Lycia Day 8: Sagalassus, and Cremna

Despite the title, today we struck off inland to a site where excavation only started in 1990: Sagalassus (map).

in need of weeding!

As such, we broke new ground, bidding adieu to Lycia, and heading off inland into Pisidia, - or so the guidebooks and much modern scholarship would have you believe, liking to think in terms of neat, permanent, unmoving geographical and ethnic units. That Strabo considers it part of Isauria, and Ptolemy places it in Lycia, though, might perhaps suggest the borders were no quite so clear-cut... - though it is true there was no Lycian tomb to be seen, unlike almost passim previously.

Late Hellenistic Fountain House

Getting off that hobby-horse, though... Sagalassus was once again a fine sprawling site with much to explore.

View from the theatre

In Turkey, excavators are also required by law (I think) to engage in anastylosis, rebuilding monuments as they are uncovered. This is occasionally controversial: in its favour, it helps preserve monuments, and is attractive visually and, as a result, financially, as it draws tourist interest and money. Some worry, though, that it diverts scarce resources from the business of excavation, that it can occasionally influence excavation methods and extent in a negative way, as well as encouraging over-restoration. Whatever opinion taken, though, the results can be quite spectacular.

The upper Nymphaeum

Still some work to do in the theatre

According to our schedule, our second 'site' of the day was to be our first museum of the trip, - a fact which again emphasises how little excavation there has been in the region. We drove, though, straight by Burdur museum, where the famous sculpture from the library at Cremna resides. Instead, we visited Cremna (map) itself, and seemed to move back in time two hundred (or for Sagalassus, twenty) years.

Cremna library

I jest, but it was not just that the site was once again almost entirely unexcavated (except, of course, for the library): that has been the norm. Nor the lack of guard or of fences; again, not unusual. It is because we were outnumbered by goats and cows about ten to one.

Cremna

The only other people about were the herdsman and his wife. He very kindly shewed us where the library was, and, even more kindly, made his trust in us apparent by setting aside his gun before he did so. It would have been still kinder if he had put it down, rather than leaving it hanging by the strap from the lowest branch of the nearest tree, but it seemed impolite to comment!

spot the theatre

The view