Day 11 An Old Friend Visits

Today was a day to feel both proud and humble, when John Osborn, a long-term supporter of both myself and Sagalassos director Peter Talloen came to visit, to look at our work. That doesn’t sound much, does it? But John is 80, on his last visit to Türkiye and not exactly a mountain climber, these days. To climb up to the Doric temple and out to the stadium is quite a feat for any visitor to the site, in our August heat, but to do it as he has done it has shown us a commitment that few of us can match. He was impressed by what he saw, even if our team was long gone. Only Zehra was on site, hard at work on her Bilkent dig in the stadium. It is sad that the full team left before John arrived, but a change to the working week made this impossible. Instead, he saw our empty trenches on the Lower Agora and Colonnaded Street, under the full sun, just prior to lunch. Thankfully, Solinda and Francis, who each supervised trenches had been there to greet him at breakfast just before departing.

In truth, John has come to Sagalassos for something more than our pits and sondages. Although he is now supporting future work in survey other sites, he is not a donor to this year’s field campaign, which is generously funded by Kent alumnus Paul Dyer. Rather, he has come to see the flowering of an earlier gift, some ten years ago, that he made to support Peter Talloen to come back into academic archaeology in a post-doctoral fellowship at the British Institute at Ankara, supported also by his great friend John Beale, and by matching funding from the University of Kent. What both John’s wanted was to see someone of Peter’s great potential, to leave his then job as a hotel manager in Kas, to come back into academia, and resume his place in Anatolian classical archaeology, as he now so spectacularly has, as director of the Sagalassos excavations, and as professor and head of dept at Bilkent.

Last year I was able to send John Beale photos of Peter, as director, excavating a bust of Zeus, as he lay paralysed from a stroke, whereas this year John Osborn was able to see extensive excavations and tour the site with myself and with Peter, to see how his support has borne fruit. A visit to the depot with Prof Jeroen Poblome followed, including a view of our finds, and then a trip to of the statues in the Burdur museum with Bilkent student Emir. For all this great hospitality, both Belgian and Turkish, I am very grateful. Yet it was only at Cremna, where John risked twisting his ankle to clamber over fallen blocks and scratching his shins on spiky shrubs, was it possible to for him to appreciate with me all that has been achieved at Sagalassos in 35 years. Here, the site is almost untouched, hanging on rock projection over a great chasm, the fallen columns of the colonnaded street leading up to the famous civil basilica, which John Ward-Perkins wrote about in Anatolian Studies 70 years ago. The site is atmospheric, sure, but we know now so much more about Sagalassos, especially late antiquity, thanks to the excavations of KULeuven and Bilkent.

11.1 Peter Talloen and John Osborn.

11.2 John inspects Trench 2.

11.3 Cremna, visited by John Osborn, to appreciate what Sagalassos would have been like, without the excavations it has seen.