St. Paul’s Well, Tarus, and Via Tauri
May 10, 2023
Short drive this morning from Adana to Tarsus (St Paul’s home town Acts 21:39) where we visited the small (about 1 city block) excavation of the 1st Century city of Paul’s day. No more is excavated because the modern city is built right on top of it.
There is also a well named “Paul’s Well”, it is from the proper time period (3 feet down they can see that the well is surrounded by Roman pavement). The museum personnel lowered a bucket and drew up some water… Craig and Vanessa courageously took a drink … we will see how that works out for them later . There are other Roman remains at various places in Tarsus, but the modern city is interesting too. It has more of a Turkish village feel in some respects which we will try to show in the picture.
We had read about and found the remains of the Roman via Tauri road outside of the city which Paul likely walked from Tarsus to Derby and Lystra and Iconium - it passed through an important Taros mountain pass called the Cilician gates.
Our bus driver needs a medal because this stretch of road was only accessible through a tiny village on tiny roads and at one point we had to turn the bus around and try a different route. Men of the village came out to give advice! But we made it! In the pictures you will see a reconstructed triumphal arch dating to AD 194. Milestone inscriptions in the tarsus museum show that the road was repaved in early AD times, but is much older than that. We do love a lonely Roman road out in the country and the feel that we are treading in Paul’s footsteps !
Our driver successfully navigated us out of the area and back to the highway where we then drove in comfort on the new highway through the cilician pass. Picture are not great because stopping at that point is forbidden.
On our long ride through the Taros mountains to the Lystra tell, we bought every version of “eti pepito” chocolates that we could find to take pictures - so cute - a huge sacrifice to eat all that candy so that you all could see these pictures .
Unfortunate our day got very long and we were unable to see the Derby and Lystra tells. Being unable to stay in the earthquake zone requires some itinerary changes and extra long drives. We are staying in Konya tonight - biblical Iconium (Acts 13:51). There is a little stretch of city wall visible, but the modern Konya is built on top of the acropolis.
A memorable evening! Our guide Belgin, who was our guide in 2021 as well, and her boyfriend Onerhan took 4 of us out to eat in Konya at a very small but well known authentic Etliekmek restaurant. Essentially that means pizza, but quite unlike our pizzas. One of the 4 varieties we tried had a cheese made only in Konya. It is aged for 6 months in the ground and has a green hue. Will let you know if any of us suffer any consequences! The first course was corba (soup) with tiny dried okras and meat… delicious! Even Craig ate it!
