Today we learned about quality Turkish rugs. Wool on cotton, wool on wool, silk on silk, dies, double knots, and the many many excellent reasons we should have spent over $1000 on a rug. Unfortunately, we didn’t act quickly enough and we lost our opportunity forever. (So sad, too bad.)

The highlight was visiting Ephesus. A city on this site was established by the Amazons. In turn, it was ruled by the Hittites, Greeks, Fresiens (sp? – all errors are the sole fault of our tour guide!), Syrians, and finally the Romans. It’s the best ancient city site in Turkey. If ever you visit, be sure to get the second ticket to tour the Roman house. I promise you will be blown away. But enough of the Greco-Roman stuff. It’s not surprising the Amazons had a female god named Epheza. But it didn’t stop there. Here’s an Anatolian Mother Goddess from 7000 BC. No doubt fertility was an important superpower of this god.

Here’s gold god from 580 BC.

The Roman version was Artemis. These two statues survived the period where Christians destroyed pagan statues by burying them in the sewer. Nobody found them until the archeologists started digging over 100 years ago. Artemis has all manor of animals and plants in the lower part of her body, and hundreds of breasts. She is the mother god for all of creation, and feeding the entire creation is her superpower,

Finally, here is the Ephesus theater. What does the theater have to do with female gods? St. Paul preached at the theater. He told the people that they had to stop worshiping Artemis and worship only God. The people got so riled up that they wanted to kill Paul. That would not do. Paul was a Roman citizen. Officials put Paul in jail for his own protection. They smuggled him out of Ephesus on a boat a couple of days later.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.