"Would you like a glass of champagne, sir?" asked the lovely airline flight attendant, smiling at me as I settled into my seat.

"Yes, I would! Thank you!"

The cold champagne tasted wonderful, and what a surprise it was. This was Ramadan in Turkiye, and suddenly I realized what a secular, Westernized country Turkiye had become, if champagne were being served during the daylight fasting hours on Turkish Airlines. They also still allowed smoking in their premium business class. Later, in their one most obvious concession to Islam, along with the light lunch came a notice stating "Turkish Airlines : Yemeklerimizde domuz eti bulunmamaktadir. This meal does not contain pork."

It was noon in Athens. John and I had made it to the airport on time today. Yesterday, Saturday, we had started out too late and then got caught up in all the weekend drivers, cruising around for pleasure. I'd missed my flight but had no trouble rescheduling.

What would it be like in Tyana, I thought to myself as we taxied to the runway. John had refused to go with me. "I not think for one second, Roberto, about going to Turkiye!" he wrote in an email message. It was his opinion that a Greek and a Texan in the fundamentalist Arab heart of Turkiye would be too tempting a combination-target for a disgruntled would-be Islamic nationalist with a pipe-bomb up his sleeve. So now I would be travelling by myself. But I planned to leave my cowboy hat in Istanbul and try to look "neutral" as I explored Cappadocia, not even knowing in advance whether the local people would speak English or not. I was tingling from excitement when the plane finally lifted off for Istanbul.

Tia met me at the airport. She was holding a sign that read "LuLu", a private joke. We laughed and embraced hello. We found a taxi and left for her condo in the heart of the weary old city, dirtier now than before but still as exotic as always. Tia had keyed me one time that she would never grow tired of living in Istanbul, that it could never become so commonplace as to bore her to tears.

Tia and I had met on the Internet at Hyperborea, a private discussion forum that I'd purchased in 1996. She'd joined my forum at the very beginning. John had joined us later, in January 1997. It was John who'd originally suggested this trip. He'd invited me to Greece to visit him, promising many exciting adventures in search of underground passageways and UFOs with the Sirian Nommo insignia painted on their underbellies.

19 November 1997. John and I were chatting at Uppernet in Amsterdam. Once again he invited me to visit his home in southern Greece. This time I decided to go. By the first of December, I had my passport and airline ticket. I was leaving for Greece, via Madrid and Venezia, on 7 January 1998.

A plan began to develop. At our Internet forum we had been devoting considerable discussion to the existence and historical significance of the Rogue Planet Nibiru, home of our "ancient astronauts," or "gods," as it were. And in this regard, I highly recommend the recently published book in England by Alan Alford titled Gods of the New Millennium. Because of the Greek involvement in this murky dungeon of our planet's distant memories, I decided to incorporate the details of this journey into a book about these Rogue Planets like Nibiru and call it Rogue Planets : The Tenth Esoteric Journey of Robertinius, John and I could broadcast live over the Internet with daily JPEGs from the Psychomantium of Poseidon and the Gates of Hades at "the end of the world." New ideas and possibilities were flooding our thoughts at that point. Tia volunteered to try to translate the book into Turkish and get it published by a Turkish metaphysical institute in Istanbul, even if an American publisher couldn't be found. We felt exhilarated.

Then Franco in Venezia sent a most peculiar message to our Hyperborea Forum. It was an Internet reprint of a chapter from the book We Are Not The First by Andrew Tomas, published by Bantam Books in 1971 : Chapter 19, "Apollonius Met The Men Who Knew Everything."

It just so happened that I have a copy of this Andrew Tomas book. I immediately verified that the Internet information was accurate. It was. It also just so happens that I have a set of dictionaries of antiquities that were published in London and Boston in the last half of the previous century by Professor William Smith, together with a large contingent of antiquarian scholars from all over the continent of Europe. There are literally thousands and thousands of pages of information, dictionary-style, on anything that one could possibly wish to know about the ancient world of 2,000 years or more ago.

And there it was : Apollonius of Tyana. In Professor Smith's A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology there is a lengthy article about this mysterious Apollonius of Tyana. It seems that Roman Empress Julia Domna commissioned a Greek writer named Philostratus to compile a biography of Apollonius of Tyana. Her purpose in doing so must have been to clarify for history that a Christianity -- or Kristosism -- based upon someone called "the Jesus Christ" had no basis in fact, was a masquerade, and that these often heretical beliefs in her day and time originated with Tyanaean troublemaker-philosopher Apollonius, who was born in the same year attributed to this "Jesus." Empress Julia Domna died of suicide by starvation in 217 CE (Common Era), and Philostratus published his The Life of Apollonius of Tyana in 220 CE.

Apollonius of Tyana died less than one hundred years from the era of Empress Julia Domna. She knew from her recent history how much conflict and bloodshed had resulted from the emergence of these new Kristosian sects. She was a Syrian, first of all. There is a saying in today's Middle East that if a man wishes to find the most beautiful and most cunning wife on the Earth, he should first go to Syria to look for her. Obviously, this idea is nothing new. Roman Emperor Septimius Severus showed his good taste for beauty and intelligence by marrying the Syrian Julia.

The well-known Biblical City of Tarsus, from which St. Paul, or Saul, hailed, now near modern-day Adana, Turkiye, at the northeastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, is an easy journey from Syria. Tarsus was the Ionian port-of-call for Cilicia, Cappadocia and Galatia. It was a major crossroads center on the way from Alexandria to Athens and Rome. This ancient route still exists today as a modern highway. The Turkish and Egyptian Governments are at present funding a project to expand this road into at least a four-lane freeway connecting Cairo to the autobahns of Western Turkiye and Europe.

In Biblical times the journey from Tarsus to Tyana would be the modern equivalent of Adana to Bor, a distance of approximately 100 miles or 160 kilometers. There is now a new alternate superhighway connecting Adana to the Taurus Mountains at Pozanti, about a third of the distance; but from there the old highway still follows the ancient route via the Cilician Gates, through which all of the ancient armies had to march from Greece to Syria. The distance from Ancient Tyana to northern Syria is no farther than the distance from Dallas to Austin, Texas. Nothing. Julia Domna undoubtedly grew up in Syria, hearing stories about Apollonius of Tyana, much like someone in Dallas would grow up with stories about Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar or Sam Houston.

Then later, Julia Domna, as Empress of Rome, would have been privy to all of the "underground rumors" and gossip of her day and age. As an intellectual, she surrounded herself with the greatest philosophers and thinkers of her imperial city. Empress Julia Domna, who was known as "the philosophical empress," was "in the thick of things," one might say today. So most probably her intentions were nothing but honorable.

What we are talking about here is an extremely revolutionary religious idea. Empress Julia Domna and her philosophical "Sophist" friends like Philostratus would not have gone to such great lengths to compile the life of Apollonius of Tyana, if this Apollonius were just another "court magician" wandering about like a gypsy from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas, and across the Sahara Desert to the Highlands of Ethiopia, entertaining royalty and performing magic tricks in the marketplaces. No. One could even go so far as to say that Empress Julia Domna and her philosophical coterie could see into the future, could see the handwriting on our wall, as it were, if this masquerade of religion were allowed to continue. Unfortunately, it did, as a direct result of the Council of Nicaea. But now ... ?

This new information electrified our Hyperborea Forum on the Internet. People headed for the Search Engines at once. Search : Apollonius of Tyana.

One of our Hyperboreans shouted "Bingo!" Mike had come across a goldmine of Internet information on Apollonius of Tyana.

*

Here is the first part of the first page:

Apollonius the Nazarene

An Astounding Revelation Saved From the Flames that burnt the Alexandrian Library, which the Roman Churchmen razed to the ground to destroy all records of the Mystery Man of Christianity, APOLLONIUS OF TYANA, the historical Christ and World Teacher of the First Century, Now Revealed to the World for the First Time, Proving that APOLLONIUS OF TYANA was the TRUE FOUNDER of early Christianity and that the "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament had no existence except in the imagination of the Pagan Roman priests at Nicaea, subsequently called the "Church Fathers," who invented him as a substitute for APOLLONIUS, THE TRUE CHRIST.

By Dr. R. W. Bernard, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

1964

FIELDCREST PUBLISHING CO., INC.
210 Fifth Avenue, New York 10, N.Y.

Note: Author is now deceased and publishing company defunct. Rights are not reserved.

Looks like open territory to me.
Mike

*****

CLICK HERE to read Dr. Bernard's book.

*****

Reproduced in this current manuscript in its entirety is the complete set of articles by Dr. Bernard regarding Apollonius of Tyana.

This material was the clincher. It changed my whole perspective of this impending trip. By now it was mid-December. I hastily rearranged my schedule to include a stopover in Tyana, Cappadocia, Turkiye. Tia is a translator of English works into Turkish, and her husband Hasan is employed by an American company in Istanbul. They are both extremely fluent in English. When I first expressed my desire to go to Tyana, Hasan arranged via his American company for me to get a ticket. But he could not go with me. I would have to go by myself. As I sat on the airplane that Saturday, January 18, flying from Athens to Istanbul, I was wishing that I had a translator/travelling companion. This trip to Tyana by then had become a total obsession with me.

In A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, Vol. II, p. 1245, by Professor William Smith & Others, London, 1878, we find the following information regarding the City of Tyana, quoted here verbatim :

*

TYANA (Ta Tuana, Tuaneus, Tuanites), also called Thyanan or Thiana, and originally Tohana, from Thoas, a Thracian king, who was believed to have pursued Orestes and Pylades thus far, and to have founded the town. Reports said that it was built, like Zela in Pontus, on a causeway of Semiramis; but it is certain that it was situated in Cappadocia at the foot of Mount Taurus, near the Cilician Gates, and on a small tributary of the Lamus. It stood on the highroad to Cilicia and Syria at a distance of 300 stadia from Cybistra, and 400 stadia from Mazaca.

Its situation on that road and close to so important a pass must have rendered Tyana a place of great consequence, both in a commercial and a military point of view. The plain around it, moreover, was extensive and fertile, and the whole district received from the town of Tyana the name of Tyanitis.

From its coins we learn that in the reign of Caracalla the city became a Roman colony; afterwards, having for a time belonged to the empire of Palmyra, it was conquered by Aurelian, in A.D 272, and Valens raised it to the rank of the capital of Cappadocia Secunda. Its capture by the Turks is related by Cedrenus.

Tyana is celebrated in history as the native place of the famous impostor Apollonius, of whom we have a detailed biography by Philostratus.

[Comment: Emphasis added. Please take note of the biased religionist attitude of this Christian commentator.]

In the vicinity of the town there was a temple of Zeus on the borders of a lake in a marshy plain. The water of the lake itself was cold, but a hot well, sacred to Zeus, issued from it. This well was called Asmabaeon, and from it Zeus himself was surnamed Asmabaeus.

These details about the locality of Tyana have led in modern times to the discovery of the true site of the ancient city. It was formerly believed that Kara Hissar marked the site of Tyana; and in that district many ruins exist, and its inhabitants still maintain that their town once was the capital of Cappadocia. But this is too far north to be identified with Tyana; and Hamilton has shown most satisfactorily, what others had conjectured before him, that the true site of Tyana is at a place now called Kis Hissar [Kemerhisar], south-west of Nigdeh [Nigde], and between this place and Erekli.

The ruins of Tyana are considerable, but the most conspicuous is an aqueduct of granite, extending seven or eight miles [12-13 kms.] to the foot of the mountains. There are also massive foundations of several large buildings, shafts, pillars, and one handsome column still standing. Two miles south of these ruins, the hot spring also still bubbles forth in a cold swamp or lake.

*

"Can you ski Tyana?" I asked Tia later that Sunday.

She laughed. "No, you can only ski in Bursa!"

"What's the Tyana weather like now?" For right at first, Tia had expressed dismay that I was entertaining the thought of traversing the Taurus Mountains in wintry January.

"It was snowy last week, but I think now it is okay. The roads are open to traffic. I saw it on the TV weather report."

Then she dropped her delightful bombshell.

"I think that Hasan has found for you the perfect travelling companion. His name is Faruk. He has travelled a lot, and he used to work for Hasan's company. He is coming for dinner this evening."

And that is how I met Faruk. It was the hand of fate that I'd missed my earlier flight from Athens. If I'd flown to Istanbul the day before, I'd not have had the company of Faruk on my journey to Tyana.

One side of Faruk's mother's family came from Cappadocia. She was pleased that her son had taken such an interest in Cappadocian history during his life. Faruk had travelled to Cappadocia a few times before, but he'd never been to the particular area that I was planning to visit. His mother told him later that she'd once heard a legend that "a great holy man" had been born in Nigde, Cappadocia, only a stone's throw from what is now left of Ancient Tyana, the cultural and religious center of Ionia, of southcentral Turkiye, two thousand years ago.

Tuesday morning I met Faruk at the Istanbul airport. Airport security in Turkiye is tiresome. One has to go through two metal detectors, so my big brass belt buckle became a nuisance to remove. Then often one has to personally identify one's luggage on the runway before the luggage will be loaded into the cargo hold. Air travel today is not nearly so sedate and glamorous as it was in earlier decades. The flight to Adana was boring and uneventful. We arrived about ten o'clock and rented an Avis Ford Escort for the drive into the Taurus Mountains to Tyana and Bor.

Faruk didn't have a driver's license, so it was up to me to do the driving. He would be my interpreter; I, his driver. It didn't take me long to get the feel of the Ford Escort and the Turkish driving conditions. We were on our way to Tarsus, and I was going back to Tyana.

Back to Tyana. I had forgotten that I'd actually been there before. Thirty years earlier, I'd taken the train from Istanbul to Beirut. We'd passed through Tyana on the way down to Adana. I'd been travelling with Fern and Ted. We were all in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. We met Jack, a Peace Corps Volunteer from Iran, on the train. We sat and gossiped about the Peace Corps all the way to Aleppo. Now I couldn't remember a thing about how the scenery had looked on that trip. It was strange for me to be going back but not remembering.

Faruk and I drove first to Tarsus. I'd had this preconceived notion that nothing, really, would still be there, that it would be a ghost town. It wasn't. It is a bustling little city with scant reminders of its Greco-Roman past. Faruk suggested that we visit a ruin known as "Cleopatra's Gate."

Queen Cleopatra, The Great, of Egypt, made a state visit to Tarsus to meet Antonius. To herald her triumphant entry into the city, the local government had erected a stone archway through which she and her entourage could pass on their way from the port to the city center.

Today, the remains of this gate are located in the middle of a shabby traffic circle, as if it were just a relic "nuisance" in the center of town to be left alone and tolerated. So they put a traffic circle around it and forgot all about it. Such were my thoughts as I stood in the street, taking a few quick photos. I wondered how many local Tarsus traffic commuters ever give "Cleopatra's Gate" a second thought, as they drive back and forth twice each day. Dogs were running loose in the streets, here as everywhere in southern Europe.

Gates. Cleopatra's Gate. The Cilician Gates. I would soon be there. The Gates of Hades. I had just come from there. The Gateway to Heaven. There is an ancient myth that during mid-January, whilst the Sun and Earth are aligned with the Constellation of Capricornus, we are also aligned with the "Gateway to Heaven," a portal through which the souls of the dead must pass on their way to eternal paradise.

So we would be passing through the Cilician Gates during the closing moments of the celestial Gateway to Heaven. We drove away from Cleopatra's Gate, east towards the highways. By mistake we got on the new superhighway to Pozanti but were able to exit at Damlana and return to the older road through Gulek and the Gulek Bogazi, or Gulek Pass, or Cilician Gates.

A funny thing happened. I had been to the Khyber Pass once long ago and had expected the Cilician Gates to look something like that. But we passed right through it and didn't even notice it. I began to think, where are the Cilician Gates? We stopped and asked a couple of men. They said we'd already passed it, that it was five or six kilometers back down the way we'd just come. "Huh?" I thought. I turned around and drove back.

Then I began to understand what the Cilician Gates referred to. Coming up the Taurus Mountains, for the most part we'd been travelling along the western slopes of the range. At the Cilician Gates, there is a stretch of about 5 miles (8 kilometers) where a narrow highland gorge exists, connecting the western slopes of one range with the eastern slopes of an adjacent range. Were it not for the Cilician Gates, to get from north to south one would have to cross two mountain ranges instead of a single combined range with a high-elevation "gate." The old, two-lane highway through the Gulek Bogazi, as the Cilician Gates are now called, was winding but not extremely narrow. A light snow began falling, and snowdrifts cascaded down the rocky mountainsides, amongst the evergreen trees, beneath the cloudy charcoal skies.

According to the travel guide Baedeker's Turkey, the Cilician Gates lie 50 kilometers/30 miles north of the City of Tarsus -- "a rocky gorge several hundred meters high but barely 20m/65ft wide through which the river rushes. The ancient road which frequently featured in history was used by such notable figures as Semiramis, Xerxes, Darius, Cyrus the Younger, Alexander the Great, Haroun al-Rashid and Geoffrey de Bouillon. It followed the east side of the gorge, partly hewn from the rock face and partly borne on projecting beams. A modern road has been blasted out of the cliffs and the new trunk road by-passes the gorge to the west. The old road is now in poor condition."

We stopped for a vegetarian lunch with tea at a truckstop on the road to Ulukisla. "When you are travelling, you aren't required to fast," Faruk advised me. It was early afternoon. We were the only ones eating in the quiet rural restaurant.

By the time we reached Ulukisla, we had arrived at the southernmost extremities of Cappadocia, where one enters into a great flat high plain at an altitude of about 1,100 to 1,200 meters, or about 3,500 feet. The cities of Bor and Nigde are at the center of this plain, surrounded on the faraway fringes by gleaming snow-capped mountaintops. Because of its elevation, the high plain of Tyanitis is not affected at all by the maritime environment of the nearby Mediterranean Sea.

The sun was shining. The sky was clear. The air was warm. It was a perfect afternoon! One couldn't have asked for better weather.

Bor : Population 24,000. We entered the city limits of Bor and found the Hotel Tyana where Hasan had booked our accommodations. It was in the heart of the Bor business district.

In the travel guide Baedeker's Turkey, we can read the following about Bor and nearby Kemerhisar, site of Ancient Tyana, pp. 424-425, quoted here verbatim.

Bor, or Poros in antiquity, is a carpet-weaving town, lying some 15km/9 miles south of Nigde in the fertile Bor Ovasi plain. Split in half by the Human Çayi, the plain is surrounded by steep-sided tuff rocks. During Byzantine times Poros came to replace the ancient town of Tyana. Around 1205, it is thought that the Seljuks founded a small Islamic settlement here and surrounded it with a clay brick wall (now ruined). It was here that 100 mortars produced gunpowder for the Ottoman troops using the saltpeter deposits in Kemerhisar. Places of interest in the town include the oldest mosque, Sari Cami (Yellow Mosque; 1205), the Ottoman Kale Camii (Castle Mosque; 1629) and the Seljuk caravanserai Bor Hani.

Kemerhisar (formerly Kilisehisar) lies 25km/16 miles south of Nigde and is scattered over three hills on the site of the ancient town of Tyana. Semiramis, the legendary queen of Assyria and founder of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, is thought to have been instrumental in establishing Tyana, which existed here from 1200 B.C. as a late Hittite principality, named Tuhana after the decline of the Hittite Empire. In the second half of the 8th c. B.C. one of the rulers was Varpavalas whose stele can be seen in an Istanbul museum. Ancient remains on the site include a Doric marble pillar on the "Hill of Semiramis" and fifteen linked tuff and marble arches ("kemer", arches) of a Roman aqueduct. A path leads from the south of the site to the Baths of Kemerhisar which is mentioned in ancient writings. The warm water (15°C/60°F) containing sodium hydrogen carbonate, magnesium carbonate and salt was drunk for its healing powers. The site also comprises a bathing pool.

Unfortunately, I read this information only after I'd returned to Texas. So whilst in Tyana, I was unaware of the Doric marble pillar on the Hill of Semiramis; and later when Faruk and I tried to find the remains of the hot baths, no one but the sexy lady leaning out the upstairs window seemed to know exactly where it was.

So this was where Apollonius grew up. I was pleasantly and unexpectedly surprised. The landscape looked like West Texas, north or Marfa and the Big Bend. Never in my wildest dreams had I considered that possibility.

Ancient Tyana, or what remains of it today, is located about ten minutes away from downtown Bor. One drives south, on the highway back to Ulukisla; and practically on the outskirts of Bor, one enters the town of Kemerhisar, a small town that stretches in an east-west direction. The ruins of Tyana are located on the northern edge of Kemerhisar and are nothing more than an ancient aqueduct said to have been constructed by the Hittites and kept in subsequent operation by the Greeks and Romans.

At the time of Apollonius, Tyanitis was a region of Cappadocia. The City of Tyana, also called Dana, took its name from the region of Tyanitis. The products of this entire area have included crystal, lapis lazuli, timber, fine wines and saffron. Its history is filled with religious and political intrigues from Alexander, The Great, to Anthony and Cleopatra, to Apollonius, to the Roman Empress Julia Domna.

There is a legend about Tyana. It seems that at one point in its history, an eastern king named "Nimrud" paid a visit to Cappadocia to consult with a Tyanaean prophet and holy man. When this Nimrud expressed doubts about this holy man's abilities, the holy man performed several "miracles" to convince King Nimrud that he was what he said he was. When this holy man caused the water on the aqueduct to flow backwards, uphill, Nimrud doubted him no longer. Today there are two mountains in Turkiye named after this King Nimrud, one near Lake Van and the another in far eastern Turkiye.

The Kings of Cappadocia were "poor kings." They had no national treasury. They couldn't keep up with all the bribery necessary to appease their Roman rulers into allowing them to maintain a separate sovereignty within the Roman Empire.

Emperor Tiberius got rid of the last Cappadocian King in 17 CE. He then officially annexed Cappadocia to the rest of the empire.

Note that date. Apollonius of Tyana was only 20 years old that year. It is no wonder that he hated Rome. And at that time he was contemplating the start of the first of his self-imposed five years of silence, and he probably didn't even desire to "dispute sophistically" about it. And don't you know that those around him were certainly talking about this abrupt change in their local governmental circumstances!

Today, at least around Bor and Nigde, the main cash crop is apples. On a clear day you could see apple trees forever. The Missouri of Turkiye. Ankara is at the same latitude as Baltimore, meaning that Tyana would be at about the same latitude as Richmond or Wichita. Missouri is a big apple-producing region in America, and is at the same latitude as Cappadocia. Faruk said that the famous Cappadocian apples are twice as expensive in Istanbul. We drove past an old man and his wife, selling apples besides the country road to the rock-hewn monastery. We stopped, and they gave us a couple of samples. I am not much of an apple-lover myself, but these were good-quality apples. They are comparable in color and taste to the "Kona Gold" brand apples that one can find in American supermarkets, at least here in Texas, as well as the New Zealand Enza Royal Gala apples. Faruk told me that the Greater Adana Region, including Cilicia and Cappadocia, is the primary agricultural area of Turkiye where most of their year-round produce originates, rather like California or Florida, I supposed.

The handsome young desk clerk at the Hotel Tyana, always a smile on his face, practically lived behind the front desk. He had his personal television set and a single bed underneath the adjacent stairway to the second floor, where the convenient restaurant was located. He gave me a tourist brochure about the Hotel Tyana and the surrounding sights to see. It informed that for centuries, Tyana, not Jerusalem, had been the primary Christian religious and cultural center of the Near East. It remained as such until its total destruction and obliteration by the invading Arabian Moslems in the Seventh Century of the Common Era. So most of what we see today dates from after that invasion. The only thing left standing now from Ancient Tyana is the ruins of the old aqueduct.

I asked him if he'd ever heard of Apollonius of Tyana, a great holy man of ancient times. He started recounting how he'd heard about a more recent holy man, a Moslem cleric, who was buried somewhere in the Bor vicinity. When I said no, that wasn't the one I meant, he shrugged and said that he'd never heard of Apollonius.

He handed us the remote controls to the hotel rooms' television sets. I almost told him I didn't want one, because I would certainly not be watching television whilst in Bor. This had happened in Italy on my way. They gave you the TV remote control at the hotel front desk, like it was as valuable as a bar of gold or something. I thought it was hilarious how serious everybody seemed to be taking this gadget of modern technology.

It was cold at night in that hotel room, even with the old-fashioned steam radiator going at full strength. When I slept, I covered up with three blankets. But this cold seemed a minor annoyance to me at the time. I had a bottle of champagne to drink each night and used those hours to meditate and make notes for this account. Turkish champagne is excellent! Because of Ramadan, I'd not even imagined drinking alcohol whilst in Turkiye; but wine and champagne were widely available. Turkish wines, especially those of Cappadocia, are some of the finest wines in the world, I am happy to report. I especially appreciated the little red pulltabs on the cork covers, making it easier to open the bottles. I hadn't seen that convenient item on American wine bottles before. In my hotel room I kept my wines "in the refrigerator," I laughed to Faruk, on the window ledge just outside on the landing to the spiralling orange fire-escape.

When I would open this window to gaze out over the darkened town, past the looming minaret of the mosque across the street, the night air smelled faintly acrid, or sour. It was a strange smell that is difficult to describe, like gunpowder or fireworks. But I learned long ago that different places on Earth often have different smells about them. This was the smell of Tyanitis. I savored it for its moment.

HA! As I was to read later, it was the acrid smell of saltpeter, used to make gunpowder!

Before going to my room that night, I'd inquired about the time for their serving of the Ramadan breakfast. The desk clerk told me that it starts around 4 AM. I decided that if I by chance woke up in time enough to attend, I'd go; otherwise, I'd eat their normal, travellers' breakfast.

There was an almost absolutely death-like quiet in that cozy hotel room. It was too cold even for the cockroaches to scamper about, if there were any cockroaches in Tyana. There was just a slight clicking of the steam radiator and an occasional clanking of a door on the floor down below. There were only ten of us staying there that night; the hotel had about fifty rooms.

Faruk and I had eaten dinner at the Kime Ne Restaurant down the street. We'd waited till the alert sirens had signalled the end of "sahur" and the start of the daily "iftar," the sunset end of fasting. In Istanbul the "iftar" was signalled by the firing of cannons, and this cannon-firing was broadcast live to the nation daily on Turkish television. Istanbul's "iftar" followed the one in Bor by twenty minutes. But at "iftar" everywhere, everybody was hungry and in a hurry to eat. Turks eat fast, like Americans, not at all leisurely as do the Spaniards or the French. So by the arrival of "iftar," restaurants are crowded and rather hectic. This was a familiar restaurant pace to me but in an unfamiliar local surrounding.

The Kime Ne was decorated almost entirely in pink and white. The walls were pink. The chairs were make of pink metal with floral cushion patterns in pink and white and red. The table napkins were pink and placed upon white tablecloths. In the center of the tables were little bowls of hot red pepper and paprika. The curtains on the glass front windows were pink with white fringe. Then to contrast with the pink, dark-green ivy had been planted in brick-colored pots, placed on pink shelves on pink walls. The ivy hung down from the pots and climbed along the walls in decorative geometric patterns.

The Kime Ne's menu never changed from one day to the next. If you wanted to eat something different, you had to find another restaurant. So on both evenings we had a light soup with cheese and bread, a tomato and onion salad, yogurt, grilled chicken kebab, and for dessert Turkish-style baklava and tea. It seemed a bit cold to me in the restaurant, like it did indoors everywhere. But Faruk said that he was not cold. We Americans, I guess, are too spoiled by the ubiquitous warmth of our centrally heated society.

We chatted with the restaurant owner. He was not aware of Apollonius of Tyana, but he had heard of a legendary "holy man" in the foggy, distant past. I asked him if many tourists came around to visit the ruins of Tyana. "No," he said, "mostly only the Japanese come to visit Bor and Tyana." He told us that a new regional airport is under construction, to be completed in 5-6 years, in anticipation of a major tourist boom in the future, since Cappadocia is already becoming a popular vacation destination, particularly for the Europeans and Japanese. That was one of the reasons for the massive housing construction activity that I saw in Bor and Nigde. A lot of eastern Turks are moving to this area in search of employment with the burgeoning tourism sector.

"But they are building apartments by the hundreds! Do they really expect to rent or sell all of those apartments?" I asked, somewhat rhetorically.

"Yes, of course," they said.

"If tourists start coming in here by the thousands, it'll ruin this place," I commented.

They agreed, but -- what can you do?

As I sat there in that cold hotel room, contemplating my foreign surroundings, I decided to check out the restaurant. Maybe some men would be there, talking, and provide me with some companionship. I left my room quietly and walked down two flights of stairs. Three very interesting-looking men were in the restaurant, preparing a water pipe that they'd placed on a table, but they were only watching television. Smoking their hookah and watching TV. Bummer. No one to talk to tonight.

The next morning I woke up too late and missed the Ramadan breakfast. Faruk and I were early in the restaurant; and as soon as the young waiter had taken our orders, he turned on that television set again. And then he walked away.

Television! Television sets were turned on in every restaurant and teashop in Turkiye. It has the Turkish people mesmerized, unfortunately. The same thing can be said of Greece and elsewhere. People everywhere seem to be hopelessly addicted to television. It is destroying travel as we used to know it, when people would sit around entertaining one another with their personal tales and opinions.

As I complained about this to Faruk, as I had also done with John in Greece, at one point he laughed and pointed at a bus that we'd just passed on the highway.

"There's a TV set in the bus," he said.

"In the bus? They have damn TV sets everywhere!"

"It is funny, actually. Some of these places don't even have running water yet, but they already have television. You know, by satellite."

We wondered what Mohammed would have written in the Koran about watching television. He probably would have prohibited it, just like he prohibited the addictions of alcohol and gambling. Faruk told me that as far as he knew, the small Asian nation of Bhutan is the only nation on Earth today to have an official ban against both television and radio programming.

That morning Faruk and I returned to the Tyana aqueduct to have a longer look and take some photographs. This was not at all what I'd expected the ruins of Tyana to be like : only a remnant of an ancient, sloping aqueduct that stretched for about a few miles, until it eventually descended to ground-level and disappeared. I collected some rocks to take home with me, from a pile that still littered the ground from the days of the city's destruction over 1,300 years ago.

Adjacent to and following alongside the aqueduct is a narrow street, barely wide enough for two small cars to pass one another. Herds of goat and sheep, often accompanied by a wrinkled older man, would get in the way of our car. On the other side of the street from the aqueduct are houses and small businesses, some of them two or three floors tall, a timeless style of architecture that could have been from any century of the last three millennia. Opposite these mostly rock buildings beyond the aqueduct, vast orchards of apple trees have been planted.

We stopped along this street to take some photos. A woman in an upstairs room apparently saw us out the window. She opened the shutters and called down to us in Turkish. She was a sexy, lovely woman, and I wondered if she knew that I was an American tourist and just wanted to "flirt" or something. Faruk told her who we were and what we were doing, and she told us that we must drive on down the street a way to see the beautiful restaurant with the ancient Roman baths. We'd been searching for these baths before but hadn't been able to find them. She said that they were inside the restaurant, that's why we hadn't seen them. How peculiar, I thought to myself.

But when we finally drove down there, after getting lost but reconfirming the odd directions of this woman, the restaurant was closed for the winter season. So we couldn't see the baths, although from the layout of the place, I got the idea that the baths were out in the back, much like a swimming pool would be the centerpiece for an American poolside restaurant and club. But a ruin of a Roman bathhouse in a modern restaurant? It was a novel concept, to say the least.

"Can you ski Tyana?" I asked Faruk, as I stared again at the snow-capped mountains.

"Oh no, you can only ski at Bursa."

"Why not here? Why can't you ski on that mountain over there? Look at all that snow."

"It's not the right kind of terrain for skiing. There are two many large rocks, and the snow isn't deep enough."

"Too bad. They could have a huge ski industry here with ski-lifts and everything."

"Yes. I agree."

"In the summertime, when it gets hot like Texas, do the men go around with no shirts? Do people, even the women, wear shorts?"

"Oh, no no! They are very modest, conservative people here, not at all like the Americans."

Faruk had lived for a brief time in America and was able to discern all the subtleties and nuances of both his and my cultures. And I must add that it was extremely fortunate that I was being accompanied by such a travelling companion and interpreter as he, because had I been on my own as originally I'd expected, I'd have had a most difficult time communicating with the Cappadocians and would never have learned all the information that I am now able to recount in this narrative.

Several times during the "sahur" hours, we tried to stop for a cup of coffee or tea; but we always came upon the obvious excuse that "we are not open for business yet," meaning, of course, the implied reason that "well, it's Ramadan, and we don't want to seem anti-traditional by serving anyone, even a tourist and his travelling companion." Actually, observing the fasting rules is not at all difficult. No one needs to eat more than two meals a day anyway. We have become too accustomed to the idea that we can snack at all hours of the day or night. If for no other reason, the Ramadan fast reminds us that we need to exercise more discipline in our eating and drinking habits, whether we be Moslems or anybody else.

A dominant feature in the landscape of Tyana and Bor is the Melendiz Mountain, named for its proximity to the Melendiz River. It rises to a height of 3,000 meters (over 9,000 feet). It is a gently sloping mountain which was now capped with snow. During the summer months, when the slopes are green, it must be an inviting mountain to climb, indeed. If I'd had the time, I'd have climbed it; and I know deep down inside that Apollonius climbed it one time. Anyone growing up at its foot certainly would yearn from sheer curiosity to see the view from its summit.

Faruk and I drove a few kilometers up the mountain to the tiny village of Okçu. We asked about climbing to the top. A group of villagers told us that to climb to the top and back would require about one week's time. We hoped that we can do it someday.

We drove to the picturesque nearby City of Nigde (population 55,000) with its tree-lined downtown streets and central park, where I discovered a chess board painted on the concrete promenade, so that "living chess matches" could be held for public entertainment. There is one of these "living chessboards" south of Dallas near Waxahachie, Texas.

Faruk insisted that we visit the Nidge Museum of Archaeology, and I agreed. It was located next to a junior high school where the students were out for noon recess. The students were dressed in formal uniforms : the boys in coats and ties (even though some of them were playing soccer), the girls in pretty identical frocks.

"Those boys look so handsome in their coats and ties, don't they?" I remarked.

"Yes, they do," Faruk agreed.

"American children would never wear uniforms like that to school, especially the boys. Are all the school kids in Turkiye required to wear uniforms?"

"Only until they reach high school. Then they can dress as they like."

Once again we heard the muezzin call to prayer. How can people concentrate for long periods of time when they are constantly being interrupted by reminders to pray once again? And all those muezzins on loudspeakers all at once five times a day -- Faruk said that there is legislation pending in the Turkish parliament to designate only one mosque per city to broadcast the call to prayer, although he added that numerous traditionalists are opposed to this change of religious custom.

There were patches of ice and snow on the ground in the Nigde Museum parking lot. We had to walk carefully. It is a small regional museum that is professionally managed by the Turkish Ministry of Antiquities.

Inside the museum, at one point a group of seventh-grade schoolgirls rushed over and surrounded me, staring at me as if I were a movie star.

"Do you speak English?" the prettiest one asked.

"Yes. Why?"

They giggled nervously. We laughed, and Faruk said something to them in Turkish.

"They study English in their school, and they want to practice speaking some English," he told me.

So we "practiced English" for a moment. They were students at the nextdoor junior high. I asked them if they'd ever heard of Apollonius of Tyana. They said no. I asked if their teacher had ever mentioned Apollonius of Tyana. They said no. So I told them not to forget the name, and to ask their history teacher about the great holy man from Cappadocia, known as Apollonius of Tyana. They said okay. As we chatted about this, it almost felt "conspiratorial." I hoped that they would stir up some trouble at school.

"Can I take photos in the museum?" I asked the pretty schoolgirl.

"I don't know," she said. "I'll ask the guard for you."

She hurried out to the museum lobby and returned a few minutes later.

"You can take photographs of everything except the mummy," she advised.

"The mummy?" I asked. "There's a mummy in the museum?"

"Yes, back there." She pointed.

The mummy she was speaking of had been found in the volcanic ash on Mount Hasan. It was a fairly well preserved mummy, as mummies go. I'd already seen the Pharaonic mummies in the Cairo Museum many years ago. The schoolgirls wanted to know if I thought it was "scary." It wasn't. But they thought it was.

From exhibits at the Nigde Museum could be found the following information :

During the Bronze Age, tin was mined extensively in Cappadocia.

Cappadocia is in the boundaries of Nigde -- Kayseri -- Nevsehir, and the region contains such important historical centers as Göreme, Ilhara, and Soganlidere. The region was formed as a result of volcanic eruptions of Mounts Erdas and Hasan in the early on. Ihlara Valley, which includes a considerable part of the Cappadocia Region, is 40 kilometers from Aksaray. According to the records there are 105 churches with frescoes and monasteries and 535 dwellings in the Ilhara Valley that forms a canyon whose length is 14 kilometers. It is estimated that 30,000-100,000 people lived here in the past.

In the early years of Christianity came the arrival of the sect's founders such as Gregorius of Nazianzus. Gregorius established the rules of monastery life as different from the rules in Egypt and Syria. The earliest examples of the churches in the Valley first appeared in the Fourth Century CE.

The City of Tyana was originally founded by the Hittites and Assyrians and was named Tuvananna. In Hellenistic times the name became Dana, and then in Roman times it was known as Tyana. During the Byzantine period, Tyana was the eastern Mediterranean region's most important Christian center. The city was conquered and totally destroyed by the invading Moslems in 670 CE.

One could spend a lifetime exploring this region of the world, I thought; and I regretted immensely not having the time to visit Göreme's Tufa rock pyramids and underground cave city where early Christians had found safety from the savage persecutions to which they were often subjected by various forces.

Before we left, I asked some of the museum staffers if they'd ever heard of Apollonius of Tyana. None had, but they summoned an archaeologist from an office down the hall. I introduced myself and inquired if he'd ever heard of Apollonius. He said no, but he took us to the office of another archaeologist. This man seemed to recall something about it and rummaged through a stack of magazines, looking for an article. He finally found it. It was in a German Turkish cultural magazine and had been written by a German researcher on the history of Cappadocia. He gave me the name of the author and the magazine's Istanbul address. Tia was later able to locate this office in Istanbul and get email addresses for both.

From the museum we drove to a rock-hewn monastery on the outskirts of Nigde. Located in the village of Eski Gümüsler, this was an early Christian haven. The monks had carved rooms and halls for worship out of the rock mountain itself, and some early frescoes can still be seen on the cave walls. A group of schoolboys in their coats and ties came walking down the road and entered the site. They had a serious demeanor about them, like the girls in the museum, and I wondered to myself if this were "class project day" at the Nigde Junior High, and some of the students were choosing to visit historical places and artifacts.

There was a small, rural mosque across the street from the ruins of the monastery. A group of old men, some with canes, walked out into the street.

"Look," I said to Faruk, "prayers have ended for the afternoon."

"Yes," he laughed. "Only the old men, you see?"

Then he pointed at the young boys in their coats and ties, scampering around the ancient rock cave cloisters. Prayer was the last thing on their young minds.

As you may have guessed by now, Faruk was not a very devout, observant Moslem. Neither were Tia and Hasan in Istanbul. Tia said that Hasan was too skinny to even think about fasting during Ramadan.

Never once during this trip did the "Texas Connection" leave my thoughts. From Ulukisla to Ankara, this terrain reminded me of Texas. But it was more than just the flat terrain with the mountains on the horizon and the flat highways that seem to stretch for miles ahead. It was the look on people's faces, and the Turkish tumbleweeds bouncing across the ribbon-like rural roads, and the occasional highway patrolman trying to hide just over the hill -- though in Turkiye, unlike Texas, these troopers were looking for people who were driving too slowly rather than too fast. There were old saddlebags in the Nigde Museum, and Cappadocia is known as "the Land of a Thousand Horses." Cappadocian Cowboys. And like Texas, too, there's no olive industry in Cappadocia because of the harsh winter climate.

And the trees of Cappadocia, even though many were bare for the winter -- the evergreens, the apples, the willows, the poplars -- they are reminiscent of Texas, too. In the springtime those countless thousands of apple trees filled with fragrant blossoms must be a magnificent sight to behold. Oftentimes I have discussed trees with people from foreign lands. One of the aspects of a foreign place that makes it seem "foreign" to an outside visitor is the look of the trees. But here, even the trees looked like Texas.

And it was the Cappodocian food we ate : the tomatoes and peppers and onions, served with lemon juice for seasoning and thin pieces of bread topped with melted white cheese, a bowl of ground red-hot pepper on the table.

Tia and Hasan told me that one time somebody had actually opened a Tex-Mex restaurant in Istanbul, but they'd gone bankrupt. "La Tienda" it had been called. It seems that the food was too spicy hot for the Turkish palate. That was easy for me to understand, because Turkish food was not at all so hot as I am used to eating.

Although the basic food resembled that of Texas, the Cappadocians clearly did not overeat like the Texans; and what they did eat was more natural and healthier. As people, therefore, they more resembled the leaner, darker Texas Mexicans than the Texas Anglos, who are far too overweight and pale-skinned as a whole these days. The average Cappadocians also dressed more stylishly than average Texans of any segment of society, who for the most part look and act like slobs when out in public. Cappadocians, by contrast, looked classy. Sadly to say, I found on this trip that America has more overweight and obese citizens who dress like slobs than any European countries, in particular Cappadocian Turkiye.

The next day, Faruk and I left the Hotel Tyana and drove back to Istanbul. That was totally unexpected and unplanned. We were intending to drive to Aksaray and back to Adana via another route in Cappadocia and fly back to Istanbul, arriving at midnight. It was not something I was looking forward to doing. Then we picked up this old man who was hitchhiking to Ankara. He was carrying a walking cane but nothing else. We told him that we could take him as far as Aksaray. But on the way to Aksaray, I kept seeing these signs that said that Ankara was only a hundred and fifty miles away, and we could be in Ankara by three o'clock, and drive on back to Istanbul on the new tollway by no later than eight o'clock. I thought, why drive back to Adana and fly so late at night?

When I told Faruk that I planned to take the old man on to Ankara and drive from there to Istanbul, he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. We stopped at a gas station in Aksaray and he phoned Avis in Adana. As he was talking, the old man and I were standing there in the gas station parking lot. When I started to light a cigarette, the old man cautioned me not to, because during Ramadan smoking during daylight hours is considered rude, if not sacrilegious. So I didn't. Then Avis told Faruk I could leave the car at an Avis dealer in Istanbul. Great! I said. Let's go! So we drove to Ankara and Istanbul. It was crazy!

Cruising along the Texas-like highways, when we stopped to purchase gasoline, I used my credit card just as easily there as I would in Texas. It seemed so strange to me and drove home the point that all our computers have made these travel miracles possible.

We let the old man off in modern, bustling downtown Ankara. I couldn't believe that I was unexpectedly driving a car in Ankara, Turkiye. I felt so odd. We got lost but finally found the tollway to Istanbul. From then on, no problem.

Ankara, like the cities of America, is a new city built in the Twentieth Century. Streets are broad; there is ample parking space for vehicles. It is quite a contrast to the more ancient cities of Europe like Istanbul, Rome and Paris, where often the streets are old and narrow, built before the days of the automobile, and where parking places are usually non-existent.

On the superhighway, I could zip along at 100 mph (160 kph). It is an excellent "autobahn." There are three lanes in each direction : the right lane for slow cars and trucks, the middle lane for faster cars and truck-passing, the left lane for car-passing by the fastest cars. There were roadside call boxes for emergency use, like in the swamps of Louisiana and Florida, and the divided highways often have been provided with median lights. I have nothing but praise for the Turkish highway system.

We passed another hitchhiker, this one a younger man.

"Want to give him a ride?" I asked Faruk.

"No!" he said loudly, adamantly.

"Why not?"

"Did you see his beard and green hat?"

"Yes. Why?"

"That is the sign of a radical religious fundamentalist. He would argue with us the whole way."

No, we don't want that today, I thought.

During this drive, there is one point where all traffic has to exit the superhighway and detour over a mountain. It is an annoyance, to say the least; however, the Turkish Government is in the process of constructing the world's longest tunnel under this mountain to connect both ends of the as yet unfinished "autobahn." We arrived at this mountain at sunset, with its spectacular canyon views. We stopped for dinner in a cafeteria. As we were eating, I noticed a couple sitting across from me. They'd already gone through the serving line and picked up their food; they were only waiting till the television set on the wall would signal the end of "iftar" in Istanbul. Finally, a waiter walked over to their table and assured them that the religious dinner hour had officially arrived. I must admit that this seemed so strange to me, in this day and age, when even Mohammed had allowed travellers to be exempt from the Ramadan fast.

As we approached the outskirts of Uskudar, the Asian sector of Greater Istanbul, it had started to get rainy, windy and cold. Nasty weather. Traffic going eastwards was stalled for miles, due to an accident. Looks like Dallas, I thought, but it felt like driving in Houston. Later, I told Yasemin and Hasan that I know exactly why they don't have a car in Istanbul. I kept my Avis car for a couple more days, and I saw firsthand how difficult it would be to find street parking every evening, after being bumper to bumper all of over town all day. It was nightmarish traffic, especially if you're lost, which I was a couple of times.

In the heart of the city there was litter all around again. A few days earlier, as we'd been walking to catch a mini-bus, I had commented on the litter of Istanbul, comparing it to the litter in my own neighborhood. "Istanbul is the dirtiest city in Europe," Hasan had told me. "They don't regularly pick up the trash because they are afraid that a fundamentalist terrorist will put a bomb in a trash can."

This subject of litter came up in the first place because a few months earlier, we'd had a discussion at the Internet Hyperborea Forum about litter in Texas and elsewhere. In Bor I'd actually seen a man out in the street in front of his little shop, using a broom to sweep the street litter into a pile and disposing of it in a garbage can. Rarely does one see that anymore.

Ultimately it will be up to you, the reader, to decide if you can comprehend the often violent lengths to which the Catholic and later the gullible, offshoot Protestant churches have gone to hide or destroy all of this information; and up to you again to decide if you can believe in this "Monkey Of Christ"! For without a resurrection from the dead, Christianity collapses in ruin.

This suppresssion of Apollonius information by the Catholic Church has continued long enough. Those of you readers who can afford it should purchase an additional copy of this book and donate it to your local church or municipal library. Thank you.

Originally Written: 28 February 1998
Revised & Updated: 21 January 2005