Penguin Books, London. Gurney's book was first published in 1951, and remained in print for more than forty years, undergoing several careful revisions. Oliver Gurney was the doyen of British Hittite scholars, and he had the gift of writing simply for the lay reader, while actually knowing more than anyone else alive.

Macqueen, J. G. (1986). The Hittites and their Contemporaries in Asia Minor. (Thames & Hudson). A revised edition of the 1975 original. Written for the interested lay reader, an economical text with many illustrations.

Mellaart, J. (1975) The Neolithic of the Near East (Thames & Hudson).  A now out-dated general source for the early prehistory of the whole of the Middle East. Since Mellaart worked mostly in Turkey, his coverage of Anatolian prehistory is particularly authoritative, although things have changed a good deal since he wrote.

Mellaart, J.: (1967) Çatal Höyük, a neolithic town in Anatolia. (Thames & Hudson).  Easy reading and well illustrated - a fascinating book to hook you on Çatal Höyük for life.

Hodder, I. (2006). The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Turkey's Ancient 'Town'. (Thames & Hudson).  Having worked at Çatalhöyük since 1993, Ian Hodder has now written a book for the general public.

Kührt, A.: (1995) The Ancient Near East. (Routledge, 2 volumes). An authoritative ancient history of the Near Eastern civilizations, including the Hittite and Phrygian civilizations of ancient Anatolia. Highly commended as the basis for serious reading and study, but its main focus is naturally on ancient Mesopotamia and the Levantine coastlands, so Anatolian civilizations are not central to the book.

Kostof, S.: (1974) Caves of Gods: the monastic environment of Byzantine Cappadocia, (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.). Very useful and informative on the extraordinary phenomenon of Byzantine Christianity in Cappadocia.

Krautheimer, Richard (1986). Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (4th ed.: Pelican History of Art, Penguin Books). The standard textbook on the subject.

Mitchell, George (ed.), (1995) Architecture of the Islamic World. Thames & Hudson, London. Beautifully illustrated, and helps to put Ottoman architecture into its Islamic context.

Shipley, Graham (2000), The Greek World After Alexander: 323 - 30 BC. (Routledge, London) covers the period from various perspectives, political and historical, cultural, philosophical, scientific, religious and literary.

Turkey today and yesterday

Irfan Orga (1988) Portrait of a Turkish Family.  One of the excellent classics reproduced by the admirable Eland Books.  It is the saga of an Ottoman family through the First World War, the end of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Turkish Republic.

Irfan Orga (1958) Phoenix Ascendant: the rise of modern Turkey. (P. Hale, London). A good account of the founding of republican Turkey out of the defeated Ottoman empire.

Yashar Kemal (1999). Salman the Solitary. Yashar Kemal became known in Britain when his novel Memed My Hawk appeared in English translation back in the 1960s. His novels are simple stories of the hard lives of the people who used to live (still live?) in the harsh landscape of Anatolian villages. Several other of his novels have also been translated into English.

Balfour Baron Kinross, J.: (1964) Atatürk: a biography of Mustafa Kemal, father of modern Turkey.  (William Morrow & Co, New York). This book provides a very good account of the man who founded modern republican Turkey.

Mango, Andrew, (2004). Atatürk. (John Murray, London.) A more recent biography of the founding father of the Republic.

Mango, Andrew, (2005). The Turks Today: Turkey After Atatürk. By the same author as the above, a fast-moving account of modern Turkey by a journalist with a deep knowledge of the country and its people.

Stirling, P. (1965) Turkish Village. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London). An informative and very readable anthropological study of the Anatolian village and its life.

Noel Barber (1973) Lords of the Golden Horn, Macmillan, London. From the time of Süleyman the Magnificent in the mid-16^th century to the end of the Ottoman Empire.

Fuller, G.E. & Lesser, I.O. with Henze, P.B. & Brown, J.F.: (1993) Turkey's New Geopolitics from the Balkans to Western China. (Westview, Boulder, Colorado). Highly recommended for those who are interested in today's Turkey.

Other books

Orhan Pamuk (1991) The White Castle, Faber.  An historical novel by a contemporary Turkish author set in the high epoch of Ottoman Istanbul. If you find that you like his writing, you can find other novels by the same author that have been translated into English.

Yashar Kemal (1976) Memed, My Hawk. Collins Harvill, London.  Turkish novelist of an earlier generation and a different kind. Yashar Kemal wrote simple stories of the harsh lives of ordinary village people in some undefined historical past. If you like this book, you will find more by the same author.

Irfan Orga (2002) The Caravan Moves On.  Eland, London. A charming, small-scale book that records the experience of a Turkish writer, brought up in London, who returns to Turkey in the 1930s. He joins two friends in Konya, and together they go off to find a group of Yörük transhumant herders with whom they live for several weeks. A world that has gone, but we shall be passing close to the place where Irhan Orga met his tent-living herdsmen.

Colin Thubron Emperor, Penguin.  An historical novel set in the time of Constantine.

Robert Graves, Count Belisarius. Set in Late Roman / early Byzantine times, a fine historical novel. Still in print with Penguin Books.

Guide Books:

If you want a guide book, Bernard McDonagh's Blue Guide to Turkey (2nd ed, London/New York, 1995) is the most detailed in terms of its coverage of archaeology and historic architecture, and it has been fairly recently rewritten by an author who knows the material well and who knows which authorities to use to reinforce his own knowledge. It has much less than many other guide books to say about how Turkey works, where to stay or eat. Alternatively, The Rough Guide to Turkey, a new updated edition of which was published early in 2007, has less detailed accounts of sites and buildings, but more on Turkey today.

Map:

Euro Map/Geo Centre produce a map of Western Turkey which covers the area of the tour.  It is scale 1:800,000 and includes town plans of major cities and some sites.

Booking