Tuesday 10 February 2015

Assos Behramkale Turkey




Could the traveler have come to Assos during the excavations of the American expedition, he would have heard, afar off, the chorus of the workmen, as they sang together, sailor fashion, while rolling aside the shaft of some column; he would have been guided to the site of the ancient temple or theatre by the creaking of the dusty barrow wheels, and by the blows of the heavy hammer breaking some stone too large to be lifted entire. Now the silence of that hillside will be broken only by the roll of the waves upon the beach beneath the cliff, and by the tinkling bells of the goats, as they twist their necks to browse upon the tough shoots of the oak bushes which have again overgrown the ruins of the Greek Bath, the Agora, and the Street of Tombs.

wrote Joseph Thacher Clarke on the Report on Investigations in Assos 1882-1883