Ancient Civilizations of Anatolia

Travel Program…

Our cultural tour of central Anatolia aims to investigate the many civilizations whose cultures and histories overlap one another like pages of a palimpsest manuscript. As such, we will offer a suggested reading list, and fill the tour with site overviews, lectures, Q&A, and guided tours to enhance our understanding and imagination of these ancient civilizations. The first agrarian societies were born here. Hunter-gatherer groups began experimenting with agriculture and stable location-based lifestyles here.

Later, in the rise of the great bronze age empires, none was more feared and powerful than the Hittite Empire, who competed for dominance of the known world with Egyptians, the Myceneans, and the Assyrians. All of these empires collapsed simultaneously in the 12^th century BC for reasons we will explore on this tour. Our dive into Hittite culture starts on Day 2 with a long visit to the incredible Hittite collections housed in the Ankara archeology museum, followed by visits to their capital cities at Alacahöyük on Day 3, and Hattusa on Day 5.

Marching forward in time, we encounter local Anatolian peoples whose architectural legacy reflects Hellenistic contact such as the Lycian League, a group of city states credited with inventing the first parliamentary system of government in the world. We visit Aspendos and Perge on Days 9-10 when we arrive at the Mediterranean coast. These cities today retain impressive Greco-Roman theater ruins, though their separate language and culture we will decipher more closely through a visit to the Antalya archeological museum. These cities also feature a deeply significant Christian history. Apostles Paul and Barnabas landed at Perge before setting inland on a missionary trip, returning to the same port city after preaching the Gospel to the local population.

We see further Hellenistic influence in one of the most unlikely places on Day 4, the town of Amasya. Known primarily for its opulent Ottoman mansions, mosques, and madrasas, the home of Sultan’s principal heirs, the cliffs above the city show a far older cultural layer in the tombs of Mithridates I and other Pontic kings from the Black Sea coast. Our main interest in our rest day in Amasya will be the Ottoman legacy.

Early Christian settlements can perhaps nowhere on earth be better seen and imagined than in a visit to the sprawling canyons and underground cities of Cappadocia. At the center of our tour (Days 5-6-7), we plan to spend three nights in Cappadocia in order to fully explore and understand the ways in which early Christian communities lived together, worshipped together, protected each other, and created some of the finest Christian art from the 6^th-10^th century period. Our exploration starts with the monastery at Goreme, where more than a dozen cave chapels were painted with detailed frescoes whose vibrant colors still express the pathos and veneration of the earliest Christian saints. It’s remarkable to realize that their images were painted when the memories of their martyrdoms and sacrifice were still fresh in mind for the communities praying in these sacred spaces.

Our exploration of early sufism highlighting the Mevlevi tradition awaits us on Day 9. It’s most famous disciple, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (Rumi), remains one of the most influential writer-philosophers of the day, with prose on the human and the divine that never grows outdated. After seeing the charming Ottoman palaces in a narrow river valley of Amasya, the grandiose architecture of Konya reminds us of the might and power of the great Seljuk Sultanate of Rum that dominated central Anatolia during the 12^th-13^th centuries.

In an homage to our own position as travelers through this land, we pay a visit to Sultanhami on Day 8, one of the most well preserved caravanseries in all of Anatolia. There, like travelers of old, we will find a brief respite, a bit of food and water, some conversation about the road ahead, and continue our journey through the center of the world. Our tour concludes with a voyage down the river to the sea, where we will spend our final two evenings at a beach hotel in Antalya, expressing gratitude for the long friendships that continue to sustain us. Join us on this extraordinary adventure, it promises to be the trip of a lifetime.

Read more about our program in the pages that follow! To register, request our brochure and registration form by email: admin@johngrahamtours.com

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