Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi

Speaking of Ankara, the Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi (Anatolian Civilizations Museum) is my new favorite museum. It occupies a beautifully-restored 15th-century Ottoman marketplace high on the castle hill overlooking the city, in the shadow of the great Ankara Kalesi (Ankara castle) itself.

The vast hallways and central room of the old marketplace, under vaulting arches of brown stone, are perfect for the exhibition of the museum's treasures, archaeological artifacts from four millennia of Anatolian civilizations. The emphasis is on the Hittites and Phrygians of central Anatolia in the 2000-800 BC period.

You've probably been underestimating the Hittites. I know I was. Those of us who took Western Civ (or scrambled to teach it) in US institutions were generally spoon-fed easily digestible capsule summaries of Greco-Roman highlights. The Hittites tend to get short shrift in that account, given ten minutes or so between the Sumerians and Akkadians of Mesopotamia and the "real" triumphs of classical Greece.

But if you went to school in Turkey, you'd get a much more Hittite-focused version of ancient history. Atatürk, not at all coincidentally, loved the Hittites, and the idea for the Anatolian Civilizations Museum was his. 

Leaving aside for the moment the dubious aspects of the direct line Atatürk wanted to trace between the age of the Hittites and Modern Turkey, getting a little more Hittite-friendly, or at least Hittite-knowledgeable, would not at all be a bad thing.

They made massive stone relief-carvings like this before the Athenians had sprung from the forehead of Zeus. They were also pretty handy with bronze, with their own version of cuneiform (written on clif-bar sized clay tablets sealed in bespoke clay envelopes to be broken open only by the recipient), and with divorce law. 

(Hittite warrior)

And here's one from the Phrygians, perhaps even more sorely under-represented. They should be remembered for something other than stylish caps and the fifth mode of the harmonic minor. In fact, I'm not at all sure the Phrygians actually used the so-called Phrygian scale anymore than the Lydians used the one named for them. They definitely wore the caps though, as the relief shows.

These photos don't do the place justice, I'm afraid. The vast room full of massive stone relief-carvings alone is a collection worth traveling halfway around the globe for (especially when in good company).

 
I went twice on successive days, once with the Hoyas, once with the Mary and the boys. The boys mostly liked the video-game-like simulation of life in Kültepe circa 1800 BC. And the very lifelike mannequins smelting bronze. 

Booker, always a modernist, preferred the grandiose proportions, clean lines and imposing majesty of Atatürk's mausoleum at Anitkabir. Walking downhill from the mausoleum, as Seamus pestered him with some urgent question about Minecraft, Booker shushed him and said, "Not now, Seamus. I'm thinking into the distance."