Day 84: On Being a Classics Nerd

We visisted two important ancient sites on this day, the more archaeologially interesting Pergamon, and the more historically interesting (to me at least) Troy. We visited the Troy site first, and I was fully aware that as ruins go it was pretty crude still. Despite that, just being that it's Troy is incredibly cool for me, and made it the more exciting of the two visits. The others in my group were, as expected, a lot less familiar with the history and legend surrounding it, but even expecting that some of their questions/comments made me feel a mix of amusement and horror. Things like:
"So did the Trojans speak Turkish?"
"Is that the real wooden horse they used?" (At a big model by the entrance)"
and about 20 of "In the movie Troy....".

I explained with great fervor that the movie is nothing like the Iliad, and the Iliad is nothing like real history, but they always kept coming back the the movie... My passion on the subject amused our guide at least. (PS Should any of the people from my tour ultimately read this, I'm sorry! I'm making fun of myself for caring so much, not of you for not knowing - ok - maybe making fun of you just a little :p).

The excavation goes on, but right now the site is largely just the remains of walls. It is pretty neat to see the different layers and styles of walls as they uncover the different cities built overtop one another.



After a solid drive we went to the Pergamon acropolis. While I wasn't as familiar with it, it had an important role in the Hellenistic period. It had the second largest library (after Alexandria), the first hospital for mental illness, the steepest stadium of the ancient world and invented an early type of parchment on calfskin that eventually led to vellum. The site was fun to play around in because it was built around the top of the mountain so there were a lot of steep climbs. The archaeological sits in Turkey are much more open and new than some of the others I've visited. Most of the places only have a fraction of the site revealed so far, and there are no issues with my climbing all over things (I'm very careful not to damage anything!)