Canberra Times, Australia
March 3, 2007 Saturday

JOURNEY SIFTED FROM THE SANDS OF TIME

by Sasha Grishin

I T IS MORE than 30 years ago, when I was in my late teens, that I
first travelled to Eastern Turkey to visit the medieval Christian
antiquities at Lake Van, the ancient Armenian city of Ani and the
churches along the Black Sea coast.

I thought at the time that these were some of the most beautiful and
spiritually charged places in the world and after many successive
visits nothing subsequently has led me to change my mind.

Professor Antonio Sagona is an archaeologist at Melbourne University
and this book reflects the more than two decades which he spent as a
field archaeologist in Eastern Turkey. In other words, it is not
written by an armchair traveller or a photo-journalist but by a
person working in the area with dirt under his fingernails. Although
scholarly in its broad orientation, the book does not set out to
present an up-to-date summary of archaeological scholarship devoted
to this region from the Neolithic period to the rise of Islam.
Instead, it is a very readable and profusely illustrated
chronological guide to the region aimed at a general reader.

For heavy-duty scholarship on the area one could consult T.A.
Sinclair’s four-volume Eastern Turkey; the several volumes published
by A.Bryer and D.Winfield, as well as detailed monographic surveys
devoted to particular periods, especially by M.Ozdogan, N.Basgelen
and S.Mitchell.

Sagona works from the perspective of cultural archaeology and
essentially narrates an account of the history of the place,
considers theories of geography and climatic change, and examines the
surviving archaeological remains. With a chronological scope of the
book from about 800,000 years BP to the early modern period, it is
almost mandatory that much of the survey material is quite cursory in
its treatment, but certain individual events and monuments are
highlighted and become the subject of detailed separate focus
studies. These include Noah and the Flood considered from an
archaeological, historical and literary perspective, and the Kingdom
of Commagene examined especially from the perspective of the
monumental heads of Nemrut Dagi, one of the iconic images of ancient
Turkey. These heads once crowned enthroned figures, built by the Late
Hellenistic king, Antiochus I of Commagene (c69-34 BC). They are
quite awe-inspiring, in the true meaning of the word, although much
eroded by time and damaged through tourism.

Another of the focal points is the wondrous Church of the Holy Cross
on the island of Aghtamar in Lake Van. This is deservedly one of the
most famous and important monuments of medieval Armenian art and is
rare for its relatively good state of preservation and comprehensive
documentation.

The founder of the Church of the Holy Cross was King Gag(h)ik
Artzruni, who was a member of one of the princely families who rose
to prominence during the period of Arab occupation.

The church, which can be dated through inscription to 915-21,
contains a mixture of Armenian, Byzantine and Sassanian elements. A
contemporary medieval chronicler was to write of it, ”While inside
[the king] establishes the holy of holies, adorned with paintings and
doors encased with silver and filled with golden cloth decorations,
icons in golden mounts with precious stones and decorated with
strings of pearls and excellent and brilliant vessels. So in this
marvellous manner he created a second Jerusalem and also the gate of
Zion on high.” Although the precious metalwork has vanished, the
church, its sculpture and its fresco decorations have remained
largely intact through to the present. It is interesting to note that
when Islam first came to Eastern Anatolia, as this region is
generally known in the Turkish period, it was accompanied by a
considerable amount of religious tolerance. The Seljuk rulers who
firmly seized control of the region in the late 11th century,
followed by the Ottomans in the late 13th century, were often great
builders and many of them were rulers of considerable learning and
enlightenment. The Armenian genocide, ethnic cleansing and the
desecration of Christian monuments occurred very late in the history
of the spread of Islam and was part of the nationalist malaise
associated with the early 20th century. The wonderful Islamic
architectural monuments of Mardin, Diyarbakir and Erzurum are
absolutely captivating, not only in their structure, but in the
ornate carving of the architectural detail.

Professor Antonio Sagona’s The Heritage of Eastern Turkey takes us on
a delightful journey of exploration through a very beautiful and
culturally significant region of the world. It is a very
intelligently designed book, where the combination of high-quality
illustrations, plans, maps and excavation diagrams, taken together
with blocks of scholarly analysis, enables us to both skim the
surface and to tap into a broader body of scholarship. As a personal
preference, I would like to have seen more detailed endnotes and a
more comprehensive bibliography and webography for further reading.

Sasha Grishin is Professor of Art History at the ANU.