Samos

April 21, 2015

Evren and Murat picked us up at 8:00 a.m. to take us to the Samos ferry. Evren asked us if we had our Turkish visas, allowing us to re-enter the country. No, we had left them at the hotel! Evren spoke with a Turkish official, who said that we would be allowed back in without them, but only this one time. After clearing Turkish emigration, we walked across a couple of Turkish carpets to board the ferry. Mark and I sat up top while Abby and Sarah went below where the seats were softer and the air was warmer. We chugged past the Ottoman fort guarding Kusadasi and into open water. It was a slow ferry ride, taking an hour and half to cross the narrow strait between Kusadasi and Vathi, Samos. The ride back would take even longer, because the winds would strengthen and be against us.

We met Irene, our Samos guide, just outside the ferry terminal. She drove us to the Samos Archeological Museum in Pythagorion, a museum small enough that we could do an overview of the whole museum in about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside the museum. No photography is allowed on the outside grounds of the museum, either, which neither we nor Irene realized at first. The result was a rather comical photo of us looking confused, which was snapped by Irene while we were being yelled at by the museum guard for taking pictures in a forbidden area.

When they started digging the foundations for the Samos Archeological Museum, they ran into an important archeological site, the agora of the ancient city of Samos (since renamed Pythagorion as a tribute to its most famous native son). As a result the museum is both an indoor and an outdoor museum, and the outdoor portion has been planted with beautiful and plentiful wildflowers. I squeezed off one photo of the wildflowers and outdoor ruins, and Irene the one comical photo, before taking any more pictures was quashed by the museum guard. We enjoyed a nice walk around the museum’s outdoor grounds before we hopped into the car and headed for the Temple of Hera.

At the entrance to the Heraion, we found a poster stating, “Is your guide licensed – demand the quality you deserve – all licensed tourist guides have the official badge.” And there, in the lower right corner of the poster was a photocopy of Irene’s badge with Irene’s photograph on it. She is the only licensed guide on the island.

The earliest evidence of the worship of Hera on Samos dates from the Bronze Age, the second half of the second millennium B.C. According to tradition, Hera was born under a weeping willow tree on the banks of the Imbrasos River. The ground there is quite swampy, which did not stop people from trying to build temples. Originally, only a small altar existed here, but by the 8^th century B.C., a rectangular stone temple was built with a paved floor. In 570-560 B.C. the giant temple began to take shape under the supervision of an architect named Rhoikos. Polycrates the tyrant receives the credit for enlarging the temple to the form we see today. By 460

B.C. Herodotus declared it to be the most eminent of all the temples he had seen. We enjoyed walking down the same Sacred Way leading up to the temple that Herodotus had trod. Of the 155 columns that supported the temple, only one stands today, and it is half of its original height. The Samian artist Theodoros invented the rotating drill for the construction of this temple. All of us who have bought drills at Home Depot or Menards are in his debt today.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that Irene likes. We had the menu that Evren had also recommended – Greek salad, calamari, French fries, bread, and Samian wine. Irene had called ahead to warn them that we wanted calamari. After lunch we went to the Pythagoras monument by the waterfront for a photo shoot in front of the – you guessed it – triangular monument.

Irene drove us to the tower of Lykourgos Logothetis, which afforded a nice view of the city below and the island of Patmos in the distance. It was nice to see, if only from a distance, the island where John had written his revelation. In the tower’s courtyard we encountered a mulberry tree that had dozens of full water bottles hanging from its branches. The bottles were serving as weights to train the tree’s branches to grow in a more horizontal direction.

We drove uphill to the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, where there is a cave with a shrine to Mary in it. A spring came out of the rock inside the cave and filled a pool next to the shrine. Irene explained that the pool is used for baptisms. In pre-Christian times a pool on this location had been used for ritual purification of boys, whose clothes would be left behind as a sign of purity. Although the local bishop has forbidden the practice as non-Christian, the monks still find children’s clothes after a baptism. The Christian faithful had taken a couple of marble slabs from the Temple of Hera and incorporated them into the shrine to Mary. Some people call this syncretism, but I believe they are just hedging their bets. 

It was time for Irene to take us back to the port to catch our 5:00 p.m. ferry. The winds had picked up during the day and the ride home was a bit rough and took longer, though thankfully the sky was clear. Evren gave us a two-handed wave from the other side of the fence as we got off the ferry. People in this country are so friendly! We were concerned when we got to Turkish immigration and could not see the officer who had said that we would not need our visas to get back into Turkey. However, our passports were stamped without comment and we were admitted back into the country without incident.

We ate an unexceptional dinner in the hotel restaurant and retired early. Tomorrow we would travel the 200 kilometers to Bodrum, and see the ruins of three Ionic cities along the way.