Antiquity

Soon after the wedding, Paul and I drove his sister Sally to Pecos to see the ruin of the old church there. Back in the day, Pecos Pueblo was the biggest town in what is now New Mexico: the trading center, the place to be. Now all that’s left is the ruin of the kiva, a few adobe bricks where houses used to be, and the stone remains of the 1700s church. (Note to self: if you want to be remembered for centuries, build things out of stone.) The town of Pecos does, of course, still exist. But the sleepy mountain village is something else entirely to the civilization that once flourished and is now lost.

Which brings me, of course, to Istanbul. The glory days of Pecos Pueblo were the day-before-yesterday compared to the city that had formerly been the Eastern capital of the Roman Empire. But, like Pecos and its lost pueblo, the modern-day city of Istanbul has only geography in common with the glory days of the Byzantine capital. But there, hanging out between restaurants and souvenir shops, tram tracks and carpet vendors, are some of the oldest and most glorious buildings in the world.

Paul is the medieval historian in the marriage. (Can you believe I married someone who is actually MORE of a history nerd than I am?) So he knows more about the story of the emperor Constantine, who embraced Christianity and founded the eastern capital of the Roman Empire at a place he named Constantinople. I definitely learned to be impressed with the Emperor Justinian, who lived a century or so later, and had the Hagia Sophia built--actually rebuilt, for the third time. This is a HUGE place, it’s fabulous and gorgeous, and it was built in the 6^th century! How cool is that?

Also from Justinian’s time, there still exists underground cistern with columns from all over the place, including two with the head of Medusa at the base. Being an American, this kind of thing just amazes me. Here I live in the oldest capital city in the United States, and compared to this, well, it’s barely old enough to walk. Even the Anasazi hadn’t made it to the Santa Fe area in the 5^th century.

[I don't think I posted the photos of the Hagia Sophia and the Cisterns yet. Will get on it, veeerrrry slow internet connection here in Santorini willing.]

The glory of Pecos Pueblo ended not as a result of conquest, by either Spaniards or raiding tribes, but by drought. Byzantium was finally lost for good when the Ottoman Turks invaded Istanbul in 1453 (thank you, Paul). It’s as hard to picture the glorious days of Justinian's time in modern Istanbul as it is to imagine a thriving native trading center in today’s Pecos.

Anyway, Istanbul will never be Paris or Barcelona for me. But the history here is something else. The Byzantine Empire in all its phases, then the period of Islam, when the churches (including the Hagia Sophia and the Chora Church) became mosques and the iconography was (mercifully) mostly painted over rather than destroyed. (Both of the above are now museums, with the earlier iconography once more uncovered. Ironically, perhaps, there was more damage to the old artwork as a result of warring factions in Christianity (iconoclasts vs. iconodules) than due to the takeover of Islam. (Boy is this ringing a "local" bell for me: so much of the old Spanish folk art--the santos in New Mexico’s old churches so prized today--was destroyed or painted over by the European priests who came to Santa Fe with Bishop Lamy in the mid-1800s!)

I’ll finish with another weird connection between Istanbul and New Mexico:

We saw a lot of carpets in Istanbul with Navajo designs! What?! It made me wonder if those designs had originally been Moorish and brought to New Mexico with the Spanish missionaries (as was, for instance, the adobe brick-making technique). But no: they are Navajo designs that Istanbul weavers had seen on trips to the US or in pictures. Go figure.