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Hieropolis (aka Hierapolis) | Pamukkale'nin hemen üstünde bir antik şehir
A world heritage.
You all know what "polis" means, and no it does not mean police per se, poli(s) means city, and the word police relates to the word city semantically .. okay so here, the etymology of the word police:
"[French, from Old French policie, civil organization, from Late Latin pol ta, from Latin, the State, from Greek polteia, from polt s, citizen, from polis, city. See pel -3 in Indo-European Roots.]" (says here) Hiero? Then one wonders. That means, holy, obviously.
So this Hieropolis place is a "holy city". It is from 2nd century BC, so it's been holy for a while before other, more common "holy religions" made it to Anatolia. What was sacred, then, about this ancient city?
"Hierapolis" can mean "sacred city", and according to Stephanus of Byzantium the city was given this name because of the large number of temples it contained.
Up to the reign of Augustus the city was officially described on coins as Hierapolis, the city of temples, but it seems reasonable to assume that this was not the original meaning of the name.
The founder of the city was Eumenes II, King of Pergamon, and it was the custom for Hellenistic kings to name the cities they founded after members of their own families. It thus seems much more likely that the city was named after Hiera or Hiero, the wife of Telesphorus, the legendary founder of the Pergamene dynasty." Some people truly worship their wives, eh? ;) There seem to be also some ancient polytheistic belief system around the word Hiera or Hiero. Anyways, here's the impressive theatre, it's simply HUGE. 15 000 seats. Yeah. Did I say it's impressive?
The theatre culture was alive and kicking in ancient Anatolia. There's this one, Ephesus and Aspendos.
All giant theatres, and there are others, not so gigantic.
This one is built just above the magic "cotton castle", Pamukkale, so you get to see a few sights at once.
Not to mention the excavations continue, and in the humbly run little museum, there are dozens of well preserved sculptures.
I am not trying to sell you a trip, I was truly impressed.
I was a bit ignorant (oh well, a bit!) about the ancient city in Denizli. I know it's kinda next to "Sparta" and all that, but ..
I thought we were going to see Pamukkale, which is something in itself, but that was quite a bonus.
Oh, there's also some sort of bath, one of those stinky ones that should make you grow younger in a few hours.
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