Eski Halfeti

Halfeti has almost a seaside look, with the dam having crept up on the village (but many people and functions have moved 9 km up the hill to a "new" Halfeti). Lakeside restaurants and rental boats to Rumkale can be found here.

Punky ibis

Birecik is also famous for hosting a breeding station for the near-extinct baldheaded ibis. We didn't have time to go and see it, but the birds where visible in both modern and ancient images pretty much everywhere. They didn't look too bald to me, though!

10th anniversary!

Re:Orient club, the centre of Stockholms oriental music scene, tonight celebrates it's 10th anniversay. Not being there feels a bit odd, actually. So, those of you who are, dance for me too!

On the road!

A glimpse of us while travelling. Both the pictures were taken in Halfeti, on the Birecik dam (more about it to come). Note the fabulous weather, this was Dec 18! We were sooo lucky on this point the whole week, normally the risk of snow closing the roads would have been great.

Birecik on the Euphrates

Birecik is not a big or important town. In fact, I believe it's main claim to fame is the bridge crossing the Euphrates. For us it was a convenient place to stay and enable a detour up the Euphrates, between Gaziantep and Sanliurfa.

Condolences

I would like to offer my most sincere condolences to the family of Hrant Dink and to the people of Turkey after the tragic murder of Hrant Dink (Turkish-Armenian writer). Hrant Dink was shot dead in Istanbul yesterday and had previously been under threat, as well as charged for "insulting Turkishness" in the course of publication of bilingual Agos. The murder has been widely condemned and commented both nationally and internationally (the links contain some examples of reactions).

Additional comments here: from opendemocracy, Swedish radio, Dagens Nyheter

Do not let the perpetrators of this crime set the agenda!

More Zeugma samples

Not all the photos turned out well unfortunately, but I think you can get some idea of the grandeur of the rescued mosaics through these pictures.

Here, I love the diagonally set centre-piece and the meandering patterns (also here, ancient patterns resembling swastikas could be discerned here and there).


The magnificent animal pictures!

This was one of my personal favourites, with the intertwined lacy frame and the centre-piece actually showing depth! So cool!

And the finely detailed human figures, here.

Award for exhibition production

My congratulations to the exhibition producer and to the museum management for such an exquisite production! The display, the lighting and the setup are fantastic! The only thing I can personally imagine to rival this would be an outdoor in situ display at the excavation site of Zeugma, on the Euphrates. But, as I understand it the site is now at least partially flooded through the dam constructed - so this is as good as it gets.

Below, you can see also another damaged mosaic with pieces missing, where scholars and museum staff are searching for the centre-piece and hoping to replace it with the rest of the collection.

Found and returned

This mosaic had maybe the most amazing history of all on display at the Gaziantep museum (remember I previously showed Euphrates the river god and the girl whose image has become the exhibition signature?). The Zeugma rescue excavations found basically only the frame of this piece and the feet of the figures in it - the rest of the image was blank and presumed to have been stolen by antique-robbers. Later, the remaining piece was identified in a private US museum and returned to the collection in Gaziantep, as you can see below! It had been there since the early 1960's when it had apparently been taken from the site on the Euphrates and sold on an art market which was maybe at the time less conscientious about sources than most would be today. Happy endings are nice!

Details of the house

Very fine details in the work on the traditional house were apparent everywhere. Look at this tap and basin for instance, not to mention the oil barrels in the cellar seen below!

The wars we (almost) all forgot

The Swedish branch of Medecins sans Frontieres, Läkare utan Gränser, has earlier this week launched a report on the wars and crises that don't receive a lot of media-attention and thus risk being forgotten completely, despite the painn inflicted on the populations of whole countries or regions. Read it and help us see and remember, please.

Annual human rights report

This year's report from Human Rights Watch has been released today. Read, ponder and spread the word!

Traditional Antep house

This typical Antep house, built around a courtyard, is now a museum. Very pretty buildings, and nicely displayed, actually, giving a picture of traditional urban life.

Murder at the museum??

This, rather gruesome, guy we met on display in the Gaziantep museum! Not to mention his gaudy headgear...

Just so you don't believe that the mosaics (of which I have showed some but more are to come) were all they had!

Baklavaci

Not only did we eat delicious Antep baklava - we also watched it being made. After making 6 och 7 twisted rolls of thin strands of dough and pistachio-filling crammed in circles into the tray, they were baked with honey. Ooooo.....

Emission right christmas success!

This story in todays Dagens Nyheter about how the emission rights for carbon dioixide that I previously wrote about became a popular Christmas gift in Sweden this year! Now that is holiday spirit I wish to wholly support and I am very happy for this!

Gaziantepspor

Football is religion in Turkey - so what more important than the city team's home arena?

Heroic Antep

Returning to our journey, we visited a museum in Gaziantep which displayed details of life in the historic city. One memento from the independence war against the French in Syria was this early motorcycle.

New attempt - Chewing on a bone...!

I tried blogging this post on Wednesday but the photos disappeared from the blog, and I don't understand why. But the new computer and I aren't really friendly yet... and now I only manage to upload 2 of the original 3 pictures. He's long since gone home now too. Please bear with me for any further delays...


Tonight is the last we have the pleasure of this excellent company and we will say a tearful farewell tomorrow... But here he is, proudly chewing (actually, trying to get a bone out of the sock we tied it into) with very high concentration - such a challenge for a dog, but what a reward he gets!

Pigeon-hole

Opposite our hotell window we could see this window with piles of chairs inside - always full with resting pigeons. Pigeons were a recurring theme of the trip, by the way, which I hope to get back to!

Houses in Antep

These are some nice examples of how old buildings find new uses - the first one is an old hamam (a bathhouse) which now serves as a cafe. The second was, if I remember correctly, a municipality building. But I really like when the old city lives on like this!

Around the fortress

The streets surrounding the fortress were the bazaar - with everything from vegetables to coppersmiths to shalvar and silver.

Doggie visitor

On this first day of 2007 and show you some more images (on request, actually) of the dog we have been taking care of for over a week now. First, proudly carrying a sock and below, resting on another of the finest carpets we have. He has great taste! Actually, he is pretty much the friendliest and calmest dog I have ever met and probably qualifies as the kindest labrador on record!

Happy New 2007!

And Id Mubarak / Iyi bayramlar - for those of you who celebrate the feast starting today!

The supreme joys of Antep

Baklava! Antep has reportedly the best in Turkey and in the older parts of the town almost every third shop is a baklava-shop! We tried some and it was delicious!

Antep kale

After the previous tit-bits (and a computer change with has kept me from blogging for a few days) I can now start to show our recent trip more chronologically. This is the fortress of Gaziantep, probably used for the last time during the independence fighting against the French around 1920, giving the city the honorific "gazi" after being plain Antep (Ottoman Aintab). The fortress was closed but looked a lot like the Aleppo one from the outside, if somewhat smaller. The similarity to Aleppo is probably no coincidence, as the city belonged to the Aleppo province before a Turkish-Syrian border was drawn between the two.

Rumkale

This is Rumkale, a medieval fortress used for centuries to guarantee security on the Euphrates. The first mention of the site was Hittite and it existed under the Romans also. The current remains are medieval, it belonged to the Crusader principality of Edessa (Urfa) and was sold to the Syriac church, who kept it as a bishops-seat for a time.

The setting, high above the river (now the dam, which has not touched the fortress) is magnificent! It is only possible to reach by boat, though.

Father Firat!

Euphrates! Here shown first as the Roman god of the River, as depicted in the Zeugma mosaics in the Gaziantep museum and then below, the river itself, taken from high up on the gorge, at Rumkale on the dam. Roman rule and influence stretched firmly as far as the river in Antiquity and the thought of a special river god shows how firmly rooted in Roman culture Anatolia was. See hos the river flows from his waterpot. The river Euphrates was at the time in a sense the divider between East and West, Roman and Persian.

Time for reading?

For those of you who may have some extra time over the holidays and who still haven't read it, I will here provide you with links to this months talkie - the Baker-Hamilton/Iraq Study Group Report on Iraq. And here to ICG:s subsequent report on "what to do now". And some media commentary in Swedish.

I hope that the holiday spirit includes some willingness to take action for making the world a safer place for all its citizens in 2007.

Excavation signature

We have seen the Roman mosaics in the Gaziantep museum, rescued in excavations from Zeugma on the Euphrates, before the building of the latest dam. This lady has become the symbol of the collection, which is beautifully displayed - the exhibition producer is excellent! Look at her eyes and marvel!

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas to all those of you who do celebrate - and may the wishes for a peaceful holiday extend also to all others. This is our temporary companion for the holiday period, resting - we are hoping he finds our company as congenial as we find his!

Arab Human Development Report 2005

In addition to the global Human Development Report which I previously wrote a posting about, an Arab Human Development Report (data covering 2005 - executive summary here & release material in Swedish here) has been recently launched, for the 4th time. As usual the report is authored by Arab researchers and adresses development challenges specific to the region. This year's edition focuses on the situation of women in the Arab world, which is still highly unequal. Thus countries fail to fully utilize the potential of half of the society in a way as to forward the needs of society as a whole and break with poverty, segregation and lack of rights and access to even basic services for it's citizens. Some progress may be noted however, also - credit should be given when due!, even if some changes are still in the cosmetic range of i e political participation.

Another interesting feature of this year's edition is the update on the impact of the previous reports, covering issues such as knowledge and governance - which have been given large attention and seen as partly very controversial.

Human Rights Day

I realize yesterday held another important event, apart from the Nobel celebrations. It was also International Human Rights Day, which of course deserves attention.

In this context, the recent prizes posthumously awarded to Martin Adler and Anna Politkovskaja by the Swedish section of Reporters without Borders also warrants a mention. The motivation for the shared prize between the two deceased journalists, who also happened to have been born the same year, is how they "with curiosity, tenacity and courage reported from places where freedom of expression is at its most threatened, and paid for this with their lives".

Award ceremony

Today, December 10th, the Nobel prizes have been awarded and the lavish celebratory banquet is taking place tonight at the Stockholm City Hall. I would again like to draw your attention to the Literature laureate, the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, and give my congratulations - for a magnificent authorship that I hope will last for many years to come.

Ihlara landscape views

Cave city

These are one of Kapadokya's underground cities, whose earliest history reportedly dates to the Hittites. In later ages they are supposed to have been used by local Christian communities in times of war and need. These may have taken place both during Roman persecution during the early Empire and later due to Muslim raiders to Anatolia. Whether they have been continuously known and used is obscure to me, though. They are dug out in porous stone and could be easily expanded - this one was 7-8 floors deep. I couldn't take a picture up the airshaft, unfortunately - the dark and the angle made it too great a challenge, but craning your head into it and looking up from the lowest level was breathtaking! I am slightly claustrophobic though and think one visit down is quite enough for me, but it was a real experience!