Approximate timeline and a few useful data points
The actual trip followed a loop route that makes sense geographically but not historically. The slideshow however follows the land route, so if you'd like to untangle the time-line of the wash of empires and civilizations that have blended together into modern day Turkey, you may refer to the following data points.
9,600 B.C.E. Göbekli Tepe ("potbelly hill") is a large Neolithic sanctuary pre-dating both the construction of the earliest known cities as well as the introduction of agriculture. It sits on a hill above the plains of the Euphrates River between Şanliurfa (Urfa, Ur, Edessa) and Adiyaman. Under excavation since mid 1990s by German and Turkish archeologists. The importance of this site is well described by Charles Mann in National Geographic Magazine, June 2011.
2300 B.C.E. (Early Bronze Age) through today. The ancient city of Harran (Haran, Carrae, Hellenopolis) was a prosperous commercial and cultural center of Upper Mesopotamia, lying southwest of modern Şanliurfa on the so-called Plains of Abraham. Harran survived thanks to its excellent location at the cross-roads of several trade routes, and has been more or less continuously occupied since its founding by the Assyrians; today one finds both a large archeological site and the contemporary village of Altinbaşak with its, beehive houses decorated by satellite dishes and solar panels, where we encountered a crew filming a TV commercial!
2000-1500 B.C.E. (Late Bronze Age) the huge ruined city Hattusa (Hattusha, Hattusas)lies near modern Boğazkale (Boğazköy) at a bend of the Halys River in central Turkey. Nearby is the Hittite rock sanctuary known as Yazilikaya. Hattusa was the capital of the Hittites (or Hatti), contemporary with the Assyrian Empire, which was centered in the area known today as Iraq.
1504-1450 B.C.E. Tuthmosis III of Egypt, whose pink granite obelisk now stands in the Hippodrome at Istanbul, brought by the Roman Emperor, Theodosius the Great in 390 A.D to adorn his city. They had to break the obelisk into three parts to get it into their boats, however, and only the top third survived the voyage across the Mediterranean from Egypt, which had been captured by the Romans.
c.1500 B.C.E. - 604 A.D. Ephesus (Efes) founded by Mycenaeans on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor (contemporaneous with the Battle of Troy). Greeks came ca. 1000 B.C.E., led the legends say by Prince Androcles, who was forced into exile after his father's death. Greeks built the famous (now a pile of rubble) Temple of Artemis atop an earlier temple of the mother goddess, its construction partly financed by Alexander the Great, flush with money after defeating the Persians in 334 B.C.E. By the first century B.C.E. Ephesus was absorbed into the Roman Empire; in 27 B.C.E. Emperor Augustus made the city his Eastern capital over Pergamum. At its peak of power and wealth during the first and second centuries A.D., Ephesus was battled over for hundreds more years, eventually being destroyed by earthquake in 604 A.D. The beautiful façade of the Library of Celsius (135 A.D.), where were stored 12,000 scrolls as well as the tomb of Celsius, was put back together by archeologists in 1960s and 1970s. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is said to have come to Ephesus after the Crucifixion; we visited the ruins of that very early Christian Church.
256 A.D. Zeugma on the Euphrates, a Roman military and administrative center, burns and is never rebuilt, leaving its buildings (and mosaics) to be covered by silt and plundered by looters until the 1990s when Turkish archeologists remov them before flooding of the river by a series of giant dams.
324 A.D. Emperor Constantine the Great moves the seat of the Roman Empire to the little provincial town of Byzantium (circa 660 B.C.) on the promontory where the Bosporus and the Golden Horn meet and renamed his city Nova Roma, but the name that stuck was Constantinople, which became the capital of four empires and one of the largest cities in the world. The contemporary name "Istanbul," which derives from a Greek phrase meaning "in the city" or "to the city" was used simultaneously until the after the Turkish revolution in 1923, when the government of Ataturk, always interested in modernizing things, decided to clarify the city's name, now universally Istanbul.
537 A.D. Hagia Sophia (center of the Eastern Christian church) built by Emperor Theodosius I and Queen Theodora on the site of Constantine's original wooden church.
1453 A.D. The fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks, and conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque. After the Turkish revolution, the Hagia Sophia became a state museum.
1465-1856 A.D. Topkapi Palace is the primary residence of the Ottoman sultans, who in the nineteenth century moved to palaces on the Bosporus. Topkapi was also made a state museum by the Turkish Republic.
1609-1616 A.D. Construction of Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque); although much visited by tourists, this structure remains a working mosque.
9,600 B.C.E. Göbekli Tepe ("potbelly hill") is a large Neolithic sanctuary pre-dating both the construction of the earliest known cities as well as the introduction of agriculture. It sits on a hill above the plains of the Euphrates River between Şanliurfa (Urfa, Ur, Edessa) and Adiyaman. Under excavation since mid 1990s by German and Turkish archeologists. The importance of this site is well described by Charles Mann in National Geographic Magazine, June 2011.
2300 B.C.E. (Early Bronze Age) through today. The ancient city of Harran (Haran, Carrae, Hellenopolis) was a prosperous commercial and cultural center of Upper Mesopotamia, lying southwest of modern Şanliurfa on the so-called Plains of Abraham. Harran survived thanks to its excellent location at the cross-roads of several trade routes, and has been more or less continuously occupied since its founding by the Assyrians; today one finds both a large archeological site and the contemporary village of Altinbaşak with its, beehive houses decorated by satellite dishes and solar panels, where we encountered a crew filming a TV commercial!
2000-1500 B.C.E. (Late Bronze Age) the huge ruined city Hattusa (Hattusha, Hattusas)lies near modern Boğazkale (Boğazköy) at a bend of the Halys River in central Turkey. Nearby is the Hittite rock sanctuary known as Yazilikaya. Hattusa was the capital of the Hittites (or Hatti), contemporary with the Assyrian Empire, which was centered in the area known today as Iraq.
1504-1450 B.C.E. Tuthmosis III of Egypt, whose pink granite obelisk now stands in the Hippodrome at Istanbul, brought by the Roman Emperor, Theodosius the Great in 390 A.D to adorn his city. They had to break the obelisk into three parts to get it into their boats, however, and only the top third survived the voyage across the Mediterranean from Egypt, which had been captured by the Romans.
c.1500 B.C.E. - 604 A.D. Ephesus (Efes) founded by Mycenaeans on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor (contemporaneous with the Battle of Troy). Greeks came ca. 1000 B.C.E., led the legends say by Prince Androcles, who was forced into exile after his father's death. Greeks built the famous (now a pile of rubble) Temple of Artemis atop an earlier temple of the mother goddess, its construction partly financed by Alexander the Great, flush with money after defeating the Persians in 334 B.C.E. By the first century B.C.E. Ephesus was absorbed into the Roman Empire; in 27 B.C.E. Emperor Augustus made the city his Eastern capital over Pergamum. At its peak of power and wealth during the first and second centuries A.D., Ephesus was battled over for hundreds more years, eventually being destroyed by earthquake in 604 A.D. The beautiful façade of the Library of Celsius (135 A.D.), where were stored 12,000 scrolls as well as the tomb of Celsius, was put back together by archeologists in 1960s and 1970s. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is said to have come to Ephesus after the Crucifixion; we visited the ruins of that very early Christian Church.
256 A.D. Zeugma on the Euphrates, a Roman military and administrative center, burns and is never rebuilt, leaving its buildings (and mosaics) to be covered by silt and plundered by looters until the 1990s when Turkish archeologists remov them before flooding of the river by a series of giant dams.
324 A.D. Emperor Constantine the Great moves the seat of the Roman Empire to the little provincial town of Byzantium (circa 660 B.C.) on the promontory where the Bosporus and the Golden Horn meet and renamed his city Nova Roma, but the name that stuck was Constantinople, which became the capital of four empires and one of the largest cities in the world. The contemporary name "Istanbul," which derives from a Greek phrase meaning "in the city" or "to the city" was used simultaneously until the after the Turkish revolution in 1923, when the government of Ataturk, always interested in modernizing things, decided to clarify the city's name, now universally Istanbul.
537 A.D. Hagia Sophia (center of the Eastern Christian church) built by Emperor Theodosius I and Queen Theodora on the site of Constantine's original wooden church.
1453 A.D. The fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks, and conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque. After the Turkish revolution, the Hagia Sophia became a state museum.
1465-1856 A.D. Topkapi Palace is the primary residence of the Ottoman sultans, who in the nineteenth century moved to palaces on the Bosporus. Topkapi was also made a state museum by the Turkish Republic.
1609-1616 A.D. Construction of Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque); although much visited by tourists, this structure remains a working mosque.